Maybe it needs a rebranding. If people have heard of linux, they think it’s for devs, IT nerds, too complicated, etc. Most of the people just have never heard of linux because they don’t look out for it. Most people don’t know what FOSS is, etc. People just don’t know that their OS is spying on them. Chromeos is linux, it’s in every store. Linux made it. Gnu didn’t.
I found repartitioning the harddrive by far the biggest hurdle. That’s a complicated and scary process that can delete all your data if you hit the wrong button. Picking the right partition sizes is another problem, as the Windows default EFI partition for example is far too small to be used with distributions that put their kernel on there (e.g. NixOS), but there is nothing warning you about that and resizing it, is complicated since there is a Windows partition in the way. The solution already existed in the form of Wubi, which made your whole Linux installation a file on your Windows partition, but that got sadly abandoned.
Next biggest problem is the boot manager, they still suck and are far to brittle. I’d wish we got rid of boot managers as is, and instead just booted into a mini-Linux has boot manager, that could not only be used to fix bad boot configuration, but also used as full recovery system. Having a full OS as boot manager means you can update and change the whole OS without fumbling with USB sticks and stuff, you can even update or switch distributions remotely. It’s an extremely powerful setup, that as far as I know, none of the popular distributions uses.
Finally, just having stuff work. My amdgpu driver still crashes regularly. There is always some obscure crap I have to configure to make things work. And I regularly have to search the Internet to find solutions for my problems. Can we have some (opt-in) Telemetry here? A tool that can scan my hardware and error logs, tell me what I have and tell me if it works in Linux or direct me to an bug tracker with workarounds? ProtonDB for hardware, kind of. Why do I still have to do that manually?
Another big hurdle of course is just the software, even if everything runs perfectly on the Linux side, moving all your software over is always a big hurdle. Wine/Proton helps a lot, but still fiddle for stuff outside of Steam. Not really seeing any easy solution here. Something like Xen installed by default that lets you switch OSs without dual booting might work, or a VM that can boot into your actual Windows partition, but no idea if that would work well enough to solve more problems than it creates.
All that aside, the problems for new users are a bit overrated. Installing Linux is something you do once or twice, that process of course needs to work well enough to function, but it’s far more important that the OS works well once you are past that point. If the OS fails in daily use, that’s when people abandon it. Enduring a shitty installer for a weekend is not really that big of a deal in the bigger picture, if the OS you’ll end up with is actually worth it.
Little aside: Why the f’ is ‘parted’ not the command line version of ‘gparted’? As far as I know, there is no command line tool left that allows you to move and resize partitions via command line in a single UI. That functionality was ripped out of ‘parted’ years ago, so you are stuck with manually fdisk, ext2resize, etc. which is not fun at all, since they all take sizes in different units and have different UI.
You hit the nail on the head about telemetry. Every program that asks me to share crash reports I always turn it on. That’s just too useful for them to worry about some ideological puritanism about “privacy”.
The problem with telemetry is that it often happens in secret. You can never tell what it’s collecting and when it is sending it. When it happens in the open, than it can be great. Steam Hardware Surveys are a great example of this, you can see exactly what it sends and when, you can opt-out of it before it sends anything and you even get to look at the results of the survey.
That’s the kind of thing I’d love to have for Linux. Couple that with what errors are showing up in the kernel logs, what software versions people are running, and it would make it much easier to chose the right hardware for Linux.
Installing Linux is not a user problem. Most users wouldn’t be able to install windows. You will never have users easily partition a computer, especially if you want to keep data. Even most people working with computers wouldn’t be able to that!
You’re gravely misunderstanding what users need. If a computer is pre-installed and working, 90% of the problems are solved already. The actual problems are 1) to not break the system with an update, and this on two computers I updated once a year it didn’t happen for 5 years ; 2) have the softwares working
- is the big part : people will moan about not having office, but office365 is a thing and you can tell them to deal with it. Video games are the next big part, and with proton it’s almost as smooth as it could get
If a computer is pre-installed and working, 90% of the problems are solved already.
That’s a fantasy solution to a real world problem. Computers will never come with Linux preinstalled in large numbers. Even if they did, they’d come with a shitty distribution filled with adware that you’d want to reinstall anyway.
Installation of Linux on an already existing Windows system is an important problem that needs solving, and it feels like we barely made any progress there in 20 years (anybody remember umsdos?).
That ‘partitioning’ part is absolutely 100% correct😔😔😔 it’s scary for general users !
It’s tough for advanced users like me because I hardly ever need to do it. It’s not a routine task.
