 Why does Linux lack software? That's one of the most common questions I think new to Linux users ask when they switch from Windows over to Linux is Why is there no software on Linux? You know, where's all the software? Well, I think part of this is a misconception for one thing Linux has plenty of software We have a ton of software on Linux. So does Linux lack software? No, not really What Linux lacks though is proprietary software and in many especially Windows users minds because any of it on Windows It's a proprietary operating system most of the software that comes shipped on it by default is all proprietary software They're used to all this proprietary software They've been addicted to it and now they switch over to Linux and none of those proprietary pieces of software are available on Linux Or at least very very few. So it's not that Linux lacks software It's that Linux lacks proprietary software if you want to use free and open source software Linux has thousands tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of pieces of free and open source software available for you and If you're a big fan of free and open source software like I am Linux is actually a better platform to be on than Windows Free and open source software is a first-class citizen on Linux. Most free and open source programs are Available on Linux, right? They typically write those programs with Linux in mind being that Linux is a free and open source operating system Right, they typically will write it for Linux before they write a version for Windows Where it's not the same with proprietary software and that's really the problem The problem is not Windows or Linux. The problem is proprietary software now proprietary software Why is it usually written? Well proprietary software is written with typically one goal in mind making money and that really is the problem is that Most programs most pieces of code most pieces of software out there Think of all the millions of little scripts and programs people have written over the decades You know 99% of those things were written with no real goal of making money on it Right, these people wrote these things for fun for education or to actually contribute to the greater good to the community And that's what most free and open source programs are right that they're written as a hobby by individuals typically You know there's one person Sometimes you'll have groups of people working on these things and they're typically freely donating their time and their energy and their code to this thing With no real, you know incentive as far as they're not trying to milk that thing for money But proprietary software is completely different because proprietary software is not typically written by Individuals or like a community organization proprietary software is typically written by people that work for a company for a corporation Corporations don't develop software for fun or for education or to help the world help to the community That's not why they do that right corporations have one goal in mind by developing that piece of software They want to be able to sell that software so that company can make money and this is why Linux Has a problem with proprietary software is because market share desktop market share windows dominates Computer market share right when we talk about a desktop operating system That's why if you're a company and your sole purpose in life is making money, right? That's the only reason a corporation exists. It's a legal entity designed to make a lot of money, right? So if you're gonna write software to make money, you have to write that software for windows You're probably not gonna write it for Mac although there's enough Mac users Maybe some pieces of proprietary software will see a Mac port, you know Very few will see a Linux port and don't even get into the various BSD operating systems out there And this is the problem is market share right because I got to be able to make money By selling this stuff to you if it's proprietary software and I'm like the CEO of a corporation now I don't know what the Linux desktop market share is and you'll see estimates that we're around two to three percent of the desktop computing Market share. I actually think that number is understated. I think these surveys You know, the problem is Linux distributions don't do a good job of reporting Market share and you know none of them report, you know downloads and user bases and things like that We have no real good metrics for this stuff But whether it's 2% 3% or if I think it's grossly underestimated and I think maybe we have as much as 5% of the desktop market share That's still pills in comparison to windows that has like a 90% desktop market share, right? That's why we don't have these corporations developing software for Linux It's because there's not enough of us to make that money now Some of this depends on what kind of software you're actually Shipping as far as the niche the the category of software, right? For example, we do have some proprietary software on Linux, right? Some of the ones that come to mind Google Chrome has been on Linux forever since the beginning of time, right? Why is Google Chrome a piece of proprietary software on Linux? It's because that's a web browser Most computer users are going to use a web browser Most computer users that use a web browser use Google Chrome And it doesn't matter that Linux only has to 3% of the desktop market share Because when you're talking about something that literally every computer user on the planet is going to use a web browser That's enough of us that it is in Google's best interest to make Google Chrome available on Linux So you'll see proprietary web browsers on Linux like Chrome, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge I mean Microsoft thought that you know, they needed to make sure that Edge was available on Linux because again That's even though we're a small piece of the pie, you know two three percent, you know Everybody has to use a