5 Predictions for Linux and FOSS in 2025

We are closing the books on the year 2024. What will 2025 bring us? Here are five predictions that I have regarding Linux and FOSS in 2025:

0:00 Intro
0:56 Linux desktop marketshare will double again...10%?
2:49 Immutable distros become more prevalent (major distros adopting the model).
3:42 A.I. integration into major desktop environments.
4:49 More corporate influence and less community-oriented.
6:20 Free software and open source will both continue to gain supporters.

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[BerserkerMomon]

I’m a new Linux user, I installed Linux on my PC last weekend! I got fed up with Microsoft’s bs so I’m trying Linux to see how much of my workflow can be brought over to Linux.

[NeuralNine]

I hope you are right about the user base doubling but 10% in 2025 sounds crazy to me.

[ringo]

I don't want "A.I" BS in my distro. That bubble will collapse from the weight of its own contradictions soon enough.

[cybernit]

I think we would be lucky if we get 7% of the desktop market; but you might be right, hopefully 10%. The big problem is creating that Linux install USB thumb drive, many people might not feel confident and scared to do this. It would be good if computer stores have an option to wave the Windows OEM fee and replace it with a Linux install with a discount so their overall computer cost will be lower without Windows. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year too, your channel did a great job this year, thank you.

[anonytuser]

Linux gaming is going to make huge leaps. SteamOS, Bazzite, ChimeraOS, and Playtron are making it work better and more accessible.

[crazman]

I have finally made the full switch to Linux, gaming is at a place i am happy with finally

[dimlylitcorners]

We need an offline-first, local-first, community-first, redistribute, own-the-end-nods mentality and culture spread in the FOSS community, we need more *local* hacker spaces to spread hacker culture, we need to integrate overlay networks like I2P, Tor, etc as the *community clouds* they are and use them that way especially for discovery and notifications, I won't mind well tested and well understood AI in the command line or desktop, but if you can't explain or even understand the inner workings of your AI I'm not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole

[abc-xyz]

Thanks for your great content, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too! Greetings from Switzerland!

[sunflash]

I think Linux desktop market share about 7-8% by the end of next year. Of course if it hits 10%, many thing needs to go right, or Microsoft need to mess up windows pretty bad one way or the other, recall, ads or some sorts of controversy.

[gadeane]

Corporations are not in the habit of doing what's best for you; only their stockholders. When Linux gets to 10%+ of OS users, you can bet they're gonna be hot to buy Arch or Debian.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too!

[varenneriocha]

I won't call it an "insane growth". Having met a two whole classes of 18 year old aspiring IT guys and gals in the last two years, a total of 300, I could measure the percentage who are sharp enough to catch Linux, shell: 15%. I was disappointed at the beginning, now think if we get that much desktop usage, that would be insane indeed!

[dono]

I really dislike all of the AI crap being pushed everywhere. The lack of it so far in Linux has strangely become one of the greatest strengths for me. I guess it is just a matter of time until that it is destroyed.

[arandomfox]

I recently switched to NixOS, so far I'm loving it. About two days now and I've manged to get the config working to the point that I can load my hyprland, waybar etc all preconfigured into a fresh format no issues.
It's pretty cool.
Not yet into flakes etc.

[shallmow]

I don't think image/audio generators will come to major DEs but i can see integration of image recognition and non LLM voice assistants

[penguin]

not that sure about that 10% market share, although some gain might happen due to Win10 EoL.

my three wishes for the next year are:
* immutable distros popularity spread - if some folks complain that Linux is too complex, the immutable thing might make the argument invalid
* Linux gaming improvement - kinda self-explanatory i guess
* KDE and GNOME own distros - maybe when they are finally a real thing, they will gain OEM support? sth that was not viable even for Ubuntu

[peterschmidt]

The last quarter of the year (past Oct 2025) I think there's going to be a huge hike in Linux uptake. You're going to see some users who are fed up with MS shenanigans switching. There's also going to be users that have multiple older PCs at home currently running Win10 or below finally switching them to Linux for security updates. I know personally I have six older machines for projects that will be switched. Three current PC/laptops where only one will have a copy of Windows (and that will get swapped to Win10 LTSC), the rest will more than likely be some form of Linux even though they support WIn11.

[Tuviz]

Really interesting would be end of the year when support for W10 will drop and ppl will have to decide wether stay with W11 or choose something more… private

[fredmckinney]

On immutable distros, I've created a Christian web-filtered distro, and found that I HAD to make all the files pertaining to the DNS-based filtering, including /etc/resolv.conf, immutable in order for the filtering to work.

[kdemetter]

I like immutable, but the problem it just end not working for some of the things I'm trying to do. I've switched to NixOS so many times, only to be forced to switch back to Arch because some very specific thing didn't work for me.

Granted, that might be a bad comparison because NixOS isn't just immutable but also declarative. Perhaps other immutable distro's have less issues in that sense.

[revgen]

I don't see Microsoft and Google becoming more involved in Linux. Both companies seem more interested in Cloud computing and AI.