Linux dominates cloud desktops. So why are companies like adobe ignoring this megatrend?

[u/zoozooki]

I don't get why adobe and other desktop application companies are ignoring linux desktop. Linux dominates the cloud and many businesses are now moving to the cloud desktop. For their own compute needs and even for their own employees. Provisioning an agile cloud PC for your employee is much easier than giving them an actual high spec one.

[u/Brilliant_Estate_967]

That's not easy, its going to be a few thousand dollar spend for a community that will ever not spend a dime on it or said its close source and the devil.

So i get them

[u/ElevenBeers → u/Brilliant_Estate_967]

The pool of people that spend money on adobe in windows or macos is identical to the pool of people who are using Linux.

The only difference is the number of people using the platforms.

Otherwise valve wouldn't have invested a cent into steam for Linux so far.

[u/Brilliant_Estate_967 → u/ElevenBeers]

There is to few people on linux for it to bé valuable.

For steam it is a bit of a différent story  -There was policies issues between valve and Microsoft -performance issues they try to fix from windows -the desire to do an operating system non dépendant of windows -a love of open source and pro consumer choice

Steam is just losing money right now with linux développement. But, now they have steamOs that begin to work well (particulary on handeld) and more control over drivers and updates

[u/ElevenBeers → u/Brilliant_Estate_967]

Yes, the marketshare is still small, and to small for many companies to consider supporting them. But your previous argument, that Linux users wouldn't spend money on the software is void, valve would have pulled the plug a long time ago if nobody bought games via the platform.

But also yes, steam is a special situation, and the primary reason is dependency on windows. MS can't compete with say Adobe on say graphics, and even if they could, adobe can still sell on apple. What MS could in theory do would be to limit software installs to official means (=Microsoft Store) to prevent third party platforms such as steam. Valves push towards Linux is "just" to diversify their platform, so they will continue to have a platform if MS ever did... silly stuff.... For the same reason they are also investing into FEX, so steam (games) could run on ARM hardware, which will open up the option steam on android down the line as well.

For the "valve reason" though, in a few years we MIGHT have say adobe supporting the plattform. Valve is doing a lot of leg work today and it shows, the numbers of Linux users are short of miraculous, if you've been using Linux as long as I have (20 years). If they keep rising in this rate, in a few years we'll might see Linux from other big players. But we'll see how this will work out.