web browser. So that makes sense now where we get into problems is niche software So what I'm talking about with niche Software is software that doesn't have a very big user base like everybody has to use a web browser, right? Most people have to use a text editor and office suite But then you get into a really specialized task for example one that often comes up in Linux is CAD software Right, not a lot of people need CAD software. Most of it is proprietary software written for Windows Why is that? Because Windows has the market share, right? Not that many people are out there that are going to purchase it and you have to target Windows in that case because think about it Linux we have two or three percent of the market share really small market share now You're talking about a really small market share of that market share that needs CAD software Maybe I don't know a percent less than a percent probably less than a percent of that two to three percent So he is a corporation going to spend money to develop that proprietary CAD software for Linux No, because it's not worth their time They're gonna lose money on that because they're not gonna be able to sell it to enough people And I think one of the biggest reasons why there isn't that much proprietary software on Linux is for the most part We don't need a lot of it one of the things about having so much free and open-source software out there Tens of thousands of programs available in your distros repositories is that whatever proprietary software you were using chances are There's a free and open-source alternative available for you that is as good or better than the proprietary program You were using before so in many cases Why do you even want that proprietary software right? It offers nothing that these free and open-source alternatives don't offer in many cases now Of course the problem comes with the ones that obviously there's no good free and open-source alternative Or you're forced to use certain pieces of proprietary software at your office at school at university And typically the ones that people complain about of course are the Microsoft office suite and the adobe creative cloud suite Now Microsoft in adobe have always been a problem They've never really supported Linux in any meaningful way until the last few years Microsoft has kind of changed their position They're starting to open source some stuff and when they open source stuff that stuff typically becomes available on Linux So that's one of the nice things is you know if you just get these companies to Open-source their proprietary software typically good things happen as far as these things being available on Linux But but again the problem is these proprietary software programs that they're developed by corporations corporations are the problem It's all about corporations versus communities free and open-source software is designed by individuals or Communities but communities are essentially individuals right it just happens to be that a lot of these individuals got together And they're all working on the same thing, but they're doing so freely and they're not tied to it They don't earn earn a paycheck. They just happen to be aligned at least for a little while on the same goal Developing this particular piece of free and open-source software Corporations completely different one of the big problems is because these corporations have to make money They're beholden to shareholders, especially if they're publicly traded companies many Corporations don't want anything to do with free and open-source software and they don't want anything to do with Linux many Corporations that make proprietary software are scared to death of Linux a free and open-source software and especially of the GPO Which is GNU's general public license much of the software on Linux on your Linux operating system is licensed under the GPO Most of the the GNU suite of applications their license under the GPO The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPO and that particular free license It states that there is there's a copy left aspect to it meaning that you are free to modify the code And you know because the it's open-source right and you can make changes to the code modify it But you're supposed to contribute your changes back, right? You can't take a piece of GPO software modify it add things improve it and then Slap a proprietary closed-source License on the thing and then hide your changes right now You have to give it back to the community because you took this work that the community was building and yeah You did something to it made it better, but you need to contribute that back to the community That's kind of what the GPO is about and that scares corporations out of their minds, right? They they want nothing to do they can't be anywhere near GPO software So that's why these proprietary corporations, you know, they're building their proprietary software But they will never build that on anything that has a GPO license Though typically if they have to incorporate any open-source software into their proprietary software They make sure that that free and open-source software is licensed under a really permissive license Typically the MIT license or the Apache license because then they don't have to give anything back to the community They can freely take those free and open-source programs close-source it and it's all good But the GPO does not allow them to do that But really all of this would go away if these corporations would quit making proprietary software and just open-source everything But I know they're not because free and open-source software unfortunately is difficult to sell I made a video about this just a couple of weeks ago about how to make money selling open-source software And the problem is too many of these proprietary software makers They have this old-school model where they're trying to sell copies of software and you know free and open-source software You can't do that because the source code is open