How much “market share” would Linux need in order for developers to consider Linux as well?
Posted by Arachnotron666@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 164 comments
Just a thought. I love open source and the alternatives that come free with it. That being said, specific software made by companies are often handy. Now that everything comes to Windows and MacOS, what would have to change in order to Linux being considered as well? And could this be something that changes in the future? Do you wish for a change like this? Please discuss.
Pleasant-Shallot-707@reddit
It would need to be the default OS on most new PCs sold
FaliedSalve@reddit
to quote J. Paul Getty: "A little bit more"
NonaeAbC@reddit
Market share is irrelevant. The question is how many people would buy Adobe products if they support Linux? The answer is close to none, users who need Adobe software are simply forced to not use Linux, they won't gain additional customers. If they start to support Linux, some existing customers would switch to Linux.
markus_b@reddit
This.
The majority of Linux users today are quite well versed in open source software and prefer the free and open source alternatives. That means Linux needs more market share in number of seats than Apple as Apple users are used to spend money on software while Linux users are not.
Neoptolemus-Giltbert@reddit
What nonsense, plenty of Linux users would happily pay for good quality software if it indeed worked fine on Linux and was noticeably better than the free alternatives.
Of course Adobe specifically is just a horrendous company with some of the worst licensing terms on the planet so I'm sure the people in the Linux community are more aware of that than most.
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
To be honest; I'm actually not interested in market share, I just thought that would be a good way to phrase my question, which is basically "can Linux can more mainsteam". Maybe I should've posted that.
Max_Wattage@reddit
To make the return on investment worthwhile, the fraction of the development project spent on making a (nominally windows) game tested and ready for sale on linux (and then providing customer support for it), has to be greater then the market share of linux.
This is clearly project specific, but if your particular game project would need to allocate 5% of the project budget to supporting your game on Linux, you would need 5% of your sales to come from linux customers.
Curently 1.97% of steam users use Linux. So commercially, projects can only allocate a maximum of 1.97% of their devlopemnt budget to servicing the (Steam) linux market.
Due to the uniformity of windows compared the multiplicity of customised OS configurations of Linux, it is often commercially pragmatic to ignore the linux market entirely as the customer support issues for your game are so much more varied and therefore expensive to deal with. If the company releases their game on Linux and then fails to provide that very expensive tech support, it leads to worse PR for their game that if that hadn't bothered to released it for Linux at all.
noonetoldmeismelled@reddit
Look at what OSX/MacOS had in like 2005. I imagine the PC market today is much larger today with more countries having more proliferation of computers so 5% in 2005 is a lot less users in total than 5% today. I keep in mind that Autodesk Maya and Davinci Resolve already have Linux releases and Topaz Video AI has beta deb installers
Moral_Degenarate@reddit
That info should be better known! :o
flowering_sun_star@reddit
I have to wonder if Mac had an easier time of getting companies to develop software for it because it positioned itself as a premium option. A target market with money to burn is always going to be an attractive one!
mixedd@reddit
I would say that MacOS wasn't about the OS only as Linux is, it was about complete bundle where system/os was optimised for hardware it runs on. Tough first years of OSX is a bit shady in my memory and I don't remember how things were back then, but current situation in my opinion is pretty top notch with Apple Silicon chips
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
Side note, I've noticed the laptops that are aimed for Linux gamers, such as Tuxedo and Pop. They're at least marketed as being the OS is optimised for the hardware (impossible to me to evaluate if this is true or not). I don't know if this is a new thing or not.
mixedd@reddit
How I see it is that with MacOS, the OS is built around a specific set of hardware, and mostly every inch of the OS is optimised to run best on that hardware. Linux, on the other hand, is built to just run on anything mostly. With brands like Tuxedo, System76, and similar, often that hardware is just rebranded OEM stuff (I hope that changed over the years, didn't follow much). To compare to what Apple is doing with MacOS would be like something like Framework who is hardware vendor, would make specific distribution dedicated to their Framework laptops optimised to run at it's best on their Framework laptops, squeezing out every drop of battery, and so on.
Don't take my word for it, just my observations and my understanding.
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
Apple’s HW/SW integration runs extremely deep, much more so than is possible with any kind of pairing of commodity hardware and general purpose software. There’s been several interviews where involved individuals have mentioned how if an OS team needs something, they’ll walk over to the M-series SoC department and ask for it. Conversely the SoC guys will walk over to the OS guys and ask if there’s anything they might find prospective new feature X for.
This is basically opposite of the norm in the x86 PC world where hardware and software development are largely siloed off from each other and the software guys just have to pray that hardware adheres to spec and behaves as the vendor claims it will.
faigy245@reddit
> This is basically opposite of the norm in the x86 PC world where hardware and software development are largely siloed off from each other and the software guys just have to pray that hardware adheres to spec and behaves as the vendor claims it will (which it often doesn’t, because firmware is consistently some of the most hacky/shoddily built software on the planet).
Losers. When Apple was using Intel, they did not roll over like Linux people when they wanted more from CPU - they just added T2 chip. Handled security, offloaded encryption from CPU, offloaded encoding/decoding of h264/h265 video, offloaded other stuff too for better experience.
Meanwhile "Tuxedo, System76" - well we'll just rebadge a Dell.
Yay Linux, such a great ecosystem.
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
The other thing in macOS’ favor is that its native frameworks (Cocoa/AppKit) were/are deep and extensive. They provided almost everything a developer might need, greatly reducing reliance on third party dependencies. Furthermore, these frameworks are opinionated and are usually clear about where the well supported “happy paths” lie.
This is a huge boon for indie devs in particular, since it means that you can just start building without worrying if the components you’ll need are there or not. That’s a big part of why macOS has a disproportionately large indie devs following.
deafpolygon@reddit
If you’re Apple, 5%
Synthetic451@reddit
I've said we already hit that, in large part due to the momentum from the Steam Deck. It really just takes a major hardware vendor push to get Linux into the limelight, which has always been a problem for Linux.
noonetoldmeismelled@reddit
Valve/Steam on gaming centric devices I'm certain will be big. If Valve does a Proton for Android and Android does something cool with that Debian VM, that could be a potential catalysts. Maybe by Ubuntu 26.04 pop_os Cosmic will be pretty solid and System76 can see themselves making some significant gains. At least maybe get more vendors shipping Cosmic/pop_os. I know people don't like Manjaro but that Orange Pi Neo gaming handheld shipping Manjaro is nice along with the Lenovo Legion Go S handheld shipping SteamOS
Candid_Problem_1244@reddit
Users would love Android to make a proper desktop experience for large screen rather than running a Debian VM for whatever reason. I mean termux is good enough already, I can occasionally open my server using ssh while on bus and call it a day.
