i think the argument is flawed.
it assumes that all these people who for whatever reason are unable to pay for propriety software would immediately switch to "Free" software.

for the most part this is very unlikely. Linux is not windows for free and for a lot of people it is the lesser OS. to the effect that when forced to a choice, they would still rather pay for a windows licence than make the switch.

//anyways people are complicated just because they don't like one thing doesn't mean they like the other

i use Linux almost exclusively these days but every now and again i still go back to windows when im frustrated and i need to just do a thing.

This is likely the biggest reason, IMO. Everyone grew up with Windows on everything. Windows is still on almost everything. So the person looking for 'free' software, what's he going to choose? A brand new OS that he knows nothing about (Linux)? Or the old standard that he knows how to use (Windows) and can pirate for the same price as Linux?

Linux adoption must have been low because:
1) Too many distros under the moniker of Linux, whereas Windows is Windows.
-Of course you could say there are many different devices under the moniker of Android. But then, also Android is Android. While there are too many tastes of Linux with different ways of getting things done, there is only one Android which gets things done in the same way.
2) All of these distros are drastically different. While some are similar, not all work in the same way.

It becomes then a search for what is basically a distro that should fulfill your needs and you being happy with those needs being fulfilled. Oh, and lastly...

3) Drivers
Sometimes obtaining Linux drivers for your laptop isn't a really pleasant experience. You'd practically have to find a laptop that already comes with a Linux distro just to save yourself the trouble. Oh, not to mention that using the Driver Manager in Mint isn't helping me with the Bluetooth, which doesn't work on Mint.

So basically, yeah...the system still has more to go to also become more accessible.

When seeking drivers, I'd look up the raw hardware id, which was like 1234:fdic or something, and I'd get a good match. Linux drivers since they are usually written by the community aren't avaliable when the hardware is launched, but as I recall usually are avaliable... 3 years or something after. Although there are compatible drivers from time to time you can use instead which may work fine.

All in all, unless the hardware is known to already have drivers (looking up the hardware vs the compatibility lists), you're better off using it on older hardware.

And that's another hurdle for drivers that aren't easily available. I don't know how to look up the raw hardware ID. Strange isn't it, even though I should be a computer centric person in some way. All in all however, I'm intending to see how SolydX fares, and Mint is okay despite the Bluetooth issues.

The article only proves that there's a correlation between high piracy and low Linux use. I also skimmed it, but it seemed to do the analysis pretty well. The conclusion is that no piracy would raise Linux usage by 60-65%, that is, from 1% to 1.65%.

Seems to me that the results match the intuition: if there was no Windows piracy, more users will use Linux, but it would still be a minority OS.

Actually, I would argue that the same is true with Windows; anyone with no Windows experience will need some instruction in using it.

Whenever anyone asks me about it, I always recommend Linux Mint. IMO it's the best choice for new users & the most usable, followed by other Ubuntu based distros and then Ubuntu itself. Plus Mint & Ubuntu etc are the most widely used and supported desktop distros.

To be fair a big part of this problem is due to hardware manufacturers not supporting Linux, leaving it entirely up to the community to produce drivers. In many cases they don't even bother to provide the specs necessary to write the drivers, forcing the open source driver developers to reverse engineer the Windows drivers and making the task that much more difficult.

Anyway, most drivers on Linux are included with the kernel so updating to the newest available kernel often fixes issues relating to newer hardware. Newer/other drivers might also be available elsewhere, e.g. I had issues with some Realtek 8723* wifi cards on some laptops, the fix was to compile and install the drivers from here: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new

It's always improving & things will improve even more as its popularity increases and it becomes more viable for hardware manufacturers and software developers to support it.

Well, yes, but most people learn how to use Windows as they grow up and use it at home, school, work etc. because it's everywhere & they're never taught anything different.

Hmmm, he's using piracy rate estimates from the Business Software Alliance. Am I misremembering or weren't the piracy rates from these guys (BSA) shown to be pretty much total bullshit?

How often does Mac get pirated?

When you know what software you're limited to, what you'll lose access to, how to install the new stuff, and have enough proficiency to debug problems yourself then Linux becomes an option. One day it will be wrapped in something user friendly. But until then it's going to be for a "niche" crowd. That would explain why it's so popular with GOGgers. :P

I think you should be able to by accessing the /proc filesystem...

Dota 2 runs on Linux, so if I was forced to use it I wouldn't have to suffer that much. :D

The UI differences between traditional style UIs like Cinnamon and Windows are less than the differences between different versions of Windows (especially Win8.x and to a lesser extent Win10), or Windows and MacOS. It's not a UI issue, but that the underlying OS is fundamentally different to Windows and people don't want to have to learn a new system (especially if they've already convinced themselves that it's too complicated/difficult).

And short of some multibillion dollar corporation (or possibly a government) heavily supporting development of a project like ReactOS there never will be another OS that works just like Windows - the progress ReactOS has made is impressive, but as things are it'll never be enough.


That doesn't mean they're interested in/want to learn how to use Linux though. Most people want stuff to "just work" and will prefer to stick with what they know, and they already know Windows & how to do everything they want using Windows (or Mac)... learning how to use Linux is viewed as wasted time and effort if they are satisfied with what they already have.

Plus in many cases it's not not simply a case of learning how to use Linux; it's also having to learn to use an entirely separate set of software because the software suites they're familiar with are all Windows only.


I agree with this, but fortunately things have been improving throughout the 3 years I've used Mint and are continuing to improve as more people start using Linux.

As for gaming... in my experience it's very good for gaming, as long as you're using an Nvidia GPU with the proprietary drivers. When I started using Mint 3 years ago it was better than I expected, and the situation has constantly been improving. Games are increasingly being made available for Linux and while the quality of ports varies, things will improve further as the userbase continues to increase.

I've been having a bit of trouble getting Steam working on 64bit Debian. Getting Steam itself to work was easy. Getting games to work is a little harder. Dead Island, which is still installed on my Debian system wants libjpeg8 and Debian transitioned away from it. So now I gotta build that.

I've gotten HL2 to run but only just. If I start it from command line it bombs out saying something about being unable to find vguimatsurface.so. Run it from Steam and it will launch, after about literally somewhere inside of 10 minutes, but won't get past the loading screen.

I do have Gallium installed and have thus far avoided the Radeon blob, so it might just be that for Half-Life. Either way we'll see about running these things down.

It's not really a fair comparison what with them using DOSBOX but all three games I've installed from GOG have run just fine.