what you have to do is you have to sell Training and support and services web services, you know stuff around the software You give the software away and then you sell stuff related to the software That's how you make money with free and open-source software and the proprietary software business model They don't grasp that know right that they don't understand that one of the other things that really holds back proprietary software on Linux Is there's too many Linux distros right? There's hundreds of Linux distros So you have to test your program on all these different distros and they all are running different Software different versions of the kernel different a knit systems yada yada yada, right? They all have their own package managers and that's really difficult for somebody that's targeting Linux Well, it's starting to get a little better because now we have these universal packaging formats like snaps flat packs app images Which you can package your software and one of those formats and it should work on virtually every Linux distribution But the problem is even that is confusing to corporations and makers of proprietary software because now you got to decide Well, which universal format to use because again you have snaps flat packs and app images Which one well, I would suggest packaging it in all three just to have all your bases covered But again, you know, this is confusing to people outside of the free and open-source community So what do we do? How do we solve this problem? How do we get more proprietary software on Linux? Well, I think the biggest thing is the community because Linux is all about the community, right? The community has to solve this problem And what I mean by that is the community needs to push these corporations to make their software available on Linux They need to make Linux versions of their proprietary software too many people Blame people that have nothing to do with the problem Like I see people that come to Linux from Windows and then I Adobe none of their software is available on Linux Linux sucks you Linux guys are the problem you Linux guys need to make this work somehow like Magically, we can make it work. We can't right because it's close or soft We can't even look at their code because it's not licensed under a free license We can't make Adobe software ever worked on Linux Adobe has to do that. So what the community needs to do if you guys want Microsoft office on Linux Complained to Microsoft tell them to port their software over to Linux If you want Adobe's creative cloud suite and especially I know photoshop is the big one Everybody wants photoshop on Linux and honestly, that's a big enough program Adobe could make money on that because many people would use a program like photoshop Like there's enough of a bite of the apple there as far as the Linux market share plus the amount of Linux users That would actually pay for photoshop Adobe could make money on that and they might do it If enough of the community lets them know about it and honestly Microsoft office and the Adobe suite They're about the only pieces of proprietary software that people really complain about missing on Linux So if we could just get those I think we'd be good ultimately though as far as Getting proprietary software on Linux. I think Linux by its very nature We're never gonna be able to attract proprietary software to Linux. I think Just the very fundamental nature of Linux free and open-source software the fact that Linux is GPL software and all the new stuff is GPL software. I think just the whole Linux philosophy It's so antithetical to proprietary software. We're never going to really make inroads in this now Is that a bad thing in my opinion? No, I I'm okay with not having a lot of proprietary software on Linux Because honestly free and open source software the reason it's popular the reason open source has become like a common word that Everybody knows it's because of Linux 10 years ago. There wasn't that much open source software 20 years ago Especially there wasn't that much open source software now open source is everywhere. You can't escape open source software, right? That's why Microsoft is so heavily invested now in open source software Google open source software Facebook is Making open source software so many companies now have to use and in some cases make their own open source software The reason they're doing that is because Linux made that happen Linux made free and open source software a normal thing a common thing They're changing the world Linux really has changed the way people think about computers think about software How they think about the world in general and I think Linux is going to continue changing hearts and minds It's gonna continue changing the world. We're gonna start saying less and less proprietary software We're already saying that we're gonna start saying more and more free and open source software being made Right and again, we're already seeing that happen. So I think the future is bright Unfortunately, we're not quite where we want to be yet, but soon and before I go. I need to think a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode Devin Gabe James Matt Michael Mitchell Paul Scott West Allen armored dragon Chuck Commander and Rita Yo-kai Dylan George lead Linux ninja Maxim Mike Erion Alexander peace watch and fedora polytech great profit Stephen and Willie these guys They're my highest tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode You just watched would not have been possible The show is also brought to you by all of these ladies and gentlemen this list of names way too long for me to read out But I do sincerely appreciate every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen These are all my supporters over on patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors It's just me and you guys if you like my work I want to see more videos about Linux and friend open source software subscribe to distro tube over on patreon. All right guys peace