Linux @lemmy.ml

6mo ago

What is happening in Norway, and how do we spread it?

Source
Linux currently 29.1%
Sample size according to StatCounter: 24,353,436 page views

150 comments

1 out of the 3 total norwegian changed the OS after creating a lemmy account.
- We’re quite stupid and easy to influence.
  Proof in point: I’ve gone from 0 to 3 Linux machines since joining Lemmy.
  Someone send help, please??
  
  I can send you an ISO file with more Tux.
  
  Buy Raspberry Pis in bulk and make pointless SBC projects. It's the only thing that will fulfill you.
  
  Same here. Maybe that explains it, all linux users just run multiple systems. I dont know many people who use linux certainly not every third person I meet.
  Source: æøå
  
  Hah, never thought of it like that. I went from 0 to 2 linux desktop machines shortly after joining lemmy.
- You laugh but I installed my first Linux distro after leaving reddit and coming here lol.
  
  One must protect their liberty

I especially appreciate that the graph is designed as "Linux" and "Other" instead of "Windows", maybe "MacOS" and "Other".

Norwegian here. I quit reddit and joined Lemmy after the API debacle. Installed mint because of W11. (A big factor was how Steam and proton enables me to play games)
Can't say either Lemmy or Linux has gotten any media attention in the big news sources as far as I can see.
I am the only one in my circle of friends that quit Reddit (most follow the various 40k reddits, and they have no replacement in federated options)
- Also Norwegian. I installed Debian linux inspired by my brother who uses a version of Gentoo before systemd, and trying to hack an annoying neighbour's bluetooth speaker. I quickly became invested in Linux. However, as far as I know, I might be the only one among my friends to make the switch. I joined Lemmy after discovering Voyager on F-Droid on my rooted, degoogled android phone
  
  Did he ever hack the speaker?
  
  Don't use root on Android or AOSP/Lineage OS
- The only way to have those communities is to create them. That's what I did.

They just started counting all my computers and virtual machines on which I run Arch and Nixos btw!
- Good choices
  
  Thanks! As I have been learning to love the Nix way of doing things my only regret is missing the great documentation of Arch. Hopefully we can have the best of both worlds in the future!

As a Dane i can say that maybe its because Scandinavians are generally pretty tech savvy and good with digitalisation. Also Scandinavians has a low tolerance for bullshit.
- Also, a lot of Scandinavian libraries are switching their public desktop PCs to Linux.
- You reset their screensaver settings twice, you don't get to do it a third time
- This sounds valid. I wonder how many Scandinavians switched to Linux because of Windows 11.
  
  Well, I'm one. Fed up with windows BS.
- Yup. It’s the reason why Denmark is the most developed country in North America as Canada and the United States worship the aristocrats’ bullshit too much.
  
  Did you seriously just name Denmark a country in North America?!

Is that where all the government computers run Ubuntu?
- I'm a Norwegian Linux enthusiast and have never heard anything about the government using Ubuntu or Linux. Seems unlikely, from what I know. I know that within healthcare Windows is still widely used, even on the server side...
  On the other hand, a lot of software for official services is being developed as open source now, so that's at least a good step in the right direction. Example: https://github.com/navikt
  
  Norwegian government loves windows, so yea, I really doubt it. (by it, I mean the government using Ubuntu thing)
  Source: I used to work for the Norwegian government
  edit: added explanation to "it", so not to be as confusing to what I refered to.
- You're thinking of Switzerland
  
  Ah, thanks! I knew it was somewhere.

Linux on all their electric cars, and they're watching porn while driving ;)
- Where do I sign?
  
  On the fat cheque
  
  You need to write "I agree on the terms of service, rent agreement and privacy policy of any electric vehicle manufacture" in order for me to elaborate on the topic, please.

In India, the share of Linux desktop became double just within one year (from 8% to 16%). I only hope this data is right.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india/#monthly-202301-202407
- The Karela and Rajasthan states are sexy
  
  Karela == Bitter Melon or Bitter Gourd
  Kerala == " Gods own Country " Southern state in India
  :-D Hope that clears up the spelling :-D
- This is promising. I hope this continues and spreads

European governments will do this thing where they pass some law that says they have to take bids from local vendors for systems, olafs computer service will put in a bid with some free software system, the government will take them up on it, spend a bunch of money trying to integrate it into their existing systems with varying degrees of success then parlay abandoning it for their majority provider in exchange for avoiding cost increases or some free support/equipment.
I think Germany’s done it twice now.
- I think Germany’s done it twice now.
  It was Munich and they switched back to Windows after M$ moved their German headquarters to Munich.
  
