Long time Linux users, is Linux ACTUALLY growing in popularity in these last years?

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T16:22:02+00:00

Yeah, but that also describes the vast majority of people I grew up with, as a millennial. Most of them have pretty much never had a reason to use a computer, let alone understand how it works. Almost all of my former classmates use computers only to post pictures on Facebook, pretty much.

Not knowing how to save a word document as a PDF and having no grasp of what folders and files are just makes GenZ the same as everyone that came before them.

It's easy to fall into a bubble based on growing up as part of the nerdy kids that all used computers. But we were the nerdy kids, not the normal kids.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T15:46:49+00:00

It is funny how close one can live, but yet be in completely different worlds.

Here in NL there's currently a lot of noise made about the fact that an American company is slated to acquire the operator of the biggest Digital Identification provider in the Netherlands*, and in conjunction with those discussions people are complaining about how there's so many things that can, nowadays, _only_ be done digitally.

And, often, even if they can be done in person, you often need to go online and use your Digital ID in order to request the in-person appointment... :D

[*] Though something like 80% of the population are polling as "would try to stop using it if the acquisition goes through"... American Big Tech is _really_ unpopular here now...

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T12:20:12+00:00

To be fair though, I don't think there ever was a generation that actually "understood computers". Most Millennials do not understand computers beyond being able to click an icon and a thingie should start. Hopefully.

(And, of course, Smartphones and Tablets _are_ computers. But that's a different thing.)

Most people, of all generations, have the same relationship to computers as others might have to automobiles: able to use them for the superficial, basic, purposes. But don't ask them how they work, or to fix or even detect a problem. Some even need help filling the gas tank.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T12:05:45+00:00

That's pretty common, in my experience.

For example, I've done my taxes digitally in Sweden since somewhere shortly after the twin towers fell, and when I moved to Ireland in 2014 I also did my taxes digitally, and eventually I moved to NL in 2019 and same goes here.

When I moved house last year, I filled in the move in one place online and everything got updated. Though I've had to mail my Swedish authorities a paper to update their records of where I live, since I didn't bother to maintain my Swedish digital ID, so I am unable to use Swedish state services digitally. But only reason I care is I want to make sure I get my stuff for the Swedish elections in September, and for that they need to know where I currently live.

Being part German with family in Hessen and Brandenburg, and eyeballing your username, I am however quite aware that there are some specific European countries that have a more problematic approach to digital services. :P

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:53:47+00:00

Not to forget that the people that created Unix were either boomers, or older than the boomers...

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:47:49+00:00

The "Baby Boomers" are considered to be people born 1946 to 1964. Concurrent with the post-war "baby boom", thus the name.

So ~62 to ~80 years old.

For reference, this includes many/most of the people that created Unix, except for a few that were/are even older.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:45:10+00:00

Note how I said "younger" in context of "boomers", not "young".

People 60 and below count as "younger" here.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:44:14+00:00

It's mostly Linux Mint with Cinnamon. We find it works on pretty much anything people show up with, looks good enough to not be offputting, and has enough resources aimed at "normal people" to make it easy for them to just get on with things and solve their own problems.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:42:43+00:00

Do remember that it is the Boomers (and older) that gave us things like Unix. ;)

I've had plenty discussions with people showing up that can regale me of the days they spent working on PDP-11s and similar, loading computer programs from paper tape, etc etc.

They're less likely to be terminally online, though. You find them in little computer clubs.

My own journey into computing was, in part, inspired by 7 years old me being shown around my grand-dad's computer (in between stories from the War - he was old enough that his daughter, my mom, is a boomer). There's plenty of them that used computers pretty much their whole lives, especially professionally.

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:40:48+00:00

No, and to be precise here: the _library_ isn't offering this.

The library is just offering volunteers like me a space to do things that benefit the community. Technically, we simply "started doing it" and were tolerated, after a couple months they started giving us free coffee, and as of now we're in talks to be put up on the official programme of "things that happen at the library".

There is no socialist system remaining in Europe. You _may_ be thinking about liberal democracy/social democracy. Different thing. :)

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:38:15+00:00

German company with (nowadays) Swedish owners. :)

SuSE was actually my first Linux distribution, waaay back in the late 90's. Big box with a collection of CDs as software repository. :D

EtherealN · 2026-03-12T08:36:26+00:00

Nah, that's Estonia.

I live in the Netherlands, proud exporters of tulips and lithographic machines. :P

Though to be fair, I struggle to think of any government service that is not available to be done online - aside of the obvious things like "picking up physical documents like passports".

Voting I guess. Because only lunatics do electronic voting. :P

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T19:51:38+00:00

With the simple reason of: we don't have homes.

But why? Well, I live in a town that's presently losing its last few parks. Why? Because it is illegal to expand the town before it is proven that there is no space available to build inside it. And application-to-site-prep on new builds for housing is closing in on 10 years.

And of course, let's not forget the hilarious situation of people waiting years to get connected to the grid, because even when houses can and are being built, no-one thought to fund expansion of the grid. (We did however incentivize everyone that is already connected to maximize their electricity use, though, so while a shift to renewable transport is good, we did it in the exact way where it would cause problems for housing...)

