According to more realistic data, e.g. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202406-202506 the market share has been around 4% for the last year, even slightly declining in the meantime.

But that doesn’t make for nice, sensationalist headline stoked by wishful thinking.

Sorry to say, Linux isn’t going mainstream anytime soon and by and large the end of Win10 just means that the comparatively small group of users still running 5+ years old hardware will just buy a new PC or keep using their outdated OS.

In fact, if you combine the market share of outdated Windows versions (XP-8.1) you get a market share very close to the market share of Linux.

As much as we all would love it if the Linux market share goes to 50% in fall, it’s not going to happen.

The main issues with Linux adoption (it’s not preinstalled and most people have no idea which OS they are using and really can’t be bothered to reinstall) are just as present as they ware for the last 30 years.

I read a similarly sensationalist headline with 4% two months ago and 5% yesterday. What’s up with the headline makers?

Exactly my point. Also on Linux you quickly get to the limits of what you can find in the first-party repos without ppas or downloading .rpm/.deb/… files. And same as on Windows, having a malware-free first-party repo/store won’t protect you from malware if you download your programs from elsewhere.

If you run a repo-only system, where everything you install comes from the first-party distro repo, you’ll likely be fine. Just as you are on Windows or Android if you only download apps from the first-party store.

But like on Windows and Android, you’ll quickly reach the limit of what you can do with first-party store only.

Especially stuff like gaming requires non-repo/non-store stuff pretty quickly, and then you are on exactly the same turf as on Windows.

Exponential doesn’t mean fast.

I got myself an old EEE PC for exactly that purpose. (Except, substitute python with lua).

8h battery life, cost me €20 and does what it’s supposed to. Just make sure you get one with an Atom N280 or better. The popular N270 is 32bit only, and more and more programs are dropping 32bit support. Some of them you can DIY compile for 32bit, some you really don’t want to.

(For example, compiling Node on an Atom N270 takes around 3 days.)

I had one with an N270 first and replaced it with one with an N450 to get 64bit.

Maxed it out with 2GB RAM, a cheapo €10 SSD that maxes out SATA and overclocked it to 2GHz.

It’s not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s totally ok for editing text files with Kate and compiling with platformio.

It does work fine too on my 2010 EEE PC running Antix running on a 5.10.x kernel. Seems to be more an issue with newer devices, since every single laptop I own that’s newer than maybe 2013 has these issues.

Every single one so far.

Fair.

The only purpose S0 standby has on my work laptop is to make sure that my bluetooth headset always prioritizes connecting to my sleeping laptop in my backpack over connecting to my phone that I want to watch youtube on while on the train.

The DOS BIOS was also sometimes called IOS, and the Input/Output Supervisor in the IBM OS/360 was also abbreviated as IOS.

The laptops are Lenovo LOQ, HP (work laptop) and Gigabyte.

It’s an EEE PC 1005P. It’s an outdated piece of garbage, but sleeping works perfectly and the battery life is crazy. 8 hours on its extended battery, 5 hours on the stock battery. And these aren’t new batteries either.

With AntiX Linux performance is ok enough for what I need it for.

I also had it that one laptop was configured to wake any time the mouse moved even a tiny bit. So walk past the laptop, laptop is now awake.

Sadly I cannot configure any of that on my work laptop, because helpdesk thinks allowing me to do so would be a security risk or something like that.

Instructions unclear, now my laptop is covered in sticky stuff.

Tbh, I don’t know. The last time I used a desktop on a daily basis was 2020, and that was just my work PC where I wouldn’t really care if it woke up while I wasn’t at work.

The last time I had a desktop PC at home was in 2009, so I really can’t say what is happening there in the meantime.

And at least to me, sleep on a laptop is much more important than on a desktop. Battery usage isn’t really a thing on a desktop (usually at least).

Interestingly, I do own a little 2010 netbook that I use as an ultra-mobile laptop when I really don’t need any kind of performance, and that one does all sleep states including hibernation perfectly out of the box. Even when just sleeping it loses maybe 1-2% of charge per day.

But all the other laptops I own suck when sleeping.

I wouldn’t mind if at least hibernation worked. But it always loses the state on hibernate and acts as if there was just a power loss. It boots up with a fresh state instead of the stored one.

Sleep and hibernate don’t work for me.

Hibernate just acts like a power loss. After shutting down the state is just lost and the laptop starts up with a fresh boot.

With Modern Sleep, kernels 6.11+ go to sleep fine, but don’t manage to wake back up. The keyboard lights up for half a minute, the fan goes on, the screen stays dark and after half a minute the laptop goes back to sleep. Kernel 6.10 sometimes works, sometimes behaves like 6.11+. I’d say it works 80% of the time.

I disabled Modern Sleep in BIOS and tried to enable S3, S2 and S2+S3 in BIOS instead. I set the corresponding sleep states in Linux as well, and no matter which one of the non-modern-sleep options I try, and no matter if I’m using kernel 6.10 or 6.15, it never manages to wake up (same symptoms as above).

Lenovo LOQ 15ARP9.

To unlock, go to the BIOS, open advanced settings, hold FN+R+N, release, press F10 to save and reboot, head back to the BIOS and all options are unlocked.

Some Lenovo laptops have other key combinations, some need a tool, some need a modified BIOS.

I unlocked my bios (luckily Lenovo allows that with just a “secret” key combination in the bios) and disabled modern sleep, enabled S3 and S2 and tried that, with the result that my Linux freezes every time on wake up instead of only half the time…

Don’t know what exactly they messed up there, but it’s frustrating.