Nick goes over what’s new with desktop Linux in 2026. Is next year finally the year of Linux? More reasons to give up on Windows and become free with your technology through technology.
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I think this comment under the video sums it up well:
There is no year of the Linux desktop, but the 2020s as a whole are definitely the decade of the Linux desktop.
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I’m just here waiting for a “corporate” Linux company to “resolve” desktop Linux fragmentation (as best as one distro can) so even the average person can simply install and use Linux with all the normal features you’d expect a desktop computer OS to have (such that needing extensions, menu bar apps, Flatseal, etc. are not necessary if it’s feature and functionality rich by default).
This is absolutely one way to do it but may not be the only way to do it. A “solution” exists. We just have to do it. We have the technology.
That’s when mass adoption happens where you enter double digit OS user base percentages.
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Based on what I have seen and heard from people who don’t feel that they can switch to linux and people whom I have helped switch to linux, mass adoption has little to nothing to do with OS usability. Linux is already ready to use from that perspective (and in my opinion has been far better out of the box than macos and windows for years). The major barriers to linux adoption are (1) you can’t buy a computer with linux preinstalled without seeking out computers that sell with it preinstalled and (2) software support for linux from proprietary developers is lacking.
The vast, vast majority of people are never going to learn how to install an operating system or even understand that that is a thing you can do. This is why computers that sell with linux OOTB are crucial. Today, if you go into an electronics or computer store, none of the machines they are selling will have linux on them, and for that reason they likely never will. Online it is slightly better, but still there are only a few machines you can buy with linux preinstalled.
Similarly, even if there are alternative applications available for linux that adequately replace the functionality of the mainstream proprietary version (and there may not be), the vast, vast majority of people are not going to want to learn how to use an entirely new software suite that looks and feels differently from what they are used to, which is why application support is so crucial.
Not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I do not view this as a desirable or realistic thing. Linux is built from different projects with different visions doing different things, and mixing and matching ideas and software that other projects have created to make their thing even better. That is why it works at a fundamental level. Linux without fragmentation would not be linux.
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Yeah, I agree. I don’t deny these other issues. I just didn’t mention it explicitly in my comment. But yes, resolving this is also a part of the solution I mentioned.
I’d like to believe we can do better in school with teaching children about computers, OSs, the internet, etc. We can change this reality.
And a big part of this comes from home by parents who know better to teach kids in their upbringing about better and a more respectable consumer friendly tech.
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But yes, I agree with you.
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A video I just came across and sharing cause its relevant to this thread:
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I don’t really know about that as someone who works in a school. Maybe it depends on the school, but the IT teachers aren’t even competent enough to teach these things to their students. And when the students have to do it practically, they will forget how to even boot into a USB unless they can do it again themselves. I think it takes genuine interest to learn these things rather than being taught at school where they HAVE to learn (this also applies to teachers).
Even at home, there has to be at least one person who discovers this interest and it’s not necessarily the parents. Speaking for myself, I recently converted my dad to Linux. He was going to buy a new laptop because his old 2012 HP laptop (which meets the system requirement for W10) was incredibly slow. Though I’ve tried to convince him to use Linux for a while, it wasn’t until he decided to buy a new laptop that I told him to hold off and try Linux Mint before buying a new laptop.
Now he questions why he even needs Windows when he can use his old laptops again. He even looked up and installed MX Linux himself (a distro I’ve never heard of) on a ~20 year old laptop and the grand kids were able to play flash games with decent frame rates. Most families would probably buy their relatives a new PC/laptop (or more likely a new phone/tablet) because if you can’t run Windows on it, then the hardware is too old and it’s time for an upgrade, even if you only use it to watch YouTube.
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What I really meant which I should have been clearer about - this has to stem from a overhauled quality curriculum that ensures of certain tech skills throughout their schooling until college time.
That’s great for him, and you! Hope more people were atleast open to such alternatives. You lose very little if anything from Windows or Mac.
Oh, I see. Then yeah, I agree. I don’t know how they’re teaching IT at my school, but the education system is more about preparing students for exams. It’s debatable whether they actually learn new IT skills, even after further education, but some students I’ve spoken to have learned more IT skills by watching Linus Tech Tips. And honestly, YouTube is how I learned a lot about Linux. Maybe students need to be exposed to content creators like Linus to further their interest in the subjects they’ve studied for because the education system is not going to change any time soon.
This is where country and culture comes in - it will greatly vary by region and other factors for what is considered important and key. Again, we have the solution but there are other natural and unnatural impediments.
Yep. It has democratized education in so many ways outside of tech too. An equalizer.