Synthetic451@reddit
I don't really see Valve entering the Android space, at least not yet. Proton barely works on ARM and needs a ton of optimizations. A Debian VM is cool and all, but the overhead and power requirements of doing that would make it a no-go for gaming on mobile devices IMHO.
The whole ecosystem is not mature yet, not to mention that most of the ARM chips are not even at the caliber of Apple Silicon, which can just barely game at the fidelity we're used to seeing in PC gaming. Given that most of Steam's library is x86, my bet is that they'll stay on x86 for the foreseeable future. I don't really see them going ARM until some other major player churns out a decently beefy ARM CPU. Part of me doubts Qualcomm is up to the task.
What ARM really needs is some god damn standardization. All the players are too used to being in the mobile space, developing their own solutions that work with nothing else, and dropping support when they deem the hardware is out of date.
noonetoldmeismelled@reddit
There's a lot of good progress today with WINE/Box64/etc on Android
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQgEwDOfFW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXXMI6jaytY&t=594s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcbZ3xWYKgc
And most games aren't so hardware intensive. There's thousands of games on Steam old and new that are way easier to run than the above
Synthetic451@reddit
Yeah I am aware of it. But there's a big difference between showing a few select games running on ARM vs trusting it enough to ship a device that claims to run the entire Steam library. I think we're years out until a product like that would actually be viable.
Yes, but then you can argue that an x86 machine would run that just as well. Going ARM and Android would just limit Valve's choices in hardware, make game compatibility harder, and involve them spending a ton of time doing integration work instead of building a kickass device and OS.
noonetoldmeismelled@reddit
Not really limiting choices. It's expanding. 2 additional platforms. Desktop Linux ARM and Android ARM. And their attention is already split towards at least supporting desktop Linux ARM. Valve working on ARM is already happening however many years it may take
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/operating-systems/valve-appears-to-be-testing-arm64-support-in-proton-but-i-wouldnt-get-too-excited-about-an-arm-based-steam-deck-2-just-yet/
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Another-Linux-GPU-Dev-23
https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX/graphs/contributors
Synthetic451@reddit
It's limiting because compared to the x86 ecosystem where you have decent standards and compatibility between components, the ARM ecosystem is very much still in the land of building one-off devices.
Yeah, keyword on many years. I don't see Valve going in this direction for any product in the near future until regular desktop ARM takes off, and that will require a level of investment in standardization that no one in the industry seems to want to commit to at the moment.
My point is that ARM isn't going to be some thing that pushes Linux gaming. It has to be ready first before Valve will jump in, not the othe way around, and right now there's too many things that are still demos, work-in-progress, etc.
Imagine you're in charge of building a car for the average joe of today, but your design requires an engine that only works in the lab, requires special fuel, and all of the parts you need to repair the thing can't be found off the shelf at your local AutoZone but have to be sourced from one particular vendor. That's what building a production-ready ARM gaming box that can run your entire library of x86 games feels like today. Not saying it won't happen, just saying don't expect it soon.
Adventurous_Cicada17@reddit
Their next vr headset will run a modified version of steamos on an arm chip. They already use the selling point that yoy should be able to play desktop game on the headset directly on it.
If they are serious about it then they will work to make proton works on arm.
Synthetic451@reddit
Their next VR headset is a complete rumor. Pretty sure those are all just "leaks". They've confirmed that they're working on a standalone headset but that's about it, everything else is just guessing from numerous publications. It's also on Valve time, so who knows if that will even see the light of day or it's all just in R&D stage.
I have huge doubts that this is for a viable product in the near future. Proton on ARM is still unoptimized, PC VR ports are heavier than their standalone equivalents and existing standalone headsets already have a tough time delivering their experiences on the current ARM chips. Unless Valve is going to announce a whole line-up of standalone ports for their headset + complete Proton on ARM optimization + some new fancy ARM chip, I highly doubt this is happening any time soon.
bawng@reddit
Getting Proton on Android x86 is probably no big deal, however the vast majority of Android devices are Arm and then Proton is going to be the least issue.
You'll have to deal with emulating x86 as well. Apple has shown that with dynamic recompiling you can get decent performance but it's a lot of work.
noonetoldmeismelled@reddit
A lot of progress on that front from mostly hobbyist/enthusiast out there with Winlator, Pluvia and GameSir backed Gamefusion. They use Box86/64 or Valve backed FEX for x86 to ARM translation. Box86/64 works for RISC-V too. I have high expectations for Android gaming eventually being another WINE country
INITMalcanis@reddit
If the rumours are true and Valve can come out with a first-party successor to the Steam Machine concept, it will shake things up a lot. Sadly, the ludicrous AI hypemachine is devouring all the resources required to deliver something like that at a viable cost. I don't see how it can easily happen until the process that is used for Strix Point* drops a step behind what's being used for commercial Compute SKUs.
*Or something like it, even if not the exact Strix Point SKUs. AMD are very happy to provide custom solutions for the console business.
mixedd@reddit
Loved the idea of Framework's mini PC that runs on AMD APU that can deliver pretty good frames in gaming, up to the point I saw the price.
Dangerous-Report8517@reddit
Leaving aside my personal beef with the idea that Framework of all companies is pushing a desktop with soldered RAM and CPU, the price is apparently very competitive if and only if you treat it much less like a desktop and more like a really weird AI accelerator GPU, since the ability to allocate tons and tons of system memory to the iGPU apparently makes it punch well above its weight for AI workloads...
Dede_Stuff@reddit
Marketing that as a gaming system doesn't make any sense to me. It's clearly just an AI workstation, and probably a pretty cool and good one from what people who know anything about that stuff have told me. But the price is just absurd if you're trying to also target gamers who want to get into PC gaming.
mixedd@reddit
Yes, the price is damn absurd, as my 5800X3D, 7900XT with 32Gb RAM SFF build was cheaper than they ask for that thing.
