I don't know how anyone can say that Star Wars has more lore than Star Trek. They both have about the same number of movies and books, but Star Trek has hundreds more episodes of TV to expand the lore even further.
I could never be a wizard. Mess up code, get some error messages. Mess up a spell, get turned into a pile of goo, slaughtered by a demon, or transported to a hell dimension.
I recently gave up on daily driving Pop OS. About 6 months ago I got a new laptop with Windows 11, which for various reasons I am not a fan of. I decided it would be a good time to try an experiment and install Linux. The biggest issue right off the bat was lack of hardware support, the fingerprint reader and the speaker amp are not supported. I spent a bunch of time researching and seeing if I could make them work but apparently it has to do with the kernel and isn’t really something I can fix. This didn’t seem like a big deal at first because I can get sound out of the headphone jack or via bluetooth, and while it was convenient to login via a fingerprint reader, it wasn’t something I really felt like I needed. Since then I’ve become much more reliant on biometric authentication, it’s just so much more convenient to be able to auth bitwarden with my finger instead of having to type in a password. More recently, I started using Proton VPN and the client is pretty crap in Linux. Switching over to Windows 11, I can login with my finger, all of my passwords are a finger print away, Proton VPN works natively with wireguard and is generally much more reliable and easier to use. It’s just a much better user experience, there’s nothing weird and janky to deal with, I don’t need to mess about in the command line to do basic things. I really loved Pop, and I’m sure I’ll boot back into it, but I’m daily driving Windows 11 until I can sort out the hardware issues and get Proton VPN working better, and I think both of those issues are out of my hands so all I can do is wait.
Off the top of my head things that Ive run into over the years that would have caused 99% of computer users to throw Linux in the bin:
*Having to edit xorg.conf to set the graphics driver
*A typo in the sources list that prevented any packages from downloading (distro upgrade)
*A bug in systemd that resulted in the OS not booting (fresh install)
*The wrong graphics card driver being selected and not being installed correctly because Ubuntu kept back 5 packages necessary for it to function (fresh install)
*A bug in how Ubuntu handles the disk platter that causes hard drives to fail far more rapidly than they should (that bug has been there for years and probably ruined a few hard drives)
*Having to recompile the wifi driver after every upgrade (broadcomm chipset) before the driver was included in the kernel and having to reinstall the OS after the driver was included in the kernel because something went wrong during the upgrade. ie recompiling didnt fix anything and the native driver wasnt working either.
*failed drive encryption
*grub being installed incorrectly (no boot)
*dealing with UEFI to maintain a dual boot for programs that cannot be emulated or virtualized effectively (lag sensitive non-native games)
*Audio output defaults being incorrect (no sound, no mic)
But the one thing that above all else, will drive newbies away is how the general linux community tends to respond to things.
The misconception that you need to “know linux” to use a computer with linux.
You need to “know linux” to administer linux servers, or contribute to kernel development. My wife is a retired pharmacist, and she uses exclusively a computer with Linux since around 2008. She knows that’s Linux, because I told her so. If I had told her it was a different version of Windows, she’d be using it anyway - she was using win95 at work before, so any current windows would have been a big change anyway (granted, nothing like gnome, that’s why I gave her kubuntu).
This misconception is fed by “experienced” Linux users who like to be seen as “hackers” just because they “know Linux”.
Nobody uses the OS. You use programs that run on the OS. My wife doesn’t “use Linux”. She uses Chrome, the file manager (whatever that is in the ancient LTS Kubuntu release I have there and update only when LTS is over), LibreOffice Writer and Calc, a pdf reader (not adobe’s, whatever was in the distro), the HP scanner app. The closest she gets to “Linux” is occasionally accepting the popup asking for updates.
Users shouldn’t need to care about which OS (or which distro, for that matters) they’re running their apps on. The OS (and distro) should be as unobtrusive and transparent as possible.
Distro hopping cult. It’s ok to try a few distros when adopting Linux, or even flirt with new ones after you’ve already settled with one. Even keep doing it forever, on a secondary machine or live usbs, if you’re curious.
