There is some conformation bias here as I love using Linux, but I can feel the vibe changing over the last few years.
2021
Late in the year LTT ran it’s first Linux challenge. The series finishes with the fourth video titled “Gaming on Linux is NOT Ready…“
2022
Steam Deck launches and Valve pours resources into Proton.
Vaxry releases Hyprland adding pretty visuals (rounded corners, animations etc) to a tiling window manager.
2023
Wayland matures significantly. Major distros push it harder as the default. I swapped from X11 so I can have working fractional scaling across four monitors.
Hyprland explodes on Reddit Unixporn with hundreds of posts of riced out Waifu desktops.
2024
Started a over a decade age, Microsoft are full steam ahead pushing Windows further away from the “perfect” XP into a bloated, ad-infested mess.
Linux desktop market share sees growth hitting ~4%
2025
Omarchy launched by DHH. A pre-configured Arch with Hyprland with lots of nice bell & whistles. Focus on Mac and users looking for a modern OS on older devices. Yet-Another-Distro but parts of the dev community love it.
2026
LTT runs another Linux challenge. The reception is noticeably more positive than the 2021 one.
Trash on TheStandUp talks about switching to Hyprland and falling in love, spending hours ricing it.
Microsoft continues shooting their own feet”..intentionally bricking all Office for Mac 2019/2021 installations”
### More
Devs and geeks push computing trends. Back in 2008 Chrome became the dominant browser because it was fast and had better DevTools than Firefox. Geeks started using it, and then installed it on every PC they came across. Because we hated Microsoft, but were forced to use it.
I think the same is happening now with Linux, where devs & geeks are switching over for their main machine. Gaming is almost solved, video is solved with daVinci, maybe Adobe could stop being wankers and port.