Synthetic451@reddit
Yeah, I feel like the hardware shortage is more limited to dedicated GPUs than anything else, so we may be okay in terms of a new Steam Machine. At least that's what I am hoping. What might be crazy though is that if it turns out to be a decent machine at a good price, people might just buy the damn thing to act as regular PCs...
Aristotelaras@reddit
Dell ships some laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.
vancha113@reddit
Yeah I'd agree with this. We already "hit" it. Theres No hard cutoff, developers already target Linux. Theres loads of Linux native applications, just take a look at every distributions respective software center. For big corporations (read: the ones that make industry standard applications like Adobe, etc), Linux would need enough users to warrant work on native applications. I would imagine numbers like say 20 or 30% market share would be well in reach, assuming that those 30% would have enough potential paying users for them to be profitable.
INITMalcanis@reddit
On the basis of no expertise whatsoever, I would say that a 5% market share is the minimum to even be on the radar. That's where the discussion starts.
Realistically, probably in the 10-20% zone for most.
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
And it’s modified by how easy the platform is to not only ship binaries for, but also doesn’t need period updates. One of the more attractive aspects of the two big commercial platforms is that a binary will continue to run 5-10+ years without significant breakage.
This is a little less of a factor than it used to be since continuous updates is becoming more of a norm, but there’s still a good amount of industry-standard commercial packages that will sometimes go long periods without updates.
This is not one of desktop Linux’s stronger points, and so I’d say we’d need to see closer to 7-10% marketshare before companies see it as a worthwhile target.
R3D3-1@reddit
I wonder how much Flatpak and AppImage help with that.
As in: Do they also ensure a consistent GLibC?
At work our admins basically don't do distribution upgrades unless you ask specifically. So I sometimes was in the situation that I couldn't run a newer binary, because it required a newer GLibC, or conversely, couldn't run an older version I needed due to some bug because of a deprecated function being removed causing a crash.
Similar issues would crop up when trying to self-compile and not being able to install the required version of the dependencies.
Yet at the same time I can downgrade to an earlier version on flatpak just fine.
Cryptomator comes as AppImage, but I don't have much experience outside of that with this format.
Also, are Flatpak and AppImage viable for closed source software?
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
Flatpak/AppImage and stable glibc help but aren’t the whole picture.
Think of how many times apps using outdated builds of Electron have been a thorn in Linux users’ sides, where they will usually run but will be buggy, won’t function correctly, or are borderline unusable. That doesn’t happen with these same apps on Windows and macOS.
Of course Electron app devs should really just keep their dependencies up to date but that’s not the world we live in.
metux-its@reddit
That's the usual standard problem with commercial/proprietary SW: horribly bad maintenance. No matter which OS.
One of the many reasons I never use such stuff.
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
Problem is, a lot of people don’t have any choice in the matter. Would it be better if companies used e.g. Matrix instead of Slack or MS Teams? Absolutely, but try being a rank and file and convincing IT and the positions above them of that. Heck it’d be a battle even for the head of IT.
So unless we’re taking an all-or-nothing mentality, making sure popular proprietary software is reasonably usable is probably a good goal. In my eyes it’s still a net win if people are running Linux even if the software they’re running on it isn’t fully open.
metux-its@reddit
You admins haven't understood the elementary concepts of Unix ?
man 1 chroot
And since we're now in the 3rd millenium:
man 1 docker
Depends on specific glibc and libfuse2. No idea who had that genious idea :o
You can put whatever you like into.
But last time I've checked, fatbak required some particular init system (systemd) for unknown reasons. Snap even officially declares this.
Unaidedbutton86@reddit
Flatpak is pretty viable for closed source software, you can setup your own repository and most people have the flathub repo installed, which has many closed source apps like discord and steam included.
AppImages are basically binaries with included libraries, they can be distributed anywhere, also with propietary software
metux-its@reddit
Pretty trivial on Linux (or quite any Unix), because the kernel ABI rarely changes (in incompatible ways). Anything else is up to userland, and in worst case one can also ship his own copy of libc.
Those who're constantly whining about this just still didn't understand the fundamental concepts of Unix, for about 5 decades now.
What does that have to do with "desktop Linux" ? chroot() had been invented 45 years ago - long before Linux even existed.
It could all be so simple, if those "developers" just would have read some Unix beginners manual.
that_one_wierd_guy@reddit
so then what's likely to happen is someone like adobe, will pick a distro, probably ubuntu. and form a partnership for distrobution? where they both work together and make sure that updates will never be pushed if they break this one specific thing? of course it'll become available for other distros but if there's issues then you're on you own?
I_Arman@reddit
Compare against Apple machines; they're at something like 15% market share. Some development targets Macs (creative arts, mostly), but they are still lagging behind in terms of games and specialty software.
ahferroin7@reddit
Apple lagging behind in terms of gaming has a lot more to do with the specifics of the platform than the overall market share. Major factors include:
yung_dogie@reddit
Anecdotally I've despised the MacOS machines I use for work because my preferred mouse has felt completely sluggish in pointing and scrolling compared to using it on Linux or Windows machines. I have yet to get a real solution to it and just gave up lmao
hishnash@reddit
> At least as recently as 2020, Apple’s input drivers had horrendous latency issues
The drivers did not have issues, the issue was with the commonly used user space api that many devs used. Apple provides mutlvipiel apis you can use to read user input, the easies one (and documented one) that many devs use is designed for office style applications and has a very high latency as it is a callback style api were it will find the next low load main thread sleep and call back to your application on a key state change. All platforms have input apis like this, and you should not use them if your making a game (other than maybe of the menus etc were it is nice to have discreet key press events callbacks). Remember macOS is very close to FreeBSD so you an hook in at a much lower raw event level that is lower latency than windows, but devs need to remember this and a lot seem to have forgotten that it is BSD.
No you cant, VK is not supported on any of the major consoles.
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
On the point of graphics APIs, even if Apple included Vulkan support it would only indirectly be helpful in that it’d enable marginally better DirectX bridges than are possible with Metal. The real problem is that game devs by and large can’t be arsed to write anything that’s not DirectX or a proprietary console graphics API. The overwhelming majority of Windows games do not run on Vulkan.
hishnash@reddit
That would depend on apple doing a lot mroe than jsut supporting VK, it would require them to supprot a LOAD of optional VK features, many of which are not well suited for apples GPUs in HW. For apples driver team this is a bad move as they care about long term, the last thing they want is devleoeprs to start targeting features today that they know they will always be stuggling to provide with good perfomance as the HW roadmap does not (or cant due to patents) provide a pathway to runnign these features in an opitmal way.