  That was very funny.
  
  Smelly corruption that was as plain as day
- The EU requires government acquisitions to be publicly announced so that private companies can make offers that the government then must choose from (not freely, mind you, but following some "objective" metrics).
  Even though this might sound great to some, it has the downside of promoting commercial services and vendor lock-in up to the point that even if a free and open source alternative exists, it cannot be used unless there also exists some commercial entity behind it that can sell the software and support for it in accordance with the established metrics.
  This might be one of the biggest hurdles in the way for Linux adoption, since anyone can claim to do lots of great stuff with SUPERproprietarySOFTWARE^TM and then hold critical services, like healthcare mentioned elsewhere, hostage to their failure to deliver on promises and future bad support.
  
  Even more important, a huge multinational like Microsoft can be forced in court to provide the support they sell under threat of legal action that would cripple their profitability in the region. Olafs computer service will just turn its pockets inside out, flip around the shingle to closed and leave the national drivers license agency in a lurch.
  On some level the companies that sell and support systems government relies on have to be treated as nation states themselves in order to maintain normalcy, which both parties “want”.
  
  I in general very much support requiring paying for support. I.e. SLAs with consequences for not meeting targets support.
  At least for software/hardware running things that can't afford indefinite unauthorized access or downtime if left in a vulnerable state. (Some stuff actually can IMHO be like that).
  I also think governments should have justify renting software insteading buying it if the money is intended to be an investment of any kind.

ironically half my team at work is in Norway and they use windows. My team in the US uses linux.
- Are nowegians hate Finland? I don't have any other explaination for this.
  
  At least us finns only have a rivalry with sweden

Northern European pride!
Being that Linus is from Finland & all.
- yet finland has way less linux users per capita
  https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/finland#monthly-202307-202407

One extra Norwegian user in Statcounter's biased and unrepresentative dataset started to use Linux, probably.
- I don't think it's that biased and unrepresentative, as Pornhub's usage statistics show about the same numbers for global Linux usage
  
  Pornhub is legitimately one of the best sites for internet statistics around. It's very widely visited and they actually put out the numbers. (Although, sadly, in my state of Virginia, they comply with identification requirements, so I only visit it with my VPN active, which then fucks up the stats.)

Nothing is happening in Norway. Source: I live in Norway.
I've met only a handful people that use Linux on their desktop, plus some developers that use it at work.
- There are dozens of us
  
  Baker's dozens!
  
  dozens of dozens!
  
  Yes,we know about your small population,but just because Karl uses Linux now,does that really matter?
- I run (one of three partners) a small IT company in the UK. I've always Linuxed since around 1998. After messing with RedHat, Mandrake, Yggdrasil and others I settled down and ran Gentoo for many years and then Arch for some more.
  I'm gradually dumping the Windows servers and replacing with Linux based beasties. We are also in the throws of replacing VMware with Proxmox.
  I also have a pretty decent Kbuntu based desktop/laptop effort. I've done Windows client deployments in the 1000s so I have quite a good idea about compliance etc. An Ubuntu based box can run several AV solutions, secure boot and full disc encryption. Buzz words perhaps but also audit points and will get you over the line for Cyber Essentials Plus (UK).
  Libre Office works for me and I used to teach office suites in the 90's! Things have moved on since but a decimal alignment stop is a decimal alignment stop today too (do you know what that means?). I run our Exchange system, and I migrated it from GroupWise back in the day because the kool kids "required" it. Anyway, Evolution with EWS will get you full functionality for a client but with far less faff.
  I'm taking my time. I already have at least two employees who are dyed in the wool Windows officianados begging me to migrate them to Linux. I will but it takes time. For example - "drive mappings" or in English: Remote mounts.
  CID - https://cid-doc.github.io/ . This is an easy to add Windows compat thing. Its rather good. For static desktops its fine but for laptops that move around a lot it can be hard to get the file system mounts working again quickly in a dynamic environment.
  CID uses a PAM mount based system and in the past I used another one (autofs I think). However it seems to me that mounts are not dynamic or responsive enough. In the end it is Samba and that might need some fettling as well.
  As I said earlier, I'm taking my time (I'm an engineer) but be assured that Linux is quite capable of driving your desktop.
- Then atleast fake it until you make it!

