It really isn't. This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. After a while the buzz will fizz out and the majority of those PC gamers that looked to switching go back to Windows.
IME a lot developers don't even use Linux on their desktop machine. I've met three developers that use Linux professional IRL. A lot of devs have a hard time even using git bash on Windows.
I am always called up by people at work because I am "the Linux guy" when they have a problem with Linux or Bash.
Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac.
More generally the thing that has paid the bills for me is always these huge proprietary tech stacks I've had to deal with. Whether it be Microsoft's old ASP.NET tech stack with SQL Server, AWS, Azure, GCP, what pays the bills is proprietary shite. I hate working with this stuff, but that what you gotta to pay the bills.
I mean, this strongly has to depend on what kind of software you are developing. I don't know a single developer who primarily uses Windows. Literally everyone around me uses Linux for development work (and a large portion of them also use Linux for their personal machines).
Of course. However if a developer isn't using Windows typically they are using a Mac.
In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home.
So for every developer you know that is using Linux, there are many more people using Windows supplied to by their IT department.
> In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home.
And I guarantee that you're wrong, because I work a corporate job where I have to put up with Windows and am 99% Linux at home. (The other 1% is *BSD and illumos.)
You are the minority but you can believe whatever you like.
The vast majority of developers I have worked with (and I've contracted a lot of places) know next to next to nothing about Linux. They can barely use a terminal (Powershell, CMD, Bash/Zsh) and often can't do anything outside of the IDE.
If they do use Linux. It be on a Raspberry PI that gets stuck in a drawer after a few months.
To those that keep voting me down on this. The teams and environments you work in are the outliers. I've had to accept that I am in the minority as a Linux user even amongst software professionals.
Yeah, I'm probably a minority. That doesn't mean that nobody uses linux, just that it's less common.
I never said that nobody uses Linux. I said that it was extremely uncommon even amongst developers.
> I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home.
[...]
> I never said that nobody uses Linux.
I'm willing to believe that this is just a misunderstanding resulting from nonliteral exaggerated language for effect, but ... yes, you did.
>Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac.
That was my original comment. It is pretty easy to that to assume that when someone says "none" in a subsequent comment they mean "almost none" following that statement.
> This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful.
I think what it fundamentally comes down to is that for consumer-oriented Linux to see widespread adoption, it needs to succeed on its own merits. Right now, and since forever, Linux exists in a space for the majority of consumers who consider it where they think "I might use it, because at least it's not the other guy". A real contender would instead make the general public think "I'll use this because it's genuinely great and a pleasure to experience in its own right". And that's why I have absolutely zero faith in Linux becoming a viable smartphone ecosystem. If it were truly viable, it would have been built out already regardless of what Android was doing. "Sheltering Android refugees" is not a sustainable path to growth any more than "sheltering Windows refugees" is.
I agree, with a caveat. The vast number of consumers don't even know Linux/BSD or any the alternatives exist.
I have zero faith in a Linux smartphone. What will happen is that there will be some GNU/FSF thing with specs that are 15 years out date and you will have to install Linux via a serial console using Trisquel and the only applications available will the Mahjong (yes I am being hypobolic).
Clearly hyperbole! We'll also have TuxPaint, SuperTuxKart (CPU rendering only, because the toolchain doesn't support Android's HAL), and a couple of (long-abandoned) LibreOffice forks that crudely adapt different subsets of the interface for a touch device.
Unfortunately in the past people have taken obvious hyperbole literally.
I realised a few years ago when one of my friends didn't know what the browser was on her phone, that any notion of people caring about the OS outside of branding is pretty much non-existent.