The main reason I don't think Linux is any threat to Windows, and the main reason why I'm personally super grateful for WSL2, is this: the desktop.
Windows is a terrible OS for the server. Linux, on the other hand, is, and always has been, terrible on the desktop.
Every year or so, for more than a decade now, I've installed some Linux distro, in the hopes that "this would be it". My most recent Linux is Ubuntu, about 4 months back, and I will grant that it's become a hugely better desktop OS in recent years - Gnome, for one, has been making massive strides in terms of usability, appearance, stability and features.
Prior to that, I tried Zorin, which is how I became aware of the Gnome plugins and settings that makes the desktop feel really familiar to a life-long Windows or Mac user, and this is really great!
Unfortunately, it's still too unstable, too unpredictable as a daily workhorse. Weird bugs and quirks, daily episodes of freezing or crashing or being unable to reconnect my monitor or some other device after taking my laptop to another room for a meeting. Just not good enough, sorry.
This is one area where I'm afraid Linux will never fully get there. It's partially driver issues - because vendors don't care to support Linux, I guess. Instead of supported, official drives, too frequently, you get "some dude's personal attempt" at handrolling a driver. Similarly, the overall desktop experience is not a concerted team effort, but a combobulation of individual authors contributing plugins that weren't always designed or intended to work together.
Another thing that didn't hold me back personally, but is likely to stop a lot of more casual desktop users in their tracks, is the difficulty of installing programs and figuring out how to launch them. On Windows or Mac, you basically double click an icon, you're guided through setup, and the program appears in the menu or your desktop, often by choice. If the program you want is even available in one of the "software centers" on Linux, it's typically either a bunch of technical messages whizzing by (very disconcerting to casual users) or a silent install with no options and no clear indication of what just happened - often not even with a menu or desktop shortcut being added and no clear way to proceed.
The latter is something I can personally get around, but most casual users cannot. That probably includes many developers, who started out on Windows or Mac and kept a strong focus on software development rather than servers and operating systems.
I'm not convinced these are problems the Linux community can actually fix. It requires resources, and a team engineering effort, but who can mobilize that when everything has to free and open source? And yes, I know there are paid Linux variants, but these mostly seem to be cobbled together from the same Gnome plugins, homebrew drivers and software you can already find and configure yourself, and it doesn't amount to a much better experience, from what I've seen.
I would love to be wrong about all this, by the way. I hope someday I will be. And I will keep trying another Linux every year or so. As said, we've definitely come a long way towards something really useful. I just think there's still a long way to go, and can't really see how we're going to get past the issues that seem to require both industry support (drivers) and a concerted, organized (funded) team effort to refine the overall desktop experience. I'll keep checking back though. 🙂
Meanwhile, I'm extremely happy to be able to work with WSL2 and definitely don't see this as any kind of threat to Linux, quite the contrary.
What would be a threat to Linux, is Windows moving to an actual Linux kernel and becoming a full blown Linux desktop with support for proprietary Windows drivers. Could happen?? I'd be surprised, but who knows. 😏
Unfortunately, it's still too unstable, too unpredictable as a daily workhorse. Weird bugs and quirks, daily episodes of freezing or crashing or being unable ...
This is precisely what makes Linux a bad server too.
I don't think windows will ever die ... but we could see it become a Linux distro in the long term.
Linux fanbois will then have a dilemma about weather love to or hate Linux since that would represent the merging of the thing they love with the thing they hate lol.
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The main reason I don't think Linux is any threat to Windows, and the main reason why I'm personally super grateful for WSL2, is this: the desktop.
Windows is a terrible OS for the server. Linux, on the other hand, is, and always has been, terrible on the desktop.
Every year or so, for more than a decade now, I've installed some Linux distro, in the hopes that "this would be it". My most recent Linux is Ubuntu, about 4 months back, and I will grant that it's become a hugely better desktop OS in recent years - Gnome, for one, has been making massive strides in terms of usability, appearance, stability and features.
Prior to that, I tried Zorin, which is how I became aware of the Gnome plugins and settings that makes the desktop feel really familiar to a life-long Windows or Mac user, and this is really great!
Unfortunately, it's still too unstable, too unpredictable as a daily workhorse. Weird bugs and quirks, daily episodes of freezing or crashing or being unable to reconnect my monitor or some other device after taking my laptop to another room for a meeting. Just not good enough, sorry.
This is one area where I'm afraid Linux will never fully get there. It's partially driver issues - because vendors don't care to support Linux, I guess. Instead of supported, official drives, too frequently, you get "some dude's personal attempt" at handrolling a driver. Similarly, the overall desktop experience is not a concerted team effort, but a combobulation of individual authors contributing plugins that weren't always designed or intended to work together.
Another thing that didn't hold me back personally, but is likely to stop a lot of more casual desktop users in their tracks, is the difficulty of installing programs and figuring out how to launch them. On Windows or Mac, you basically double click an icon, you're guided through setup, and the program appears in the menu or your desktop, often by choice. If the program you want is even available in one of the "software centers" on Linux, it's typically either a bunch of technical messages whizzing by (very disconcerting to casual users) or a silent install with no options and no clear indication of what just happened - often not even with a menu or desktop shortcut being added and no clear way to proceed.
The latter is something I can personally get around, but most casual users cannot. That probably includes many developers, who started out on Windows or Mac and kept a strong focus on software development rather than servers and operating systems.
I'm not convinced these are problems the Linux community can actually fix. It requires resources, and a team engineering effort, but who can mobilize that when everything has to free and open source? And yes, I know there are paid Linux variants, but these mostly seem to be cobbled together from the same Gnome plugins, homebrew drivers and software you can already find and configure yourself, and it doesn't amount to a much better experience, from what I've seen.
I would love to be wrong about all this, by the way. I hope someday I will be. And I will keep trying another Linux every year or so. As said, we've definitely come a long way towards something really useful. I just think there's still a long way to go, and can't really see how we're going to get past the issues that seem to require both industry support (drivers) and a concerted, organized (funded) team effort to refine the overall desktop experience. I'll keep checking back though. 🙂
Meanwhile, I'm extremely happy to be able to work with WSL2 and definitely don't see this as any kind of threat to Linux, quite the contrary.
What would be a threat to Linux, is Windows moving to an actual Linux kernel and becoming a full blown Linux desktop with support for proprietary Windows drivers. Could happen?? I'd be surprised, but who knows. 😏
This is precisely what makes Linux a bad server too.
I don't think windows will ever die ... but we could see it become a Linux distro in the long term.
Linux fanbois will then have a dilemma about weather love to or hate Linux since that would represent the merging of the thing they love with the thing they hate lol.