What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

Wasn't 2025 the year it happened? Yes. No. Answers on a Christmas card

Opinion I've run Linux desktops since the big interface question was whether to use Korn or Bash for your shell. Before that, I'd used Unix desktops such as Visix Looking Glass, Sun OpenWindows, and SCO's infamous Open Deathtrap Desktop.

Unless you're a fellow gray-haired computer or Unix geek, chances are you've never heard of, never mind used, any of these. Fast-forward to 2025, there are more than a dozen significant Linux desktop interfaces. These include GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, MATE, and on and on. They're all too likely to be as forgotten as the first three Unix interfaces I named. Why? The same reasons you don't know a thing about the Unix desktops.

First, though, why you might want to get the hell away from Windows while the going is good. Besides the usual security crap – 41 zero-day CVEs so far in 2025 at the time of writing – there have been new features such as Microsoft Recall, a privacy disaster disguised as a feature. Then there's the way Microsoft is forcing AI functions down our throats. If I wanted Copilot when I'm making a grocery list in Notepad, I'd… wait a second. I'll never want an AI program looking over my shoulder in a simple note app and then reporting to Microsoft that I'm picky about my green peppers.

I'm old fashioned about my desktops. I want the power in my PC, not in the cloud. I also want to control what does and doesn't get sent to the cloud. I'm looking at you, OneDrive, with your obnoxious habit of being the default for saving files.

I also like my old, but not yet ancient, PCs to keep working. Just because I still have PCs with Intel's eighth, ninth, and tenth-gen Core chips under the hood shouldn't mean Windows 11 won't run on them – but here we are.

These reasons alone have given the Linux desktop a boost. By my count, as much as 11 percent of the desktop market is now running Linux one way or another.

That's great, but much of that counts Chromebooks rather than traditional PC-centric desktops. So, what do we need to make the fat Linux desktop succeed?

Unix died because of endless incompatibilities between versions. Linux succeeded on servers and everywhere else because it provided a single open operating system that everyone could use. With the desktop, though, we saw, and still see, endless incompatibilities.

Linus Torvalds also saw this. He's long thought that we have way too many desktops. He's right. If someone goes to DistroWatch, they'll find upwards of a hundred desktops. Who has time to figure out what's best? I don't, and I cover this stuff for a living, and once ran a site called Desktop Linux.

That's just the surface of the problem. Under that, you'll find arguments over how to manage software packages and the library incompatibilities they must deal with. Distro builders constantly have fits building and rebuilding programs to run on their Linux distros. The traditional ways of delivering Linux desktop apps, such as DEB and RPM package management systems for Debian and Red Hat Linux, respectively, simply don't scale for the desktop.

We have the answer: A containerized software package delivery program that bundles all required dependencies into a single, useful package. Today, we should all be using Flatpaks, Snaps, and AppImages to install programs instead of worrying about library incompatibilities and the like. This also saves vendors a lot of time since they can deliver a universal version of their program that will install and run on anyone's Linux desktop without the hassle of porting it to each and every distro.

The problem? It's fragmentation once again. Some people hate containerized packages because they use more storage space and RAM than old-style programs. Others dislike one or the other packaging system for other reasons. For example, my favorite desktop operating system is Linux Mint. However, Mint's leaders don't like Snap because its parent company, Canonical, has too much control over the Snap store and has used Snap to replace some of the apt package installation program's functionality.

The problem is that everyone has their own reasons for preferring their special sauce for the desktop. No one's sauce is special enough to get Windows users to move to any particular distro.

Another problem, as Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany's TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn't taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks "are the path toward the desktop."

Just look at Android, he argued. Linux won on smartphones because, while there are different Android front ends, under their interfaces, there's a single, unified platform with a unified way to install programs. He's right.

I still hope that the Linux desktop will be successful. Indeed, I think it may yet win by default. As Microsoft moves ever closer to a cloud-based computer approach, Linux may be the last "true" desktop standing. It won't be as much of a win as we first dreamed of when we came up with the "Year of the Linux desktop" tagline, but it will still be a win. ®