The state of Linux in 2022: A viable alternative to Windows and macOS?

16

October

2022

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Tux (Linux mascot), originally drawn as a raster image by Larry Ewing in 1996.

Linux is a free, open-source operating system based on the Linux kernel, which is maintained by the Linux Foundation (Linux Foundation – Decentralized Innovation, built with trust), and the GNU utilities, which are maintained by the GNU project (Stallman, About the GNU project – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation). However, Linux is not a single operating system but a collection of multiple distributions consisting of different bootloaders, package managers, desktop environments, login managers, etc., bundled with the core Linux kernel and GNU utilities. It is the third most popular desktop operating system behind Windows and macOS, commanding a desktop market share of 2.42% as of June 2022, up from 0.88% in January 2013(Desktop Operating System Market Share 2013-2022).

Although this is a huge improvement, the market share of Linux still pales compared to Windows and macOS, which commanded a share of 76.33% and 14.64%, respectively, as of June 2022(Desktop Operating System Market Share 2013-2022). The primary reasons for this disparity can be summarized as follows:

  1. Operating System installation source: Most desktops and laptops come pre-installed with Windows due to partnerships between OEMs (Operating Equipment Manufacturers) who assemble them and Microsoft. Apple desktops and laptops come pre-installed with macOS since Apple wants more control over end users’ hardware and software experience. But no multinational organisation provides any financial incentives to OEMs to install Linux. Hence, end users must search for Linux distributions and manually install them. Since most users are already comfortable with Windows and macOS and do not have the technical prowess or inclination to install Linux, the number of Linux users is naturally low.
  2. The technical difficulty of using Linux: Even if users are willing to put the effort into installing Linux on their computers, as mentioned earlier, most computer users have used Windows and macOS and are uncomfortable with the increased technical complexity of using Linux. They are uncomfortable using a Command Line Interface and miss the traditional layout and features of Windows and macOS.
  3. Quality control, Hardware and Software support: Since the Linux kernel is maintained by volunteers and not a single corporation, as is the case for Windows and macOS, there are many issues with operating system stability, hardware and software support. Many regressions (Fixes being undone) occur when the Linux kernel and open-source software are updated, and issues may take a long time to be resolved. This will lead to a lot of user frustration. If the user is technically adept and has a lot of free time, they can fix some issues themselves, but this is not a viable alternative for most people.
  4. Absence of important applications and games: If users are willing to put up with the aforementioned issues, have the technical prowess to fix those issues, or do not face issues with their particular hardware and software configuration, they may still find many important applications missing. Popular software such as the Microsoft Office suite and Adobe suite is not present in Linux. When searching for applications on the internet, most of them only support Windows due to the operating system’s prevalence. For many paid software, the existing small installation base and a large number of distributions make it financially infeasible to support Linux. Most popular AAA games are only released for Windows, with only a few released for macOS and Linux. Most games use the proprietary DirectX protocol, which Microsoft developed, which results in difficulty running those games on Linux.
  5. Lack of standardization: Due to a large number of Linux distributions with varying properties, there is no standardization regarding user experience and support. Larger distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch Linux have a relatively large user base and thus enjoy maximum support and standard features. However, more niche distributions may face a lack of available software, unfixed bugs, lack of support for software issues, etc., resulting in a poor user experience.
  6. Selecting a distribution: Even among the larger Linux distributions, there are various choices with varying pros and cons that are difficult for users to evaluate. This would lead to choice paralysis. The user may invest a lot of time and effort into learning a Linux distribution before discovering whether it suits them.

However, many of these underlying issues are being addressed to a greater extent as of 2022:

  1. Partnerships and WSL: OEMs such as Dell and HP have started to ship laptops preinstalled with Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distro(King, 2021). A copy of Linux is also pre-installed in Windows starting from Windows 10 as “Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)”. Hence, it is easier than ever to get acquainted with Linux.
  2. User-friendly distributions: Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous improvement in the desktop user experience of Linux, and distributions such as Ubuntu, Elementary OS, and Zorin provide excellent support and make the transition from Windows or macOS easy. Hence, the problems of transitioning from Windows or macOS and selecting a distribution have been mitigated to a great extent.
  3. Corporate kernel contributions and improvements in procedures: Linux is the operating system used in all 500 of the top supercomputers in the world (Prakash, 2020) and is used in 96.3% of the top million web servers (Vaughan-Nicholas, 2015). This is due to the extreme customizability and versatility of Linux. Hence, many corporations and research institutions have incentives to improve the Linux kernel and accompanying open-source software. As of 2020, the percentage of corporate contributions to the Linux kernel has increased significantly, with major contributions from companies such as Intel, RedHat, IBM, SUSE, Google, Samsung, AMD, Broadcom, Huawei, etc. (2020 linux kernel history report). These companies wish to improve their hardware and software compatibility with Linux and improve stability to benefit their personal use cases. There has also been an accompanying improvement in kernel maintenance and update procedures to reduce instances of instabilities, hardware and software errors, and bugs. Thus, the desktop Linux experience today is vastly superior to several years ago and is still improving.
  4. Improvements in application compatibility layers: Linux has a software known as wine (wine is not an emulator) which creates an application compatibility layer to allow Windows programs to be executed on Linux. This software is also the basis for Proton, a game compatibility layer developed by Valve software. Valve owns the largest PC gaming marketplace in the world, Steam, and they have also launched a handheld computer known as the Steam deck, which runs on the Linux operating system. Hence, the number of windows applications and games which can be run on Linux is rapidly increasing, reducing the requirements of using other operating systems.

