news
Desktop/Laptop Becoming Mainstream, Say Valnet Pundits
-
XDA ☛ The year of the Linux desktop already happened, just not on desktops
It's become a bit of a tired trope to hear someone say "this is the year of the Linux desktop", and that's saying something considering the trope used to be just "the year of Linux", to which someone would inevitably reply that Linux powers the entire internet because it's on most servers. But even the updated phrasing has become old and repetitive, and most people acknowledge that it's probably never going to happen.
Except it already has. Your average laptop or desktop PC may not be running Linux, but there are PCs out there running full, classic Linux desktops, and by many people's standards, Linux is actually the preferred choice. That's right, I'm talking about gaming handhelds, which are, indeed, just like desktop PCs in terms of their architecture, and they run desktop operating systems. These devices have upended our perception of the PC landscape, and while it hasn't spread to every form factor, the seed has been planted.
-
XDA ☛ I tested every Linux desktop and realized fragmentation isn't a problem anymore
As great as Linux can be, it's easy to look at the sheer number of desktops and distros you can use and be overwhelmed by all the differences between them. The truth is we often talk about Linux in contrast to Windows, but the latest Windows version only has one desktop paradigm, and even across versions, it doesn't tend to change that dramatically; so, having different Linux platforms be so radically different on the surface can be confusing.
But these days, things aren't as bad as they used to be. Yes, there are still a ton of Linux desktops and distros, and I've tried a lot of them. Distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Arch, Fedora, as well as desktops from GNOME to KDE, COSMIC, LXQt, Xfce, Cinnamon, and even Hyprland (albeit briefly). I've got my hands on all of these at some point, and I realized that the fragmentation that seemed to be such a big problem before is no longer that big of a deal.