Doing it forever, on a primary machine is stupid; NO FSCK DISTRO WILL BE PERFECT. Windows users whine and cry every time Microsoft shoves a new and worse Windows version up their SSDs, but they stick with Windows anyway.
Distro hoppers hop often because they give up at the first inconvenience. They never feel at home or make it their home, because they never actually use their computers for long enough with any distro. They are more focused on the OS than in using the computer. Nothing wrong with that, but they’ll forever be “linux explorers”, not actual “linux users”.
There will always be some other that has that small thing that doesn’t come default on this one. There will always be compromises. It’s like marriage. Commit, negotiate, adapt. Settle down ffs.
The OS/distro shouldn’t be important for the average user; the OS/distro shouldn’t get in the way between the user and the apps, which is what the user uses.
Of course there are distros with specific usage in mind (pen test, gaming, video production, etc), as they conveniently have all main utilities packaged and integrated. But for real average user apps, the OS shouldn’t matter to the end user, let alone look like the user should know what window manager or packaging system they’re using.
Then when they are faced with dozens of “experts” discussing about which distro has the edge over the other, and the gory technical details of why, and comparing number of distros hopped, well, it sounds like Linux is a goal by itself, when all they wanted was to watch YouTube and access their messages and social media.
When my wife started using a Linux computer I didn’t tell her which distro was there (she probably knows the name kubuntu because it shows during boot). I didn’t give her a lecture about Gnome vs KDE, rpm vs deb, or the thousands of customizations she could have now. “You log in here, here’s the app menu, here’s chrome, this is the file manager, here’s the printer app”. Done, linux user since 2008.
Linux will never be mainstream while we make it look like “using Linux”, or “this distro”, matters, and that is an objective in itself. Most users don’t care. They want to use their apps.
This. You dont have to be a linux guru if you want to use Ubuntu or Mint. I’m not generalising, but in many linux user groups, there is a lot gatekeeping taking place, even when a new user asks a genuine question and provides all the necessary information.
But it could do. I bought a mainstream laptop from a European big-box retailer 17 years ago which came without Windows installed and nothing but a Knoppix CD. It all worked great out of the box. It would work greater still today.
The corporate monopoly in OS software is just as outrageous as the one in browser software. It’s time for Brussels to step in.
This is harder than it first appears. Microsoft actually subsidizes vendors for selling machines with Windows installed. So these cheap laptops would actually be a bit more expensive without the Windows installation.
There is a perception of Linux as this hacker, terminal-only OS with a million equal choices and no direction or guides. This is not a true view or at least this is hyperbolic/based on Linux from 15 years ago. It is a stigma that Linux has. Every distro these days has to market itself as “We’re the out-of-the-box distro” which is just silly. Out-of-the-box is meaningless. Even Windows users modify their OS in certain ways. However, it breaks the stigma.
Linux adoption just needs more time. Most of the big issues for adoption have been solved in the past few years, and Linux is ready and knowledge of Linux and removal of the stigma is growing.
Linux should be teach at school instead of windows. Most people assume Linux is harder only because they are not used to it. Once you get accustomed you realize that it’s even easier, for example in popular distros with package manager opening a terminal and write a 3 words command followed by the name of software, as hard as it may sound, it’s much easier and fast than using google to download shady .exe files that needs to be installed manually.
Also people really needs to stop being lazy. You don’t jump into a car and drive it if you don’t know how to do it. If you are not down to spend 2 hours of your life learning how to use a machine you use daily you really should change mindset.
It’s the first step of installation, making a bootable usb/CD. Most non-technical people can’t be arsed to create a bootable drive, then go into the bios boot settings to run it. I haven’t used Windows in a long time so I don’t know how it’s installed these days, but the fact that it comes installed out-of-the-box when people buy a computer lets them skip the first and biggest step to running linux, which is getting it installed in the first place.
Distros have come a long way that a Windows user trying Linux Mint can hit the ground running. It’s no longer about the learning curve for USING linux, it’s INSTALLING linux that’s the problem.