In short, Linux is currently in its best possible state and still undergoing rapid improvements. The aforementioned issues are not completely fixed, but at the present rate of improvement, Linux will be a viable alternative to Windows and macOS within the next few years.

References:

Linux Foundation. (n.d.). Linux Foundation – Decentralized Innovation, built with trust. Linux Foundation – Decentralized innovation, built with trust. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.linuxfoundation.org/

Stallman, R. (n.d.). About the GNU project – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation.  [A GNU head] . Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html

Statista Research Department. (2022, July 27). Desktop Operating System Market Share 2013-2022. Statista. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/

King, B. (2021, November 25). Where can you buy a preinstalled linux laptop? MUO. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.makeuseof.com/linux-laptop/

Prakash, A. (2020, November 20). Linux runs all of the top 500 fastest supercomputers. It’s FOSS. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://itsfoss.com/linux-runs-top-supercomputers/

Vaughan-Nicholas, S. (2015, October 15). Can the internet exist without linux? ZDNET. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-the-internet-exist-without-linux/

The Linux Foundation. (2020, September 4). 2020 linux kernel history report. OpenSistemas. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://opensistemas.com/en/2020-linux-kernel-history-report/

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Is real-time ray tracing worth it for consumers in 2022?

15

October

2022

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NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti graphics card (https://www.nvidia.com/nl-nl/geforce/20-series/)

Computer-generated graphics have been steadily improving in quality over the past few decades. We have advanced from crudely rendered 8-bit graphics to photorealistic images due to improvements in computational hardware. One of the critical elements of photorealism is the behaviour of light.

In the real world, light behaves like a ray and reflects (bounces) and refracts (bends) while interacting with various surfaces based on physical properties like colour, emissivity, refractive index, etc. To create an accurate rendition of a scene on a computer, we would have to program all these properties into virtual objects, render numerous light rays from all light sources, and trace the paths of these rays as they interact with the virtual objects. This process is known as ray tracing.

Ray tracing using computer hardware has been attempted as far back as 1982 by the LINKS-1 computer graphics system in Osaka, Japan (http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/other/0013.html). However, due to the heavy computational requirements, it was reserved for use in pre-rendered scenes. In 1995, the animated movie “Toy Story” was released by Pixar studios, and it was rendered on 117 computers. It took between 45 minutes to 30 hours to render a single frame. (https://www.insider.com/pixars-animation-evolved-toy-story-2019-6). To perceive smooth motion, we must see at least 24 image frames in a single second, but computers obviously couldn’t render so many frames in real-time with ray tracing enabled. Hence, most computer graphics generated in real-time on consumer hardware was rendered using a method called “rasterization”, which approximated how light would be rendered and could result in glaring visual flaws, which reduced immersion.

In short, the main factors which have prevented ray tracing from becoming mainstream are as follows:

  • Cost: The amount and type of hardware to render images with ray tracing would be prohibitively expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars.
  • Speed: Even after spending a lot of money, the speed of rendering would be too slow for real-time applications, taking several minutes to even hours to render a single frame.
  • Electricity consumption and heat production: A large amount of hardware would consume a lot of electricity and thus produce a lot of heat, making it impractical for average consumers.

This changed in 2018 when NVIDIA launched the RTX 2000 series of graphics processing units, with specialized hardware to drastically speed up the mathematical operations required for ray tracing calculations. It was possible to get a computer costing less than 1000$ and consuming only 300-400 watts of electricity capable of rendering ray-traced images in real-time at a reasonable speed. Since then, graphics processing units have been steadily improving in performance following Moores’s law, and now it’s possible to render games with real-time ray tracing enabled at high frame rates. The most recent RTX 4090 graphics card achieved 60 Frames Per Second or more at an image resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels with ray tracing enabled on numerous games from AAA studios (https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-review-extreme-performance?page=5), once thought impossible. The number of games supporting ray tracing has rapidly increased, reaching 141 as of October 15, 2022 (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_ray_tracing).

Given the visual benefits of ray tracing, increased support from games, and the primary constraints of Cost, speed, and power consumption are mitigated to a large extent, the answer to whether ray tracing is worth it for consumers in 2022 is a resounding YES!!! The scope for real-time ray tracing could also extend to the metaverse and other digital content consumed by the general public as prices for ray tracing hardware reduce.

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