Rys Sommefeldt

Year of the Linux desktop

While writing about my move away from the Mac in 2025, I wanted to stick to what was wrong with the Mac rather than write extensively about what is better for me about what I replaced it with. I’ll do that, but to get started I wanted to talk about the momentum behind Linux to frame why I’ve switched to it, to make it easier to talk about those details in future posts.

In that article about leaving the Mac I mentioned that I use Arch btw and talked a little bit about the new PC that I built that I’m running Arch on, but there’s a lot more to it that I want to talk about, both to document it and get back into writing as a hobby, and also to encourage anyone reading to maybe try Linux out.

There’s a huge amount of momentum around switching away from Windows or macOS to Linux at the time of writing, as people get really fed up with them in droves in much the same way that I have. It’s not just because those platforms are getting worse and Linux is the only viable other option; Linux distributions and software written for Linux, especially for desktop systems, have all come on leaps and bounds in the last few years and made big improvements in user experience, compatability and reliability.

Then there’s Valve and their investment in SteamOS and the open source software that adds all of the value to their Linux distro. The software that makes SteamOS able to run Windows games often much better than Windows can natively is some of the most impressive software engineering I think I’ve ever seen.

That Linux, using the open source software layers that Valve have put their resources behind to create SteamOS for their growing range of games consoles, can routinely run games better than Windows can on the same hardware in terms of both performance and reliability, speaks volumes for the overall progress that Linux has made in the last few years.

There’s been a fresh explosion of new Linux distributions that put together their own opinionated views of what modern Linux should be like, and established distributions like Arch and Fedora have evolved to not only provide their view of modern Linux on the desktop, but have also become the substrate for many of the new distributions. Indeed, SteamOS is now based on Arch.

The year of the Linux desktop has been a running joke for at least the last 20 years that I’ve been using non-Windows operating systems for my daily personal computing. And while it might still turn out to be a running joke come 2027, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more certain that it could actually grow market share to 10% or more and become a serious problem for Microsoft and Apple as it gets there.

If nothing else, both of those platform owners need the Year of the Linux desktop to happen, where Linux usage statistics become such a serious problem that it takes big chunks of revenue away from their bottom line. Disruption to their growth and money is the only thing either company is likely to use as a signal to change course with where they’re taking Windows and macOS for personal computers and start to focus on what it will take to regain those users that are now looking elsewhere, like me.