With grpahics features there are always mutlipel ways you can provide the same visual output, and depending on your HW selecting the correct pathways can have a HUGE impact on perfomance. So providing apis for pathways that you cant (and never will) be able to support well in HW has a long term negative impact on the platform. (apples GPU driver team have made this long term over short term choice mutlipel times in the past and are clearly given the leg room to do this long distance planning).
A large reason for this is dev tooling and support. If your going to write your own custom engine and yoru big enough to do so. If your using VK yoru on your own, you will need to hire GPU experts (likly direclty from the driver teams) for each GPU vendor you want to support (VK is not HW agnstic if you care about perfomance). This costs a LOT and is also very high risk.
If as a studio you opt to use apis that have backing in the indsutry. (DX, metal, Sonys, NV private api for Switch etc) then the paltform vendors of these apis will help you. If your large enoguh that can include them sending experts to work in your offices (at no cost to you) for a short time to help you get started and to fix issues you have later on. This is worth a lot of $$$ as you dont need to try to poach these very costly staff mambers and furthermore you dont need to keep them employed long term. They can upskill your other team mebers in the peticulars of the platform when they are on site and later can be reached throgh email, chat or video link to help with futher questions.
There is no such support in the VK space, not to mention the poor developer toolign when it comes to debuging and profiling compared to the other vendors that provide much better tooling for this.
mmv-ru@reddit
But Apple's platforms is very consistent. Apple strong push users to upgrade to latest OS variant and actually there only 2 major OS variant macOS and iOS. Easy to make One (two) binary distribution suit all (almost).
I_Arman@reddit
Which is a good point - as standardized as macOS is, it still doesn't have but a fraction of the software Windows does. Linux is far more fragmented, so it likely would have to be more than 15%, maybe even as much as 10-20% for a single distro (or family, like Debian/Mint/Ubuntu).
INITMalcanis@reddit
On the other hand, Apple gets Adobe, MS Office, and even some very popular games that are locked out of Linux. If Linux could run what runs on Apple, I feel like that would remove the barrier for an awful lot of people.
FattyDrake@reddit
This is closest to the correct answer, it seems. (The OP seemed to be talking about commercial software packages, not open source or specific custom software.)
Serif, the makers of Affinity and before they got bought out by Canva, said that they wouldn't even consider a Linux version unless they could be 100% sure they'd make at least $500k in revenue, and that was just to break even.
Larger companies would want even more return.
And it's been shown that Mac and iPhone users are more willing to pay for software, there's a disproportionate revenue split between Apple and other platforms. So even if Macs are at 15%, they're more likely to pay for software, so they might be closer to say 30/70 revenue split or higher compared to Windows with some apps.
So the real question isn't so much % of marketshare, but how willing are Linux users to pay for software compared to Windows or Mac in relation to marketshare.
And since a lot of people use Linux because it's FOSS, that's likely lower than the other platforms.
its_a_gibibyte@reddit
5% of what? Looking at computers of any type, linux is absolutely dominating. Servers, phones, cars, embedded devices, etc.
It's hard to get numbers, but searching around it's around 95% for web servers, 60% for servers in general, 80% for phones, 90% for supercomputers, 70% of smart TVs, and 70% of embedded devices / internet of things (IoT).
metux-its@reddit
I am a developer and I'm not just "considering" Linux, but developing for it for decades now.
Market demand, within the specific segment of the individual vendor - those have to gain more profit by adding Linux support. The areas where there're really no FOSS alternatives are just specific niches, often there isn't even any competition - so actually no market all. Users of those fields could just unite and sponsor FOSS development.
Personally, don't care much, because I don't need those niche stuff. I don't use any proprietary software at all (except maybe for boot firmware, I couldn't replace yet)
doranduck@reddit
About 90% if you ask adobe.
Appealchul@reddit
Probably around 15-20%
throwaway490215@reddit
Its a function of
users * value per user. The ease and willingness of users to spend 10$ on a flashlight app have to be taken into account.Expensive-Paint-9490@reddit
Many casual GNU Linux users ignore that outside consumer market, GNU Linux is the standards. Internet, cloud, HPC all run on GNU Linux.
Robsteady@reddit
Better question, how many users switching to open source alternatives will it take for other developers to realized their stuff should be open as well? The more I personally gear back toward F(L)OSS software/tools/etc, the more annoyed I get by the things I use that aren't, particularly when it comes to things I need for work (particularly looking at you, MS Exchange/O365).
zombeharmeh@reddit
The reason I switch to open software isn't strictly because it's open. I switch because it's usually the only alternative to subscription model software. I will gladly pay for closed source software that doesn't jerk me around.
Robsteady@reddit
I can get behind that sentiment. The problem is most closed-source, for profit companies believe the only way to be sustainable is the subscription model. Technically, it’s true from the perspective of recurring revenue, and there can be a case made that it could be cheaper than one large purchase every couple of years on new versions, but that benefit to the customer is not their primary reason for that arrangement. I think the whole ideology behind open/free software just fits better with a humanitarian outlook.
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
Good point!
zombeharmeh@reddit
The problem isn't market share, the problem is how annoying it is to release software for Linux. Especially big and complex software that isn't open source.
Specialist-Fuel214@reddit
What about %10 ?
kabrandon@reddit
Can you give specifics on things that aren’t developed for Linux because from what I’ve seen most things already are developed for Linux?
Trying to think of things my Linux systems can’t do and mostly coming to mind are some Elgato peripherals and game anticheats. I think we’re reaching a day that gaming companies start thinking of Linux systems more now though.
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
In my case, I’m fighting to get certain guitar plugins to work properly.
divad1196@reddit
The main issue of linux for vendors is the linux license of the kernel.
This is why android adds a layer on top of linux. This is why nvidia announcement of doing open source drivers was so well received.
If we had better vendor support for hardware drivers, it would help a lot.
mikosullivan@reddit
Linux is already the most popular OS in the world. It powers most cell phones. I don't know how much more popular it would need to get.
Nadie_AZ@reddit
On the server? Already there. On the desktop? How fast does Microsoft destroy their desktop offering? I mean if they switch to a subscription model, that might speed things up, but many people might just give up using a computer as they can do a lot on a phone.
