Linux desktop systems in India are 16% of the market
We need to learn from what they are doing.
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Are they really?
Are they including handheld gaming systems like the Steam Deck? This distorts what weâre really interested in: a desktop.
Are they including Pi type devices? Those can be used as a desktop.
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The raspberry pi is yet another market for some, i know we have several members on this site use them.
Did inherit a box of pi with robots, screens, sim card and almost every model from the original to one about a year old, had no idea what i would use them for so donated to my stepson who promises to get them doing something but no idea what guess they will site on his desk till next year.
I can express my personal view based on my personal experience what I have gained in my two months experience with Linux. First, Windows is damn easy for general public. In six months of time, if you are a dedicated learner, you will know how to install Windows and drivers and other softwares and even how to partition disks through Windows. Second, finding Windows based drivers for various devices are easy as finding your way to your bathroom (because this is the most important room in human lives⊠
). Third, every software we can think of has a Windows version.
But⊠there is a big pain in the butt regarding these aspects in case of Linux. First pain, graphics driver. AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers are still messy. Second, to make the sound work properly, people have to tear their hairs, though unlike the graphics driver, it will be solved. Third, if someone like me who wants to feel the effect of movie theatre at home with not so hifi speakers, another hair tearing episode will be waiting. Fourth, if someone wants good professional alternatives other than MS-Office suit, it will be a total disappointment. There are no alternatives of Windows based applications. I am sorry to tell. Gimp, Darktable, Krita, they have still a long way to go. Why? Gimp still doesnât support Adobe âSmart Objectâ. Krita still canât import .ai files (Adobe Illustrator files) with all its layers. If someone wants to process RAW format files, Gimp with Darktable can do the job for less than 10 files. But for more than 50 files, if time be the essence, there is no other way than using Photoshop, I am afraid. I still havenât find any alternative to RipX Daw in Linux. Audacity is not an âalternativeâ to any professional DAW in Windows. Kdenlive doesnât recognise all Nvidia GPUs. Installing Davinci Resolve in Linux⊠forget it, except using Blackmagicâs own version of Rocky Linux which doesnât upgrade its kernel. Even any add-on for XAMPP Linux is not available. How one can do professional work in Linux. If you want me to describe the cause of why people are not using Linux in a short, I will say incompatibility.
But, I am hopeful and I fed up with the Mafia like behaviour of Microsoft and Adobe and thatâs why I have started using Linux, Fedora to be specific, as my daily OS and will use Windows 10 for my work purpose disconnecting from the internet. I will wait for Linux to be able to replace Windows and become the main OS to go for most of the people. I donât know, whether I will be able to see that day in my life time. But, I will wait, patently.
Linux-the-David has got a lifetime chance to kill Microsoft-the-Goliath because with Windows 11, the greedy giant has been unmasked and Linux has to make 100% out of it.
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No idea.
There is a dramatic increase from 3% to 16% in one year.
Something has changed rapidly.
You want to move away from Adobe, but you still want to use its file formats?
That is only half a move.
Maybe you could conquer that with a script.
I dont know if gimp ,krita, etc can be scripted,
but
in general processing multiple files is better done at the CLI with a simple shell script.
There are image processing packages that specialize in multiple images, for example
siril for astronomy images.
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Maybe not in NSW - but I remember using it for woodwork or metal work class (âshopâ) when I was in high school (in Melbourne - at a âvocationalâ high school) - that was 1978âŠ
I also use it in the context of e.g. âIBM shopâ - e.g. big banks et cetera are often IBM âshopsâ. I think that etymology might be related to unionised workplaces, where the union rep is the âshop stewardâ et ceteraâŠ
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Wrong!
Laptop:
Desktop:
Neither running on Rocky 
I miss the non-destructive correction layers from GIMP, but itâs still so much useful!
I do it frequently, my tool for that is Rawtherapee. Itâs amazing!
Give it a try!
While I agree to a certain level, I also disagree.
NVidia prop. drivers worked me always well, provided I donât want waylandâŠ
As soon as Wayland gets into the picture, nvidia drivers get really messyâŠ
AMD just works without addition ado, assuming itâs not a shiny-new-just-entered-the-market device, which still does not have (proper) kernel support.
Right, Audacity is âjustâ an audio editor, not a DAW. For that purpose Iâd suggest to check Ardour, we (actually my son) had good use of it.
I would better say, the lack of education in schools. Young pupils are taught how to use computer (== Windows !!!), they donât hear a single word about Linux.
How on earth do we want future users for Linux without advertising it among the users in the future???
Probably India does that better.
