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Happy Birthday to Linux, 30 years strong

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It was on this day 30 years ago that a younger Linus Torvalds announced a free operating system to the comp.os.minix group and from there it exploded across servers, desktops and plenty more.

Now one of the most popular operating systems in the world, you can find it nearly everywhere you look including 100% of the top 500 supercomputers. There's a Linux distribution for everything, and Linux is what will also be powering the upcoming Steam Deck with Valve using SteamOS that's based on Arch Linux. What Torvalds said "won't be big and professional like gnu" has changed the world.

We might not have reached the "year of the Linux desktop", which is a running joke, but there's no denying the great strides the Linux desktop has made over the last few years thanks to many companies and individual contributors. The desktop share is different depending on where you look with StatCounter giving it 2.38% while NetMarketShare put it at 1.79% - both higher if you decide to include ChromeOS which is Linux-based.

The Linux desktop is even now a truly viable gaming platform - something many thought would probably never happen. Thanks to various major game engines and toolkits supporting Linux, drivers constantly improving, lots of native Linux games, Steam Play Proton and more. According to the latest figures from Valve, Linux is sitting at 1% right now of Steam users polled. Perhaps the Steam Deck will bump that up, depending on how Valve include it in their survey.

Happy Birthday, Linux. Here's to another 30 and beyond.

What does Linux mean to you? Let us know in the comments.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Kernel, Misc
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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AussieEevee Sep 23, 2021
Quoting: furaxhornyxWhile I agree that DaVinci Resolve is a great software (I am not a video editor though), I guess it is not enough to make a lot of people make the switch.
The problem I see is tunnel vision. When something becomes big and popular, many people can't understand that there are viable alternatives.

I have seen people on YouTube talking about Adobe Premier as if it is the only way to edit videos professionally... and they can't see anything else.

Heck, I know people that think Windows is a must have for gaming. They refuse to acknowledge that Linux even exists, let alone is a viable alternative. Had an argument not long ago with someone that thought only Windows could be used in high end gaming.
furaxhornyx Sep 24, 2021
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Quoting: AussieEevee
Quoting: furaxhornyxWhile I agree that DaVinci Resolve is a great software (I am not a video editor though), I guess it is not enough to make a lot of people make the switch.
The problem I see is tunnel vision. When something becomes big and popular, many people can't understand that there are viable alternatives.

I have seen people on YouTube talking about Adobe Premier as if it is the only way to edit videos professionally... and they can't see anything else.

Maybe, maybe not...

I use Excel at work, and I have tried several alternatives that "just do the same things", which may be true for most basic features, but far from it when it comes to advanced use.

So maybe it is the same for other software, such as video editing, photo editing... I am not in their professional shoes (far from it) to be able to tell wether they are viable replacements or not.

Quoting: AussieEeveeHeck, I know people that think Windows is a must have for gaming. They refuse to acknowledge that Linux even exists, let alone is a viable alternative. Had an argument not long ago with someone that thought only Windows could be used in high end gaming.

As for video games, of course, it is a different story, since it is the same software running on the same machine (but with different level of support: drivers, etc)
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