The real barrier, sadly, are applications like MS Office and Adobe suite.
LinusThinkPad@reddit
Maybe my experience is skewed but in the offices I worked in those two are already moving to free alternatives like Google Docs and Canva/Photopea/DaVinci. Even as everyone still uses Windows
Fun_Assignment_5637@reddit
yeah Windows is losing market share every year, it won't last another 10
LinusThinkPad@reddit
I could se google making a strong play for it.
Chromium is Linux but most consumers think it sounds less scary
faigy245@reddit
Why would Microsoft destroying their desktop would lead to more Linux users? Ma and pa would just buy refurbished M1 Air - fanless, more that fast enough, great screen, and runs Word.
Vasant1234@reddit
Linux is too fragmented with no stable API for application development and deployment. If developers can address these basic issues then Linux desktop will gain market share and software companies will target Linux desktop as a viable platform. I don't think this will happen as backward compatibility and stable API doesn't seem to be the priority for desktop developers. For example KDE 5 applications will not run on KDE 6 same is true with GNOME 3 and GNOME 4.
adamkex@reddit
Honestly just wrap it all in with Wine/Proton. It would be by far the easiest to maintain.
SnooCompliments7914@reddit
Depends on the tech used to make the software. E.g., Electron apps tend to automatically have a Linux version. Java too. Games are also more likely than desktop apps.
green__1@reddit
It's not that simple. consider the Android versus iOS situation. Android has 80% market share versus iOS 20%, and yet most companies develop for iOS first, and many of them never get to Android. so apparently market share isn't the determining factor.
jedi1235@reddit
About 10%, optimistically.
I'm a hobbyist game developer working in Linux. I hate Windows. I hope to eventually release something and make a couple bucks (being very optimistic about how good my experimental games are). I would consider releasing without Windows support if Linux had close to 10% market share.
And I really do not want to support Windows; the users are complete idiots and would ask for my help rebooting.
But even as a hobbyist developer, I would feel obligated to support those idiots just so I could be certain my crappy game got it's fair share.
So... 10%.
teepoomoomoo@reddit
MacOS got mainstream development support around 3-4% market share so I'd argue that's not really what's holding Linux back. It's probably more of a hardware issue. If Linux ever saw widespread commercial release you'd probably see more effort for native Linux support.
kudlitan@reddit
What Linux needs is a big company producing Linux-based software that markets their products to hardware manufacturers and software companies in B2B transactions.
Red Hat and Canonical come closest to this but they need to do this on a bigger scale with the biggest impact. In other words, spend more on marketing.
But how can they do that when their users don't really pay for their software?
When users pay for software, developers will write for that software.
teepoomoomoo@reddit
The reality of the Linux server market share doesn't bare this out, as far as commercial software is concerned. RHEL makes a good chunk of change providing support for otherwise free and open sourced software.
Id still argue (and I do) that Linux being FOSS isn't why it doesn't have support from third party companies. It's really just that there isn't much consumer demand at points of sale for Linux machines.
Like I said, macOS had widespread software support at around 3-4% market share at around the same time Linux also had 3-4% market share. The fact that macOS was supported while Linux wasn't seems to be entirely based on consumer demands at retail locations. While macOS users at Best Buy we're asking if Microsoft Office would work on their new iMacs, Linux users were writing FOSS alternatives.
In simpler terms: we need more normies demanding support from software companies.
fundation-ia@reddit
Apart from Linux users, no company cares about desktop Linux for general users, not even Valve.
Aranka_Szeretlek@reddit
Depends on what is being developed. I work in computational physics, and Unix is the default for us.
bobj33@reddit
I'm in integrated circuit / chip design. In the 1990's everything ran on commercial Unix systems from Sun, HP, and others. Since around 2002 everything runs on Linux.
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
Right! I'm your average everyday user, don't know much about that stuff. Thanks for the comment!
100GHz@reddit
He either tells you if it will rain tomorrow, or how to get energy from vacuum, or something in between.
that_one_wierd_guy@reddit
nah, he's the one that figured out if you get energy from a vaccum, it's gonna rain tommorrow.
Tricky_Professor_654@reddit
maybe twice as much as today, so 8-10%
that_one_wierd_guy@reddit
I'd say it's less about market share and more about ideology. sure we've had a couple decades worth of influx of new users that don't care much one way or the other if something is open or closed source(I'm one of them) but, and this is just my perception. it seems like a majority of people doing the actual work to make linux, have strong feelings about closed source, for profit software. and I'm sure the companies behind those projects have simmilar opinions about foss
blackcain@reddit
That's not how this works. You're looking at the effect part of "cause and effect". For Linux to gain marketshare, you need to have a robust way to make money from the platform. Money means that more powerful tools will show up. Tools and applications that people want. Then you start getting more people into the platform and your marketshare starts growing.
daniellefore@reddit
Piggybacking because I think we probably align here :)
Making it a goal to attract ports of big successful windows or Mac software is also kind of backwards. Platforms like iPhone and iPad were wildly successful for years before Photoshop was ever available in any capacity. It took completely market saturation.
Instead they focused on creating their own really robust ecosystem of new indie apps, which is what I think GNOME and elementary are doing with Adwaita and Granite and FlatHub and AppCenter respectively. I think we have a much better chance at closing the functionality gap by creating new purpose-built apps in a sustainable indie developer ecosystem than trying to court major ISVs
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
Quality and capability of tooling and frameworks makes a huge difference here too. It’s one of the reason why even today, many apps either debut on iOS first or remain iOS only: the dev experience, despite the App Store nonsense, is just better. It’s only been very recently that the Android dev story has started to approach something decent.
Ideally, Linux would have a set of frameworks that largely eliminates the need to pull in external libraries that are incongruent in style. To use iOS as an example again, in an iOS app you don’t need any third party dependencies to connect to a server, pull down some JSON, and parse it into a properly typed model — all that’s included in the box. By contrast on Android everybody pulls in something like OkHttp and Moshi to do those things. It sounds insignificant, but it’s actually a substantial amount of extra friction.
daniellefore@reddit
Yeah I think our developer story there is Flatpak platforms. These days pretty much every library you need for common cases is baked into the platform, so you don’t really need external dependencies in your Flatpak manifest most of the time. I know we still have some gaps but I think we’ll get to the point where the platforms are super well rounded and you can just pick one without having to worry about adding extra libraries and it’ll just work
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
It’s certainly a good step forward, though it’s still missing style consistency. For example, on iOS all the APIs one might work with all look and feel pretty similar, so knowledge using one transfers to the others to a large degree.
