Let’s not exaggerate like that. A lot of pcs are used by university students/professors, researchers, office work, engineers, software devs, audiovisual production, designers, hobbyists from many areas, etc. And linux has been gaining space in all those areas.
Professional use is a whole different story, and I left it out because the previous message was getting a bit too long. 😃
If your work relies on a specific piece of Windows software, Linux probably won’t be good enough. Even if you can technically use that application through Wine or Proton, the work environment usually requires every feature to work as intended. If there’s weird behaviour that interferes with your work, it’s pretty clear that you can’t tolerate that. This can easily happen when your work involves using a computer to control a machine or to pull data from it. You may also need your computer to talk to other systems that expect you to use a client running on top of Windows.
However, many people need apps that were designed to run on a browser. That’s when you really begin to have options. Even MS Word and Excel kind of sort of work through a browser as long as you don’t intend to do anything even remotely advanced with them. Many people just need basic office applications, and in that context, Linux has been a viable option for many years already. Even though the docx->odt conversion is far from perfect, it’s usually good enough.
Many people also require specific functionality, but don’t really care which application actually provides it as long as the job gets done well enough. If that’s the case, Linux can usually provide an alternative. Don’t know about professional video production, but hobby videos can definitely be edited on Kdenlive. Same logic applies to Gimp, Krita, and Inkscape.
Let’s not exaggerate like that. A lot of pcs are used by university students/professors, researchers, office work, engineers, software devs, audiovisual production, designers, hobbyists from many areas, etc. And linux has been gaining space in all those areas.
Professional use is a whole different story, and I left it out because the previous message was getting a bit too long. 😃
If your work relies on a specific piece of Windows software, Linux probably won’t be good enough. Even if you can technically use that application through Wine or Proton, the work environment usually requires every feature to work as intended. If there’s weird behaviour that interferes with your work, it’s pretty clear that you can’t tolerate that. This can easily happen when your work involves using a computer to control a machine or to pull data from it. You may also need your computer to talk to other systems that expect you to use a client running on top of Windows.
However, many people need apps that were designed to run on a browser. That’s when you really begin to have options. Even MS Word and Excel kind of sort of work through a browser as long as you don’t intend to do anything even remotely advanced with them. Many people just need basic office applications, and in that context, Linux has been a viable option for many years already. Even though the docx->odt conversion is far from perfect, it’s usually good enough.
Many people also require specific functionality, but don’t really care which application actually provides it as long as the job gets done well enough. If that’s the case, Linux can usually provide an alternative. Don’t know about professional video production, but hobby videos can definitely be edited on Kdenlive. Same logic applies to Gimp, Krita, and Inkscape.