Exactly. I’d argue that some supposedly mainstream distros are hard to install even for the competent. Last time I checked, Debian’s funnel for newbies consisted of a 90s-era website with “instructions” in the form of a rambling block of jargon-filled text with mentions of “CD-Roms” and a vague discussion of third-party apps for burning ISOs. I mean, on Linux flashing a USB stick is matter of a single dd command with some obscure switches, but even that was nowhere to be found and I had to search forums for it. Incredible! Hard to imagine how forbidding it must all seem to the average Windows user! No Debian for them!
IIRC Ubuntu’s process was much easier but still not as easy-peasy as it could have been.
The only hope for desktop Linux is a crystal-clear, bulletproof, 1-2-3-style onboarding funnel that takes the user from “this is the distro’s website” to “I have a bootable USB”. From that point on it’s plain sailing.
As somebody who likes using the terminal I too have mostly stopped using dd and use gnome disks instead. Getting the rightdd flags to get the best performance and progress indicators is a challenge to Google every time.
Install Balena Etcher. This is the website. Now install it.
Open Balena Etcher. Follow instructions on screen. Make sure you select the corrent iso file and the correct device (your USB of choice). Wait for the magic to happen… you have a bootable USB
Did not know Balena Etcher. Looks good - 1, 2, 3, professional-looking site.
But IMO even this is too involved. After all, by comparison, installing Windows is “Step 1. It’s done!”
Let’s say I know nothing about, say, Ubuntu, except that a techie friend told me to “have a go, it’s easy!” Well, personally I am going to want Ubuntu to do everything. I should not need to download stuff from random third-party sites that my friend never mentioned.
Basically, IMO there needs to be a FOSS clone of this Balena Etcher tool, which all the distros can rebrand and reskin as necessary. Then step 1 of “Install” is a native experience, just it is on the corporate OSes.
Maybe one of the slicker distros already does it, perhaps Pop_OS. If so, they deserve all the new users.
Indeed. I just checked and IMO Fedora is doing it exactly right: a big button “Get started” with the Media Writer as step 1. Now this is Linux for dummies! Meanwhile on the supposed dummy distro Ubuntu.com, you get “Follow this tutorial” and a stodgy bunch of howtos. And Debian all but screams “go away if you’re not a nerd” 😭
A long time ago, Ubuntu actually had a interesting way to install Ubuntu on your PC through Windows. It was called “Wubi” if I remember right.
It was definitely… Odd in how it worked. I believe it created a Windows virtual disk image, stored that image on your Windows filesystem, and then added an entry into the Windows Boot Loader to somehow boot into that. On first boot, it was like Windows where it asked you to create an account and then boom - all done.
And if you no longer wanted Ubuntu, you could just literally uninstall it from the Windows “Add or Remove Programs” menu and it’d remove the boot loader entry, and delete the virtual disk image.
Super super new user friendly. Unfortunately I think the reason why it was discontinued was there was an I/O performance cost from running it in a virtual image - and of course just as it sounds, it was a hacky way to do things. And of course, you couldn’t get rid of Windows because Ubuntu was living inside it.
Reminds me of how nowadays I believe Asahi Linux for M1 PCs is installed from within macOS - you don’t need to create a boot USB and load it at startup.
Ha! Amazing, had no idea. Maybe that explains Ubuntu’s early success. But yeah, in the grand strategy, better not to settle for being a Windows .exe app
Yeah, it took me way too long to get Debian running on my pc, because for some reason the website assumed that everyone would have a Linux to install Debain with. I haven’t had that, and that one tool they had didn’t work.
This is exactly what I never get. Do they not know that when you buy a new computer it tends to have Windows and only Windows on it?! I can’t help concluding that the people who run Debian must be bearded nerds who live in PC-filled basements and assume that all their users are the same.
@JubilantJaguar@Flemmbrav
For me, as long as the distro comes with with GUI of some sort, I am ok. The main issues with Linux installs, for me, is usually my wifi driver, but where there is a will, there is a way.
lemmy.ml
Oldest