[pjmlp]

If only, this will only happen when regular consumers can get GNU/Linux desktops and laptops fully working on shops like Media Market, Saturn, FNAC, Dixons, Publico,....

Until then it will be computer nerds buying from online shops, building their own PCs, or running Linux VMs alongside Windows and macOS.

Android, ChromeOS, WebOS have succeed among users, exactly because they are consumer OSes, where the use of Linux kernel is an implementation detail, and are available everywhere.

[protocolture]

The PC market doesnt care what nerds do. But the PC market has a niche that it does respond financially to, and thats gamers. Gamers have long felt the pull factor of Linux, with games becoming easier to run on the platform. But now Windows has delivered a heap of push factors, with Windows chewing more memory, and that memory being used for intrusive AI tasks.

If market forces respond as they do for gamers, we will be seeing a lot of peripheral manufacturers at least ensuring their devices are covered by a generic driver on Linux, and eventually those gamers will be installing linux on their parents computers to avoid expensive memory upgrades. Games publishers are likely to take notice. And at least small PC retailers will be offering customs without Windows, assuming a couple of the big hardware guys dont start offering it too.

I made the old joke tongue in cheek, but it does have legs tbh. This is basically a perfect storm, that any previous management at Microsoft would have fired half the business to prevent. Focusing on optimisation rather than bloat would be a better strategy. But IIRC the management of Microsoft believe the cloud is the future and were thinking desktop was dead anyway.

The conditions were set in 2025, but 2026 is probably when we will see the greatest amount of switching.

[pjmlp]

Until Valve removes their dependency on Windows developers for content on GNU/Linux, that doesn't matter.

Most professional studios have no reason to care, and change the status quo.

Most would rather stick to game consoles and mobile games than move a finger to support GNU/Linux, when not targeting Windows.