Strong social nets that allow people breathing room to allow more interest in how their computers work?

What's the source for this image?
- I downloaded the data from globalstats statscounter
  
  How do you make the graph? What type of graph is it?
  So I can use it for browser marketshare and search engine marketshare.

Serious question for you all. I too wish to see Linux use increase. I also want to see corporate social media die. I am thinking of requiring my students to create Lemmy accounts for a Lemmy group i create.
Do you think this might move folks away from essy corporate os and social media? How do You see it giving wrong?
- I like the idea, but a lot of people resent being made to create accounts on random services. We know that Lemmy is good because we're here, but it might put them off the idea.
  Depending on the age of your students, you might have to be careful about the fact that NSFW content is freely available here, and check the terms of your instance to see if they're allowed to make accounts in the first place e.g. on most social media and forums you have to be 13 or over.
  
  These are college students. I'll try to make the assignment relevant and fun.
- requiring my students to create Lemmy accounts
  No. Nobody likes registering accounts for random services because an authority figure told them they had to, I feel like if it were me I would do the bare minimum of interacting that I was required to and never look at the service again out of resentment.
- I like it! Even if the majority of em completely abandon the accounts afterwards, it’ll increase the visibility of a fledgeling platform AND it’ll show a few folks that alternative social media platforms exist.
  I mean, shit, if lemmy can suit my needs there’s no reason it shouldn’t work for at least some of em.
  
  I remember a teacher requiring us to use Matrix for a coding class. We still mostly used Discord, and after that class ended, we never used it again.
  You and I have a reason we use Lemmy: we don't want to use Reddit and want the Fediverse to grow. Simply forcing your students to make Lemmy accounts won't do anything, in fact it might make them hate it (Oke boomer).
- Haven't seen this in the other comments: Coolness factor. If you're a successfully popular teacher, i.e. "cool", then your students will likely want to participate in whatever it is you suggest.
  However, if they don't see you as cool, you might have difficulty, and might even put them off the platform. This is not something that can be fixed easily, and trying to be cool is about as uncool as you can get.
  (Making it mandatory will work, of course, but how you go about that could determine whether they choose to stay on the platform once you're done. This was kind of covered by OP talking about Matrix in another comment here.)
  
  Good points. I need to be very thoughtful before i procede. Thank You.
- Yes as it will get your students to dip their toes into the fediverse
- I would rather say that help questions can be posted there. That way its not forving anyone to do anything

Cuba, Germany, Greece and Albania have good %

Demand the government implement Linux to increase the funds available for social services

This reminds me of Meetup.com dying almost everywhere except Chicago where the HQ is and everyone uses it.

I don't really know about the uptick, but the general trend upward over a longer period of time I kind of wonder if it's due to things like the steam deck. I played around with gaming in Linux with wine back in the early 2010s and was woefully unimpressed with how little I could do, especially with the amount of work involved. I didn't really give it a second look at all, but after the deck released I was blown away by how much has improved, and it's motivated me to see how much I can get away with without windows. I wonder how many people have had a similar experience.

How accurate are these measurements? I don't know much about Norway, but if there was some massive roll-out of Linux in the governmental sector or their school system, surely there would be posts about it here?
Edit: I'm just having a hard time believing such high numbers without something like that.

This is reported as a percentage and that's what is tripping people up here.
You are not seeing a drastic rise in Linux usage you are seeing a large decrease in the use of desktop computers.
Linux is increasing because the only ones left using desktops are Linux users.
- Nice explanation but here is a graph with desktop percentage included (versus mobile plus tablet, but that isn't shown)

This graph gives me some Corona flashbacks.
- I was confused why they used Swedish flag colors for a Norwegian graph
  
  The welfare of the brother peoples.
  
  Well you see. 1905 never happened, and we are all under Sweden still. /s

You know, charts can lie, but with THAT crosshatch? Impossible.

It's 3,68% in my country

noice

Worth noting that Norway has a very small population, in fact, short term residencies leaving such as students, refugees (which Norway takes an insane amount of), and seasonal (especially oil) workers could at least explain the trend/fluctuation. Overall high usage is cool though! Norway also had a fuckton of government money going into tech startups so maybe that's impacting it too.

Of all countries Norway might be among the last to switch to Linux.
Rich countries tend to go the apple way.
- It might surprise you to learn that Apple is not dominating the market here, neither in phones or laptops.
  When I think about it, I only really know one person with a Macbok and at work, Android is probably 2/3. Source: I’m the IT guy ordering phones for everybody.
  