One of the few things I genuinely preper a GUI for because I feel I’m much less likely to make a fat-finger mistake.
It’s still software support. Yes, there are many great alternatives, but not being able to use apps like everyone and not being aplble to keep the apps you have is just too complicated for many
When’s the last time the average user has had to install an operating system?
That’s the biggest obstacle right there. I think plenty of non-techy people would use linux if it came preinstalled.
Also, if it came pre-installed, one would assume all the hardware was properly supported. A big pain point with Linux is that sometimes things just don’t work right, and there’s nobody to turn to for help except Google. It’s been a while since I attempted to run Linux on a laptop, but when I did I struggled a lot getting good battery life, good trackpad support, and a sleep mode that worked correctly.
Reputations live on for decades after they are earned. Perhaps all of my laptop problems are ancient history, but I have no way to know without trying, and it’s too much effort.
I have an example: a little whole ago I put Arch on my 2-in-1 laptop just because I prefer open-source philosophy, and although a lot of things worked out-of-the-box, my biggest problem was the actual 2-in-1 function. I know that, like Windows, I’d have to do a little digging to get it working (except Windows would involve drivers, Linux required settings) and I got a makeshift solution working: KDE has its own screen-rotating feature, and I made 2 shell commands on the desktop that, when pressed, disable/enable the keyboard/trackpad. Turns out it only works on Xorg, and Wayland requires a way more complicated setup to work, so I just gave up using Wayland on it. Something to do with udev rules or something
Three words:
Baby duck syndrome.
how it can be addressed?
Without turning Linux into “another Windows”? Well… you (kind of) can’t – Windows users are way too used with the idea of being spoonfed by the OS. And the only “real” way to address it is to tell Windows users to change their mentality and “embrace the new”.
It breaks. And I cant imagine anyone who wants to spend time fixing it, much less how long it would take tech illiterate people. Cant explain how many times ive gotten some random error downloding a package, and even ill have a hard time finding what tf the cryptic error message means
That and permissions, though they could be lumped into the first point
One thing I always talk about is how DE is much more important for new user than a distro. New users will only use GUI anyway so their choice of DE has to be the most comfortable.
Took me years personally to switch to Linux, trying stuff like Ubuntu or PopOS, and I couldn’t understand why it doesn’t “click” for me until I understood that I simply personally dislike Gnome (being an ex Windows user). Tried a KDE distro and it clicked immediately, never looked back. Now I don’t even use KDE but it helped me to get through initial frustration period.
This is very true.
I’d say its probably, among other thigs, hardware compatibility issues.
Running Linux on a mashine, most notably portable, that is somewhat recent and is not specifically built with linux in mind is, imo, almost certainly going to cause some, for the average user unfixable, issues. Things like wifi, bluetooth, audio, etc. not working due to missing or broken drivers.
The best way to fix that would be official Linux support by the OEMs, which realistically is never going to happen. Or extremely time consuming reverse-engineered community drivers.
That’s a wrong take. The issue is when you install Linux. Once installed and running, it works fine.
And users don’t install computers. So it’s not their problem. You merely need to not break you distro once it’s working. And if it’s not arch Linux it’s been a long time since I read it can break on an update.
Gatekeeping and elitism
The installation process and the fear of frying your computer can actually be a no-no for some users. (Not that it actually happened or can happen but some people are just really scared of doing this type of thing) Like the Linux experiment said : we need to have more accessible Linux hardware like we have Windows Laptops and desktops.
has there been a case of linux actually frying a PC in the past 20 years?
No fortunately lol.
Fortunately we have some and are getting more options with the framework laptops, and there are some other hardware manufacturers who have Linux compatibility as a priority
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Many comments here largely underestimate an average non linux user.
If anything, the opposite is prone to happen
Probably just hardware compatibility and me specifically NVIDIA x) once you get the kinks sorted out it’s a pretty stable experience
For me it’s always been partly about ease of use, but the biggest thing is a superficial one. I just really enjoy a beautiful UI and slick UX. In these categories Windows is deep in the trash, but the bar for me is MacOS. An OS needs to make what I’m using it for easier and nicer, not have me spending time just making it work.
I haven’t dipped my toe into the distro test pool in a few years, but every time I do I find myself spending more time sorting out the OS than just using it, and we’ll, they just haven’t been pretty to look at.
I think that’s what it comes down to, distros can be decently developed but are often severely lacking in the design department.
I’d definitely love to know if any distros out there for that sort of vibe!
Being called out as autistic