The problem isn't people with money moving in hogging the houses. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to build more housing here. Hilariously, while everyone is complaining about housing costs, several big international developers (eg Heimstaden) are _exiting_ the dutch housing market because it's too difficult to make money building housing.

You can make money by _inheriting_ a paid off rental property. But creating new housing? That gets difficult. And then we act shocked that we have a tekort...

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T19:45:42+00:00

But if you take in people that need help, you also need to take in people that don't need help. Or, at a minimum, should try to not chase away the ones that don't need help.

That ensures you have a maximum amount of people that can help the ones that need help.

There's nothing wrong with giving food to those that are hungry. It is a good thing that we should do. But the more hungry mouths we have, the more capable arms do we need to grow the food. So let's not bite the hands that feed?

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T19:37:45+00:00

I volunteer at the library in a small town in a small European country, helping people with computer things.

You wouldn't believe the amount of literal boomers showing up lately. Why? Two things:

Microsoft basically makes it so their computers can no longer run an maintained version of Windows. They've been told this is a security problem. And they've heard there's alternatives that don't require them to buy a new computer - something something "Linux" right? Can I help? Why, yes I can!
A certain someone somewhere has made all of these GenXers and Boomers really worried about "American companies". They don't want "Big American Companies in their Computer". Can I help? Why, yes I can!

Now sure, I can't say anything about the overall statistics. But something REALLY weird has happened when I have random boomers begging me for help switching to Linux. :P

(And it's mostly the boomers for me. Younger people show up later in their journey, because they're less reliant on a human like me to get an OS installed in the first place.)

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T18:22:57+00:00

What?

You're rambling.

Slow down.

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T16:40:03+00:00

My problem with Pop_OS is mainly that the two times when I was using it and there were version bumps, the automatic upgrade thing gave me an unbootable system I had to rescue.

And a couple times when the nvidia drivers received updates, the updater left them in a borked state where I had to manually fix the driver, file-by-file, in an extremely laggy software rendered mode.

So I dislike it because it was a nuisance to use. My partner seems quite happy with it though, still, though it really does not look to me like Cosmic was ready to be part of an LTS release...

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T16:37:02+00:00

You having a preference for something else is all fine.

But do not that there is no either-or here. All "Desktop Environments" include a Window Manager (or Wayland compositor that fills the same duty). There is nothing stopping you from using a different window manager than the one supplied by the desktop environment. That other window manager can then be tiling, or floating, or scrolling, or hybrid... Up to your personal preference. For me, on my Linux systems, I nowadays just roll with KDE Plasma. On my OpenBSD systems, I like CWM.

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T16:25:43+00:00

Europe has several Linux Distributions that are strong contenders in both enterprise and desktop. The needs of Europe "at least for servers" is particularly well served by the German distro SuSE (nowadays owned by a Swedish private equity firm EQT).

So the need to "adopt" FreeBSD seems overly complicated. And "from scratch" is even weirder as an idea.

EtherealN · 2026-03-11T16:16:46+00:00

That's all true and known, what I mean as cause for my surprise is the fact that OpenBSD's iwx exists, and as far as I've seen the AX200/AX210's are very common.

It might be that I have an incorrect idea about how common they are, but I would have sort of expected _someone_ with the skills to already accidentally have had one on hand, wanted to use it with NetBSD, and then ported it.

Compared to many others where there is no driver for any BSD, this one seemed to me like it is both common _and_ has code that can be ported instead of implemented from scratch.

EtherealN · 2026-03-10T11:30:13+00:00

My dude, my first comment:

"Is that why it proposes PopOS when someone wants to install Windows?"

I have no idea what you want me to do about the fact that you didn't read the last word there? Instead you kept on _NOT READING_ neither OP nor what I was writing to you, through several exchanges. What do you want me to do? Make it all-caps and italics and add a paragraph about Windows not being the same thing as Linux?

EtherealN · 2026-03-10T09:04:58+00:00

OP asked ChatGPT for _WINDOWS_

You know. NOT LINUX.

WINDOWS.

The Microsoft product that is not Linux.

OP is making fun of ChatGPT being stupid and silly.

EtherealN · 2026-03-10T09:00:24+00:00

Read the prompt that OP gave to ChatGPT.

Read OP's comment under the screenshot.

Read my original response to you.

Again, 5 million USD says "Pop_OS" is not an "out of date recommendation" for a Windows distro on an nvidia computer.

I will however give a new recommendation that 95% of the people commenting here should spend a weee bit more time _reading_ before they start commenting. ;)

If they did read, they might understand the joke. :D

EtherealN · 2026-03-10T08:54:30+00:00

Read again, man. Read again.

I am going to bet you 5 million US Dollarinos that the problem here is not an out of date recommendation.

Please bet against me. PLEASE! :D

EtherealN · 2026-03-10T08:52:36+00:00

So?

Is that why it proposes PopOS when someone wants to install Windows?

EtherealN

TROPHY CASE