  Statcounter's graph of iOS market share points to more than half 56% on Norway, so I bet if there is a need for replacing windows in Norway they will swing to apple instead of Linux.

This cannot be true. The dip in windows is corrolated with the increase in linux. Its just a measurement error
- The dip in "others" correlated to the increase in Linux being correlated is not an issue. They need to add up to 100%, how do you expect one to increase with l without a decrease in the other?
- The dip in windows is corrolated with the increase in linux
  Well, yeah? The users have to come from somewhere?
  Its just a measurement error
  Maybe

I wish there were more focus on the desktop and app gui side of things on Linux
sure using the terminal to install things is very efficient but some people just want an install button and a gui that they don't have to use more than 2 braincells to figure out why package not found or some obscure error with an app for the next 2 hours with forum pages full of condescending non answers
- I don’t think that’s been an issue for several years now. At least for distros focused on user friendliness.
- I'm tired of pandering to people that can't take the time to learn how to operate a computer. I hate the trend of the last 25 years of making everything "idiot proof", because it's not helping people, it's making them dumber. I remember a time when normal users were expected to set DIP switches on their motherboards and edit autoexec.bat files.
  A lot of gen-z doesn't even know what a hierarchial filesystem is anymore. They just shove all their media into "galleries", but can't actually tell you where that file is actually located.
  
  This is the unfortunate reality. My kids (11 and 9) have only ever used Linux distros, and they are keyboard warriors to boot. They say that the only reason to use the mouse is to aim in video games 🤣
- Flatpak?
  
  I'm a fan of the Flatpak trend. The latest version of Linux Mint has some interesting additions to how things are presented, as far as "verified" and "not verified". Basically their app installer program lets you know if a particular Flatpak should be treated with caution, sort of like downloading a random .exe with Windows.
  I recently installed Manjaro with KDE Plasma, and I'd like an easier way of getting Flatpaks out of the box with it. Their solution is to install Discover alongside their own app installer. So now I have two different GUI programs to open if I want to research something to install.
- I can't vouch for every Linux distro that claims to be user-friendly, but I've fully switched to Linux Mint a couple of months ago, and I've had no issues. The only times I've used the console are when I want to use it.
  My biggest worry before fully switching was playing pirated games, or games that I bought outside of Steam, but using Lutris it has been pretty straight forward.
- Try Aurora.
  Everything I've tried to install has all been point and click using flatpaks.
  If you're into gaming, use Bazzite instead, which comes with all the gaming stuff pre installed.
  
  thank you for the recommendations!

Why do you all want to rule the world? Just let people who like windows enjoy it... Jesus christ.
- an attempt at an answer:
  more linux users = more linux software (and I know this doesn't mean better linux software)
  Or at least attention from the bigger actors e.g., Adobe, Autodesk etc. to make their industry standards available for Linux users
  
  I'd rather Adobe not do that, but to each his own.
  More Linux users =>
  more people looking at source code
  more people potentially paying for development of some OSS Linux software
  More developer time for said OSS software => better OSS Linux software
  
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - Not for commercial AI
- Why spread a good thing to the world? Just let people enjoy their wiretappy thing.... jesus christ.
- “Why do you want to educate people? Just let them live in ignorance of the theft right under their noses… Thor Odinson.” - that’s what you sound like
- look at the culture and mindset which Windows™ breeds.
- For a democracy to work it's people need to act like political consumers. To do so, they need to be informed about the products they consume and their alternatives.
  
  That's political consumerism, not democracy.
- I am wondering, what is enjoyable about Windows/Microsoft?
  The slow & buggy UI?
  The blue screens due to crappy drivers or bc they fucked something up?
  The way they erase any customisability, essentially forcing their users to adapt their vision of how a computer should be operated?
  How they are coming up with great ideas such as taking system snapshots and having AI analyze them?
  The updates that randomly decide to install and then take an eternity with the end user not being able to use their PC whilst an update is taking place?
  The 10.000 different ways of updating software?
  How they are blatantly ripping off features whilst marketing them as their own ideas?
  The way they are turning it more and more into an advertising platform for their own products?
  The $139.00 license fee for everything I just mentioned?
  Like, the only enjoyable thing I can think of is software availability but thanks to WINE / Proton this advantage is becoming less and less relevant.
- Hi

150 comments