This could be handled with some sugary wrappers so devs aren’t e.g. interfacing directly with libcurl, which is not going to act anything like the other GTK/Adwaita APIs they might be using.
blackcain@reddit
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of people porting successful mac/windows software since that also requires a critical marketshare mass you have to build. I'm more thinking that you've built something where an indie developer could make a living writing code on Linux more than anything else. Folks like you. :)
You want to have a growth path. The flathub/appcenter stuff is a critical aspect of this. The flathub would not have happened without being inspired by the work elementary has done in this regard.
daniellefore@reddit
100% and I think Adwaita has especially been wildly successful in terms of attracting 3rd party developers. We’re working on the next generation of Granite now and definitely learning a lot of lessons from you folks!
blackcain@reddit
Well we are complimentary ecosystems. :) But yeah, adwaita has been really good - when seeing new apps, I see a lot of them are adwaita.
There are some things that needs to be done though to increase mindshare and that is building better comms with software authors - like I want them to be invested in helping others by answering questions based on their experience. Create a library of codes that people can look at. Even better, upload those code snippets to an LLM and then have the LLM explain the code. (vs trying to generate it, which isn't great)
daniellefore@reddit
Yeah I think we’ve really benefitted by endorsing a language in that way because we can create docs and examples for that language and all our first party apps can serve as examples and a good portion of our community is also using it. So it really makes it like everyone is on the same page and care share experiences
pnlrogue1@reddit
In which sector? Programmers write a lot of programs for Linux developers - VS Code, compilers, etc, all exist.
Creative apps tend to go to Mac first as there's still that stupid "Macs are better than PCs for graphics" impression hanging around even though a PC can be much more powerful for cheaper and perform at least as effectively. Getting an artist to use a PC is like getting a toddler to swallow cod liver oil a second time (after they know what it tastes like) so Adobe won't be coming to Linux any time soon if Mac is still their primary use case with Windows in second
Microsoft is unlikely to ever create Office for Linux, though the web apps are getting pretty solid so office workers might start to find themselves shifted to Linux eventually as the justification for a PC becomes more tenuous. LibreOffice and its various related suites exist, of course.
Games are starting to get there but I think Windows still has a major graphics advantage over Linux so a compatibility layer that means they only really have to develop for Windows and then just make sure Photon works sufficiently is a much easier sell than making a native app. I anticipate we'll see more and more games being written for Photon rather than for Linux any time soon
faigy245@reddit
> Creative apps tend to go to Mac first as there's still that stupid "Macs are better than PCs for graphics"
No, it's more that creative people do have taste and I mean look at Windows...
pnlrogue1@reddit
I'm with you. I hate customising Linux. The more you screw around with, the more likely it is too break. I was bored of Cinnamon on my Mint install so I know run stock Gnome
CarbonatedPancakes@reddit
For creatives specially there’s still some lingering bits and pieces that make the Mac experience a little better than that of Windows. The big one is color management, which macOS has always handled excellently but Windows remains awful for to this day. Desktop Linux lands somewhere in the middle… decent-ish color management is possible under X11 but still patchy under Wayland.
So something that’d bolster Linux popularity there is to make it very good at color management.
faigy245@reddit
Simple - you should travel back in the future and prevent WINE from happening. No incentive to develop for Linux when you can develop for Windows and change (or not) a little to make it work on WINE.
This is nothing new, OS/2 with Windows compatibility situation.
__laughing__@reddit
Considering macOS/OSX is at \~13% globally on statcounter, probably somewhere around there.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Probably not. Many games aren't available on macOS, despite very good press, traditions in personal computing, ~13% share, and very uniform platform that makes it easy to release software for it. So when GNU/Linux reaches that, it would remain reasonable to still have even less choice of supported games than macOS.
6SixTy@reddit
Apple rolls too much of their own in-house tech that's very removed from whatever the rest of the gaming industry is doing to even try courting developers.
__laughing__@reddit
Gaming isn't the only software though. Nearly all productivity software is available on macOS
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Some of what I wrote still applies (marketing, uniform platform), but productivity software comes with an extra difficulty: it tends to contain a lot if legacy code, and experienced software developers who match its age. Getting either to work on a new platform would be a huge cost. So GNU/Linux would have to exceed quite a high threshold to be worth it - higher than existing platforms that simply need to remain supposed.
lKrauzer@reddit
Developers already prefer Linux, they use Windows because companies force them to
CybeatB@reddit
Based solely on Apple's current desktop market share, at least 10-15%.
I have a feeling that Linux would need more than that to overcome the reputation that it's only for "techy" people who refuse to pay for software.
Apple made its own reputation with a huge marketing budget, especially when it was rolling in profits from the iPod & early iPhone. Linux doesn't really have that option.
wosmo@reddit
I don't think numbers tell the whole story.
If MacOS and Linux had equal market shares, exactly the same number of users, I'd target MacOS. They have a more consistent platform, and a userbase that's not allergic to the concept of paying for software.
mfuzzey@reddit
It's not the global market share that matters but the market share in each niche that a category of software targets.
In some niches Linux is already there. Eg software development tools, some hardware tools like logic analysers, oscilloscopes, USB analysers..., FPGA tooling, much scientific software
In others it's on the way. Eg some gaming platforms
And in yet others it's nowhere and probably never will be (accounting software)
As an embedded software engineer (which means doing some hardware stuff too) I've been using exclusively Linux at work for over 10 years now and everything I need is available. If I were an accountant or a graphics artist it would be a different story. And that's perfectly fine - computers and operating systems are tools and we should use whatever is the best for our use cases.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
"that everything comes to macos by default"
That's not true
Annual-Advisor-7916@reddit
I don't use any software that is only available on Windows, so for me it happened long ago...
ToThePillory@reddit
I think it would depend where the market share was. The Mac sells pretty well and people tend to make creative tools for it, but still will rarely port a game.
If you multiply the Linux desktop user base by 10 you still may not have many gamers in there, and games won't get ported. Business software might though.
