5 Predictions for Linux and FOSS in 2025

so we're coming up on the end of 2024 and as we close the books on this year we start looking ahead to next year and of course those of us in the content creation game a lot of us like to make predictions about what's going to happen in the new year so today I wanted to cover five of my predictions on things that are going to happen in the Linux community and just the broader free and open source software community in 2025 now note that these five predictions of mine I will say that as I take a look at them now I recognize that all of these are somewhat controversial as in that people are going to have differing opinions on whether these predictions of mine are positive or negative because depending on what side of the fence you are you might see some of these as a good thing if they do come to pass or you might see some of these things as very negative if they actually do come to pass prediction number one I think everybody wants to make predictions about Linux desktop market share in 2025 and obviously the trend is we're growing we know Linux desktop market share is exploding we went from you know one to 1 and a half% of desktop market share when I first switched to Linux about 16 17 years ago to now you know the numbers are estimated about you know 4% maybe 5% of desktop market share is now using Linux so that is a substantial increase right we've probably tripled our user base in the last 15 years and you know a lot of that growth really came in just the last say two years or so I think the rise of the steam deck really helped push us forward a little bit and you know what I'm going to make this bold prediction this insane growth that we're seeing is going to continue in 2025 I see no signs of it stopping really all signs point to go as far as people adopting Linux Windows is not getting any better right it's getting worse as far as some of the shenanigans that go on with Microsoft and Windows Apple not everybody wants to be locked into to that Walled Garden that is Mac OS so I think Linux is just going to keep gaining market share I could see us possibly getting all the way to the 10% Mark by the end of 2025 that's not insane I mean all we would have to do is double our user base if we're already around 5% we just have to double it in 2025 and we've essentially doubled it in the last year or two anyway we've already kind of been on that pace and if we get to that magical 10% number well now we're starting to rival what the Mac OS market share is and I think that will be a real Turning Point with Linux going forward should we hit that number and again I know not everybody sees Linux becoming more popular as a good thing but for me I think it's a positive prediction number two again another controversial one everybody's going to have a different reaction to this but I think a mutable distributions are going to become more and more prevalent you're going to see a lot more of mutable Linux desktop distributions including some of the old guard you know some of the OG dros you're going to see dros like Arch and uh Debian things like that Aon to of course is kind of experimenting with this already we're going to see a lot more distributions adopt that immutable model now is that a positive thing for me I don't mind it so much I don't necessarily see it as a positive or negative I just think it is the evolution of death top Computing I know some people really hate immutable distributions for whatever reason I don't have those kinds of Hang-Ups so for me you know this is just an observation I just see this as the trend and I'm okay with it prediction number three I see much more AI integration being put into our Linux distributions and especially our Linux desktop environments especially the major ones and we're talking about gnome and KDE especially we're going to see much more AI integration we're going to see built-in chat assistant so you're going to see things like Cortana or Siri you know for those that are familiar with those tools we're going to have stuff like that in gome and KDE we're going to have chat GPT you know or open source Alternatives like oama we're going to have all of that stuff built into our desktop environments and window managers we may even see other AI tools you know generative AI stuff like uh image uh generation and video generation and tools like for example Caden live if you want to automatically have ai just generate an audio clip or video clip or where you image for you maybe you can do that right there in your uh video editor or your image editor maybe will start implementing some of these AI tools I mean that is coming I mean that's a given you're not stopping that will we get all of that stuff as early as 2025 possibly number four of my predictions is probably the most controversial one and this one people will be divided uh especially on this one as far as whether it's a positive or negative but I see much more corporate influence and less Community influence in the Linux world and the free and open source software world now for me I think that is a negative but a lot of people will see this as a positive they want these major corporations like Google and Microsoft and meta you know they want these companies to be much more involved with the direction of Linux and free and open source software because they see obviously these trillion dollar corporations all the money behind it and you know they're going to make Linux better for us right all we need is corporations to make free and open source software better for us to me there's a real disconnect with that line of thinking because free and open source software has always been about the community it's the community that drives it forward it's not really corporations corporations do play a role certainly in the Linux space uh corporations like red hat and canonic Susa you know and many other corporations have helped us go forward but they're not the driving force behind this thing the driving force behind this is you and me the Regular Joe the community and for me I see this growing corporate influence especially by the big Mega cap tech stocks like Microsoft and Google and Amazon and met and Nvidia and all these companies I see this as concerning and number five of my predictions for 2025 is I think that the free software movement and the open source software movement will continue to gain supporters and by supporters I mean we already see a lot more people in the community that used to be staunchly anti-free software anti-open Source software I love proprietary software proprietary software is the best open source software sucks y y y we don't see that kind of negative reaction to free and open source software anymore and that's going to continue the community is going to continue opening up to free and open source software and especially corporations again all the big Mega cap tech stocks they all adopt open source stuff now right they're all on the open source bandwagon we're going to continue to see this snowball grow and I think that's great right I think that is a positive because I do think you know when I talk about the negative corporate influence on free and open source software I do think that we in the community can kind of keep them in check if we have a large enough community that supports the free and open source software ecosystem so for me I see this as a positive and again on all five of the points I made on this video I know there will be some people that see things differently some of the things I thought were positive you'll see as negative some of the things I see as negative you'll see as positive which one of us is right who knows but you know 2025 is will be upon us here in just a couple of weeks and I guess we'll see and in case I don't get a chance to tell you this before the holidays guys Merry Christmas and happy New Year peace