Fragmentation, there is so many WM, DE, Distros, package managers. This is the beauty of open source but it is also the plague.
Toxic communities, where people are thrashing you if you don’t understand sometimes the overly complicated wiki and you dare open a thread in one of the forums to seek for help.
Driver support, sometimes installing your OS requires a lot of manual configuration to make everything work ok your machine the way you want it.
The average user doesn’t give a shit about what OS they’re running. They also don’t know what tools they need. I remember a client who dropped $700 on Photoshop because “How else can I resize my photos?”
Linux is to hard for someone who doesn’t know why it’s bad to install multiple antivirus suites. People who don’t know the difference between a web browser and a search engine.
Linux will only ever be for hobbyist because they the only ones who give a damn.
The number one issue for me was games.
Like seriously, why do most developers not give a damn about their Linux playerbase?
Most likely this will become less of an issue over the comming years due to the popularity of handheld Linux based devices such as the steam deck.
Also thanks to Wine/Proton. You have to give it to Valve : overall it works surprisingly well.
It does. I am disappointed in the game studios who refuse to allow Linux players, though, such as Bungie. I’m certain that Destiny would be playable if not for their obstinacy.
I saw this in a YouTube video about some indie video game. They had a native linux port. The userbase was like 99% windows and 1% linux, but 99% of the crash reports were from linux users.
This and the “problems” with adding anti cheat software that works with linux is just too much for most to bother.
Might be because the average Linux user is way more aware of how useful a crash report can be and therefore actually submitted them. At least most Linux users I know actually read error/ crash messages and not just call someone saying there was some pop-up, I just clicked ok and the game was gone.
With proton now it is easier than ever! Right in steam. Lutris is awesome for almost all the others.
Gatekeeping and elitism
Preinstall it on cheap laptops.
It’s that
simplehard.This was sort of a thing in the brief netbook flowering
It didn’t work
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.
That’s why I crossed out the “simple” 😉
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.
The fact that we use private software for public schools is something I will never understand.
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.
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
ddcommand 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.
- This is the distro website. Click on Download.
- 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.
For Fedora, there is Fedora Media Writer. Maybe other distros can follow in its footsteps
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
Indeed. And I think more distros, like Mint, should take this approach.
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.
Whats nice about gnome is the disk util. included: select USB stick, click restore image and browse for the iso file. click OK.
Yeah but here we’re interested in how easy this is for a normie on Windows.
As somebody who likes using the terminal I too have mostly stopped using
ddand use gnome disks instead. Getting the rightddflags to get the best performance and progress indicators is a challenge to Google every time.
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
The second that you have to google the more basic things…you have lost the audience
Linux is the coolest fucking OS, hands down… If you’re a computer nerd. Otherwise it’s inconvenient at the best of times. Many users click around in their OS of choice without fully understanding what they’re doing, myself included. Try this in Linux and you’re in for a really bad time.
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
Exiting Vi/Vim 😂
To be honest, one part is what everyone mentioned here. Not being preinstalled and all that.
The other part is that unfortunately at least according to my own expirence as a Linux noob a few years ago some Linux communities can be very toxic. If you’re asking questions of how to do X and someone comes along and is all “why do you even want to do X if you could also do Y? Which is something entirely different but also does something vaguely similar”
That’s one if the things.
And then other curiosities. I cannot for example for the life of me get my main monitor to work under Linux with any new Kernel version. My Laptop just refuses to output to it or the second monitor attached via Display port daisychaining. On the older version it works, on the newer it’s broken. I have tried troubleshooting this problem for over half a year and it’s still broken. And that’s out of the Box on Ubuntu LTS…
So i don’t really understand this question. There are major roadblocks. With Wayland which is default for Ubuntu now those roadblock jist became bigger. Screensharing in multiple Apps including slack is outright broken unless you use the shitty webapp. The main player Office 365 largely doesn’t work at all on Linux. All these things that should work for a Desktop operating System don’t work out of the Box as they should.
That’s why people aren’t using it and companies aren’t preinstalling it.
Linux really isn’t ideal for anyone who isn’t already a tech enthusiast on some level. I recently did a fresh install of Kubuntu and after about a week, it prompted me that there were updates, so I clicked the notification and ran the updates, after which my BIOS could no longer detect the UEFI partition. I had to use a live usb to chroot into the system and repair it, as well as update grub, in order to fix it.
It’s fixable, but this is not something anyone who doesn’t already know what they’re doing can fix. I’ve had auto updates in the past put me on boot-loops thanks to nvidia drivers, etc.
This kind of thing needs to almost never happen for linux to be friendly for those who just want their computer to work without any technical understanding. This, honestly though, can’t happen because of the nature of distros, you can’t ever make guarantees that everything will work because every distro has slightly different packages.
Wine is getting better, but compatibility is still an issue, especially for people who rely really heavily on microsoft office or adobe products.It’s actually ideal for people who are actually not tech enthusiasts at all and do not need specific software for their job (Photoshop, audio stuff, actually NOT Ms office)
Everybody I 've seen making this argument is actually a tech enthusiast themselves and just as out of touch with the average user as a Linux “guru” and massively overestimates the non tech enthusiast user.
They are far more likely to fuck up their Windows PC (even with UAC because they don’t understand what it is) than successfullyinstall a new program on their own.
I 've borged my Nvidia drivers a few times, never via the distro auto updating. Custom kernels, trying to get newer cuda versions or something. Still better to fix than AMD drivers on windows and the whole DDU dance.
I’d say it can be, if they’re running something incredibly stable that you can guarantee won’t break on them… Which involves an amount of research and effort that most people simply won’t put in as long as what they are familiar with continues to work. Windows might have it’s fair share of issues, but at least a lot of people are already familiar with it, same w/ Mac os.
Nope. Install a distro like Ubuntu and it will not break with auto updates. Nvidia drivers included.
Much less maintenance than when they used windows.
You also overestimate the non tech enthusiast ability to use or fix issues with windows. They usually download the first program that promises to fix their issue, or increase their RAM.
I mean… that’s simply incorrect. If you read my original post, I talked about that, exactly. Twice in the last month I’ve had running updates via the “updates available” notification in Kubuntu break the system, and require chrooting into the system via a live usb to fix it. That’s without any changes or messing around with the system, on a very recent install.
When I used normal Ubuntu, there were rampant gnome shell crashes. Hardware compatibility is far from perfect, as well - case in point I’ve done clean installs of Linux Mint on computers for others in the past, only to find out that there simply aren’t working wifi drivers for the device.
Linux CAN be less maintenance, but it’s ultimately more work to actually make the jump and completely relearn how to use a computer. I’m fully aware of the capabilities on people who aren’t enthusiasts, I do tech support for my whole family all the time. My stepfather’s solution to the wifi being slow was to make more networks on the same router, it was hosting like 12 wifi networks at once. However, windows is already familiar to them. They could technically learn to use linux, but they have zero interest because if windows has an issue they’ll just call me and I’ll fix it (and that’s usually not needed because it rarely breaks on them).Well our experiences differ then. I never had any issues on vanilla Ubuntu systems. After all if there was I 'd have to be on the phone to fix it while also reminding the fam that any non specified click us a left click.
To be fair I rarely had issues with Windows myself, at least post xp. But windows do fail, especially on updates and in quite bizarre ways. I ve had to solve quite a few over the years.