I work in industrial automation, and on the desktop Linux and Mac might as well not exist there, it's not that Windows has 90% share, it's that it has *100%* share. That's just how the market is.
As a developer, it just depends, it's not about market share size, I've worked with plenty of companies that work on IBM mainframes. In terms of actual installed base of machines, the base is *tiny* but of course they're big machines owned by big companies and they'll spend money.
On the other side, Android phones have a *vast* userbase, but you try selling anybody anything and it's a tough market, users just don't want to spend money. They'll look at ads all day, but getting 99 cents off them is another matter.
It depends on a lot of things, not just the size of the market, but what those users do, and their willingness to part with money.
Zery12@reddit
>>users just don't want to spend money. They'll look at ads all day, but getting 99 cents off them is another matter.
android users are fine with paying for subscriptions though, and "one-time payment software" is pretty much dead on Every OS. it's not sustentable for the most part.
library-in-a-library@reddit
Do you mean for desktop? It's already the most used system in the world.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
And what market share would Xbox/PS5 need in order for decelopers to consider porting all the Switch games there?
For many studios, the cost of changing the platform is too great, and Windows could very well remain their only PC platform even when it drops to 1/3 of all gaming PCs or so. Because choice of supported platforms is not only about market share, but also about cost of getting that working, direct support given to users, quality assessment, and the profile of users who might purchase it (or not).
Support for all the distributions, libc choices and versions, X11/Wayland, new Wayland protocols, SELinux/AppArmor, sound systems, user customization, and whatever else is about to change in the uncertain future, is much more difficult than getting stuff to work on Windows. The latter is messy, but it is done once - and then following buggy Windows Updates, while bothersome, at least covers all users.
And the game developers available to hire rarely have experience with GNU/Linux environments, which raises the cost of going there even further - it requires people with rate skills, or comes with the risk of getting low quality stuff that users will hate.
Ok-386@reddit
With development you're talking about Photoshop, Maja or something? You're definitely not talking about backend, frontend development and X various areas of development. Dude, dotnet applications run faster on Linux, can be developed on Linux, and I'm not aware of a tool for development that works on Mac but not on Linux. I mean, there has to be some soyboy shit... Nah, I doubt it.
dread_deimos@reddit
You ask this on a Linux sub?
Personally, I either develop for Linux only, or Linux-first.
LazarX@reddit
Market share itself won't do it. Thing about Linux users...they HATE paying for software.
JudgmentInevitable45@reddit
The solution is to increase the market share as that will bring a lot of people who do like to pay for softeare
jiillii@reddit
wrong question, not linux but linux desktop. because android is technically linux. Thankfully valve is consistently developing linux based gaming experiences. 😭 make linux more popular and easy. then many new developers are designing for cross platform.
5-10%: Developers might start considering Linux Desktop as potential platform. (current state I think). 15-20%: Linux as a viable platform worth investing in. 25-30%: Linux as a must-consider platform.
As far as I know, many people have switched because of gaming (it has a big impact), Then: 1. There is a reason why there is not much proprietary software on Linux is because of licensing. Flatpak or Snapd is really do the job for software center, but still not enough. 2. If the next generation of windows really becomes a subscription based model. (unlikely) 3. I am an engineer. With an OnShape, I feel it is enough to leave windows. Then what if the future of software is as SaaS? Linux will have a new role as a cloud platform. expect there will be competitors for Adobe, CAD, and some other dominant software. Like DS 3DExperience (aka catia) Cloud Platform was developed using Linux Technology.
I really like Foxit PDF over Adobe Reader which has a lot of bloat. Foxit can run over wine. But gimp and krita can't be an alternative to adobe PS & ilustrator for now.
leaflock7@reddit
it could easily be considered by many even at a 7-8%. a more realistic it would be probably over 10-12% and closer to 15%.
BUT unless there is a uniformity on what the devs are targeting then don't expect completed apps to start appearing.
It is not so much as the market share alone but the issue that comes from all the fragmentation on the scene.
Otaehryn@reddit
Linux now has more market share than Apple in 1997 when Steve came back (3%)
https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/articles/culture/total-share.media/graph6-1.jpg
The composition is different (many developers or older systems on Linux vs creatives on 1990s Macs). At around 2% Linux is close to be relevant, especially with Steam.
RegularTechGuy@reddit
10% or more. In my opinion.
Ingaz@reddit
Linux market share is 99.99% from my POV lol
I'm a developer of backend services.
I did not touch Windows in 5 years.
monkeynator@reddit
It depends I think more about how Linux can solve certain systemic issues, whenever that be the negative part of fragmentation, backwards compatibility or dependency hell.
Linux to begin with won the server race because they had an extensive open platform for developers to get right into which looked and felt unix-y enough + it's free.
aryvd_0103@reddit
Idk about market share. Ig around 10% for the major ones like adobe. But there's probably more to this
Mac even before M1 didn't have a ton of market share , around 15-20% at best. Still, I'd see so many high quality apps being developed for that platform than for windows (same is true for iOS vs android) . Even today a ton of apps , especially in the productivity space , start out as apple ecosystem exclusives
Dave-Alvarado@reddit
What are you talking about? Everything runs on Linux. *Microsoft* supports deploying code to Linux.
susosusosuso@reddit
They no longer need to consider it because now we have proton
WesternPrimary4376@reddit
Adobe for example, will never, ever consider Linux, because Apple has a deal with them to only support Mac and, as a second citizen, Windows since the Amiga days.
(That's also the reason Adobe products cannot run on a Hackintosh, but that's another story)
Brorim@reddit
linux does have plenty of developers
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
Yes I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know much about this stuff, but I’m interested. My question/ post might seem a bit odd because of that.
Brorim@reddit
considering the strength of current distros like linux mint maturity has been achieved quite a while ago and thanks to wine and valves proton gaming has been reached so i guess the demise of windows 10 might gives us an added 10% desktop use ..
I use mint for everything, no secondary windows boot drive because i have been weened off ..
we just wait with patience as the user base is growing year by year 😀👍
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
I use Mint also and I'm a new Linux user, which might explain why my post sounds a bit off. I'm really not into PCs that much, but I love the philosophy of Linux and open-source. I was curious to hear opinions on how to make Linux more mainstream. Judging by the comments, people here in reddit find this question interesting as well!
