this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
740 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
74532 readers
3691 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not a lot currently, but what's needed is for the snowball to start rolling. This means the early adopters will have to make the more difficult decision of choosing "lesser" options wrt. comfort and convenience, compatibility, and bang for your buck. All decisions matter, and it will have long-term effects en masse.
At this point I'm ready to be an early adopter. I'm so tired that Im willing to do that.
If Windows phone didn’t take off, nothing will. It was so far ahead of its time, and a legit alternative, but developers didn’t want to support a new platform and neither did users.
The Windows phone entered the market while the market was stable, and users had little reason to move away from what they were used to and comfortable with. These days users are getting more uncomfortable, hence why Linux is on the rise. Same with the push for more liberal software (FOSS). I believe if a company can do it right, and offer a stable and comfortable alternative, they can manage to be much more successful than the Windows phone was 10 - 15 years ago.
Disclaimer: I haven't checked the statistics, but I remain optimistic, and continue making choices that align with my principles.
Linux is not on the rise lol.
People are locked in to iOS and Android. There is no appreciable number of people who would switch to another ecosystem and lose all their apps, purchases, etc.
More importantly, just like what killed Windows phone, developers won’t support a third platform, nor will customers move to a platform that doesn’t have the big apps that they need - many, if not most, of which are from Google themselves.
Linux has doubled its market share in the last couple years and is on an exponential growth curve right now. Valve's push for Proton and Steam Deck has changed a lot.
Also, if Linux-based, non-Android phones or tablets became fully functional and feature complete, there would absolutely be a good number of people who would switch. I'd be one of them.
Doubling your market share is easy when your market share is so low. It’s not on an “exponential growth curve” lol. The steam deck changes nothing for Linux as most people playing them don’t give a shit about Linux.
Linux gaming users are in the tens of millions of people. It's not like this is some super tiny community. There are more Linux gamers than macOS gamers by around double.
About two years ago Linux gaming market share was hovering below 2%. Now it's over 4%.
Yeah.....it's smaller than Windows by A LOT, but it's continuing to grow every single month on the Steam Hardware Survey. With Proton, SteamOS/Bazzite, and the Deck Verified program, Linux gaming has gone from "this sucks" to "this works unless there is kernel anti-cheat".