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I am from India and I can give you the main reason behind this boom. Indian people are price conscious. They generally prefer one time expense rather than monthly recurring expenses regarding computers and softwares and as the general population is not so much rich, they value their money and not very interested on changing their computers. You might be surprised to know that there are a large section of business house who are still using Windows XP. Now, copilot AI with GPT4.0 is available only in laptops in India and the price starts from approx INR 83,400 ($999) which is quite high compared to a market where average laptop price starts from INR 40K to 45K ($476 to $536) and generally these laptops are bought by youths for their study outside home. At home they use PCs for high-end tasks like gaming etc. So, if you can buy a laptop $476 and get Linux as OS which is FREE and almost similar to Windows in the front-end along with all basic softwares like Office suite, antivirus, basic photo editing tools for FREE, will you go for a $999 laptop only to use an OS with such a feature which you would probably never use? Probably not and this is why Linux market share in India is rising. And another thing in the side is also affecting for the decrease in the market share of Windows is REPAIRABLITY. The repair market in India is huge. You can repair almost any device from the repair shops without going to authorized service centers and they are very good in repairing. So, repairing a Copilot laptop is right now impossible without going to specified service centers and boy, they will just slit your throat with their price tag for which they are infamous. So, why people will go for a laptop which will be literally a money pit when they can avoid it entirely just by embracing Linux? Just mark my words, Linux market share will rise more if the current problems of device drivers, GPU drivers to be specific, be solved and make proper alternatives to Adobeâs applications because a huge section of computer users in India uses Adobe applications for their work.
Now, you know why Linux is rising in India. 
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I think IBM shop means an exclusively IBM computer department
but there is a use of "shop " in the union world, yes. ⊠again it means exclusivity⊠they talk abput âclosed shopâ operations
When I was a young child, we had a âblacksmith-shopâ in our backyard.
Definitely not a unionised workplace and nothing exclusive, it was a family business.
Well Melbourne is about as different from Sydney as the US is from England.
I think there are a variety of meanings for âshopâ.
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Adobe .ai files are Vector Graphics.
If you were to put them in a raster graphics program like Krita or Gimp, they would be converted to raster images. That may not be desirable.
The vector graphics program in Linux is Inkscape⊠that is the place to work on .ai files.
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100% and with multipage documents from Inkscape 1.2 onwards - Inkscape is on level par with CorelDraw for vector graphics⊠I wouldnât know about Adobe Illustrator (which is where âaiâ format originated) I couldnât say.
I once tried Adobe Illustrator - I thought such âMacâ friend apps were supposed to be friendly - but it wouldnât let me rotate a vector shape freehand - it wanted me to type mathematical formula⊠Seriously - FâK that - when Iâm creating shit - I want analog tools - not remembering numerical standards for rotations of degrees⊠I gave up and went back to CorelDraw⊠Which I stopped using about ~10 years ago - when I realised InkScape could do everything I needed (apart from multi-page documents).
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âFriendlyâ and Illustrator reside in the opposite poles. CorelDraw is far more user-friendly but I donât know why some people love to use Illustrator. May be itâs a status quo. I have never tried Inkscape. I will try that. Actually as I want to replace all the Adobe apps I use, I try to open those Adobe generated files in Linux apps and I have mentioned what I have found so far. But I am hopeful that I will figure out some workaround so that I can use Linux as my daily driver.
You will slowly work out what to use for each case.
Linux will never be an exact copy of windows⊠there would be no point in it existing if it were indistinguishable from windows.
There are some things it does better, some things it does differently, and I suppose some things it avoids doing.
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I made a very slow switch to Linux, first I learned the crossplatform alternatives on Windows, then on Linux continued to use them instead of the Windows-only apps.
This process took me years, but caused negligible pain.
Switching to Linux in the first place AND learning the alternatives at the same time is much faster, but I think, much more painful process.
Depends on your habit.
Iâm a lazy and comfortable guy, and I hate to be in hurry and under pressure.
So I choose the less painful process.
If you are driven by adrenalin, you can choose a more exciting, less boring, more dangerous, less comfortable way
At the end, after all: weâll both use Linux and Linux-native apps for our everyday tasks 
Edit:
Just a footnote: I kept a Windows install in a VM with my paid and activated softwares, just in case⊠Yes I used that VM, not more than 5 times since april 2019. That was the last time I booted Windows on bare metal.
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Thereâs a syndrome based on the concept of âWeâve always done it that wayâ. Since Windows has been around for so long, people simply gravitate to it, regardless of whether the new thing may work better. I suggest we add âWeâve always done it with Windows to the listâ.
And, yes, after reading the blog post linked above, I essentially agree with the author,
Ernie
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Unix ( not Linux) predates Windows by about 10 years⊠but the public never used it.
Apple was available before Windows
So why did the majority of people choose Windows originally?.. The first Windows was a terrible performer built on top of DOS.
I think it may have been cost⊠Apple was more expensive,⊠still is.
How can we make a Linux PC cheaper off the shelf?
I think you could beat Windows if you flooded the market with half price Linux PCâs.
That is achievableâŠLinux will perform on cheaper hardware.
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Linux can perform on cheaper hardware. It may not always though. Iâd hate for possible poor performance on cheaper hardware to backfire and have users unhappy with Linux when itâs really the hardwareâs fault.
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I do believe the days of cheap hardware may be just a dream!!!
Really cannot see the logic with this ?, when the answer is quite simple!!!
#1 it is pre installed
#2 Windows works quite well on a broad range of hardware
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People buy Windows computers because they are readily available and cheap.
For Linux to get into that market there have to be computers with preloaded Linux at a lower price than Windows computers, and readily available off the shelf in the local store.
but we cant go so cheap that there are reliability problems, as @pdecker pointed out.
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