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Anyone who has some technicall knowleadge about packaging a distro could so omething like this, and I think there are allready many such distros out there
Yes, technically anyone can do it on their own. But a one man show managing and maintaining and developing a distro is no small task. A team if not a company is surely needed.
To reiterate what I meant there was if a distro had all the major and popular utilities app and whatnot bundled with the distro natively as a feature or a functionality of the distro itself, it would enable desktop Linux adoption and would be one less problem to solve.
The others being app compatibility. Even here I feel if a distro could have their own versions of apps as alternatives to popular Windows or Mac ones that are equivalent in quality, stability, feature set, etc., we would not need the likes of Adobe and others to build for Linux. A 1:1 parity as much as possible that’s FOSS is what we would need to alleviate this second problem.
The last is gaming but Valve is already taking care of that and will resolve in due time so I am not too worried about that here.
All combined would make desktop Linux the best of Windows and macOS has to offer with the benefit of being independent and free for all. The feasibility issue here is monetization. Like I said above, technology is not the limiting factor here. Other impediments are.
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You don’t need to create a new distro from scratch.
Just use an good working established distro like Fedora and bundle it with all the additions you want.
This can be done more eassily and more stable since Ublue/Universal-Blue exists which is also used to create SecureBlue, Bazite and many other custom distros
Yes, that’s what I was thinking too. Just didn’t explicitly mention it.
I am no Linux expert but I wish a distro did this. I should not need to install extensions or other functionality additions utility apps add. This would mean they would need to in-house the development and maintenance of all these new little features that don’t currently come built in by default. I’m surprised a distro has not figured this out.
How do you mean this?
Do you mean they should just ship with the additions pre installed or rewrite them?
I mean a distro like Fedora would likely need to incorporate these new features and functionality that currently come from other FOSS apps within themselves (in-housing) which means they will need to fork and going forward keep developing or maintaining the same as they do with everything else (if they at all did this.. at least this is how I am envisioning it).
They could rewrite so it is incorporated in the distro better as a feature/functionality but no, shipping them with it doesn’t feel right.
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But I could be wrong with my thinking of an approach a distro could take. All I know is this is not an impossible task and wish a distro did this.
What concretely pushed Linux forward is stock hardware adoption, weird/fatal mistakes of MacOS and Windows and just people speaking and trying. All the other things are secondary and/or, in most cases, good enough. I think Linux adoption will only slowly increase. What worries me more is the distortion and the manipulation of the community as Linux will get increasingly used from corporations and state’s entities. Linux can be almost anything and this will be both its blessing and curse—and I’m pretty sure we will see more of this in the future. Probably, whatever the future of the adoption of Linux will be, the “real Linux” community will stay small and grow to a fraction of the speed of the “mass” Linux community. Relevant and enduring changes always require much more time than superficial ones, but are also the ones who determine if we really are a step forward, or if we’ve been just walking in circles.
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You want Linux to go main st(r)eam? — Be careful what you wish for … 
‘The powers that (should not) be’ will tolerate a really free Linux only as long as won’t give the majority of the ‘normies’ some ‘bad’ ideas … 
I hope no one believes the tech mafia will just peacefully go away …
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I’m probably a little bit too late in the discussion but the same content creator seems objectively against this core idea but I get what you are saying and would be helpful to have big major brands of PCs selling more oob devices.
Although I agree with much of what you state, I cannot help but point out other aspects that are often overlooked.
From my perspective (strongly politicized and grounded in philosophy and political science, as I am a professor) the obstacles to the adoption of different Linux distributions among end users may indeed be those you mention, yet in my view the root cause lies in the economic system, which shapes both educational curricula and market dynamics. Educational programs are legally mandated, and these laws are drafted by politicians who show little interest in expanding the rights and freedoms of their citizens, including future citizens, namely students. Linux is absent from school curricula because its inclusion would grant citizens greater control over their own lives, while also curbing excessive consumption and planned obsolescence.
Furthermore, the economic system has historically tended toward monopolies or oligopolies, which eliminate or absorb competitors. While we must certainly be grateful that Linux remains free, the truth is that its survival depends partly on substantial donations and contributions from large corporations such as Google, and partly on the efforts of the open-source community and exceptional individual developers. Linux will never grow to the point of rivaling macOS. Choosing between them is, unfortunately, practically impossible, because what truly governs the world and the market is advertising.
Issues in computing (the ongoing assault on privacy, the limited adoption of ethical and mindful technologies, and so on) are merely extensions of politics and economics. The struggle, therefore, lies in continuing to raise our voices and demand laws that strictly prevent the adoption of technologies harmful to consumer rights, ensure a longer lifespan of software updates, regulate advertising and market practices, and establish both national and individual digital sovereignty, among other essential measures.
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