Jamarlie@reddit
To be honest: I have found more "specific software" made for Linux than I have ever found for Windows. The market share is irrelevant in this case by the way, the only thing that matters is money. Think about the market share that a specific micro controller has in the medical field, they might be .1% of all micro controllers. Yet if you can make millions off of the tech you will find hundreds of companies developing software full time for it.
Same with Linux. Even if it had a market share of 97%, as long as the software does not bring any money no company will develop it. That being said: 97% market share would lead to millions more developers writing code for the platform anyway.
MatchingTurret@reddit
There already is a lot of commercial software for Linux, some of the most important: Oracle Database, SAP, MS SQL Server... Just to name a few.
LordAnchemis@reddit
Not an issue - compatibility layers (wine), VM or dual booting exist
Final-Work2788@reddit
In order for Linux desktop to be a real player, I'd have to put it at around 20%. Enough to kill her reputation as the hobbyist's OS.
Mindless_Listen7622@reddit
Most of the world's data centers run on Linux. All of the world's largest super computers, especially and including the one's that run AI, run Linux. Android is also a modified Linux kernel. It's not a hobbyists OS at all, it's a datacenter OS, where it spanks every other operating system available today.
Hobbyists do use Linux, but that is not its primary use case at all.
shinra528@reddit
They said Linux Desktop specifically.
Mindless_Listen7622@reddit
I guess they did.
jr735@reddit
You're not going to find some number that will be objectively "correct" for any developer, much less all or most of them. Aside from that, proprietary developers can all switch to Linux tomorrow for all I care. I won't be using their products.
Gary_Blackbourne@reddit
The problem is not marketshare, although for a lomg time i thought it is. Linux dominates among software developers, and has everything for common use case, except for one thing: backwards compatibility.
You see, linux people, like ourselves mostly open source and/or free software enthusiasts. We like to have fairly recent versions of stuff, having source code available. And we have evolved an ecosystem around free software, which means, that if something your programs require change, you only have to recompile the program with the latest compativle dependencies, and you are good to go. Not a big thing, i have emacs compiled from source and have to do this from time to time, takes like 10minutes.
But with proprietary software, you have no source code available, perhaps no one has (looking at you, HoMM3), so the best you have is a decade or two old binary. This binary has zero chance to run natively ob linux. Even fairly recent software has serious problems with compatibility.
Having to compile your code for linux at to my current knowledge, is not hard. And linux has the marketshare to port any application to it. Maintaining several distributions and not just one, with ever changing glibc ABI which is likely to break your binary upon sys upgrade is a terrific nightmare and requires a lot of investment. And for companies it is a requirement since they give you warranty intheir license when you buy their product.
I recommend you google glibc compatibility, DT_HASH, and linux binary compatibility, there are loads of articles and blogs discussing this very anoying situation. Also, Linus Torvalds has a debconf Q&A (available on youtube) where he speaks of this issue. The guy has the right mindset for software development, i also recommend to check out that video.
kishoredbn@reddit
I have understood lately that software engineering career is a very challenging job and is constantly evolving into something new that requires constant learning and experience.
Mere training at superficial levels doesn’t matter anymore.
Linux is here as an alternative paradigm of software engineering and development ecosystem where you are determined to use the ecosystem in your daily life. Yes you will hit roadblocks in what ever you are doing but this is where you really role sleeves and become a plumber.
Keep a professional windows or macos environment in parallel when tasks are really important to get done quickly, but as much as you can use Linux.
Post covid, Linux is the true future of computing, and people who will understand this faster will benefit more by being here.
beermad@reddit
Some companies already have Linux ports for their software and have done for some time.
For example, on my system I have commercial software from Photomatix (HDR photo-processing) and pCloud (cloud storage). I'm sure there's more but haven't needed to look for it.
Whatever801@reddit
I mean a lot of stuff is shipping on electron these days and has Linux support (for better or for worse).
Optimal_Cellist_1845@reddit
System76 is the best USA Linux retailer, but you do pay a premium for what they offer. They could compete with Macs, and they have their own *buntu derivative OS they maintain called Pop!_OS
False-Barber-3873@reddit
Some things:
Most "pro" devs don't know a shit about Linux or Unix in general.
Most Linux is still seen as a "hobby" project by such "pro" persons.
Except for few distro (ie Redhat), Linux has no well established companies. And Redhat mostly focuses on DB and Web stuffs.
Most companies could develop drivers to Linux too, since they develop drivers for Mac or Android.
Real serious companies do take care of Linux. See Google or nVidia for example.
So at the light of this, I would say that they don't give a damn.
DFS_0019287@reddit
Not everything comes to Windows and MacOS by default. In niche areas, software is developed for Linux/UNIX first (or only). One example is EDA software; most chip design software runs on Linux or UNIX.
There's already a decent selection of mainstream software such as word processors, email clients, web browsers, etc. for Linux.
What makes Windows displace Linux is the inevitable niche software needed by a company. Things like software to run a veterinary practice, or specific CAD software, etc. There, I think we need to support Windows API emulation because realistically, nobody will port a Windowsy app to Linux unless the market is huge.
Wine and and its libraries have made good strides, so I think there's hope.
atiqsb@reddit
Need testing on gpu supports before making good statements like that.. it is free I appreciate it. But the graphics API is nowhere near those corp products..
WhiteShariah@reddit
About 30% on Western market and other developed countries. That is a potential big market for developers and software companies for them to not ignore.
Only reason they are ignoring Linux right now is because they can't invest and sell their products to make profit.
KnorrFG@reddit
This is not only about numbers. Shipping a binary that runs on nearly all distros, that runs Vulkan or OpenGL is damn near impossible. Making a windows binary and relying on proton/wine is, sadly, by far the most reliable way.
daemonpenguin@reddit
Since lots of developers clearly already consider Linux and many developers (of applications and games) already support Linux, the question is a bit nonsensical.
Arachnotron666@reddit (OP)
Thanks. I’ve seen a lot of posts about whether this or thats specific software will work on Linux. But I admit I might be wrong.
MouseJiggler@reddit
Eleventy
slickyeat@reddit
No idea but Adobe Photoshop was released for the Mac back in 1990 and according to Google their market share at the time was around 10%. So looking into my crystal ball - I'd say around 15%.
That's when developers will finally have enough of a financial incentive to give the slightest of shits.
slphil@reddit
Did you come out of a time machine from 2008?