So I’m building a new computer before the end of the year and lemmy is obviously pushing me towards Linux.
I am not computer savvy, I have a family member that will help me set up my PC, but I do not want to be calling/messaging them every day when I want to open a program.
Basically my question comes down to: can I operate a Linux PC these days without needing to troubleshoot or type code.
I use my computer about once a week for a few hours I would say, so any time spent troubleshooting is time wasted.
Thanks!
EDIT: since a lot of people are asking what programs I typically use, I’ll just list my most used programs.
Word, Excel, ect(I’m fine with alternatives)
Spotify
Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I’m glad it’s supported)
Brave browser (browser is a browser)
Steam
Discord
I would say that while I could figure out how the kernels work, I’m at a point with computers these days where I don’t have the time. My priorities fall with a seamless daily experience. If I have the time to figure something out I can, but ideally my day to day usage being unbotherd is what I’m after.
A lot of the comments so far have been helpful! I’m definitely going to give Linux a fair shot with my new build, probably start with Mint.
Linux Mint LMDE is always my recommendation to friends & fam who are leaving Win & Mac environments. LMDE bc ease of use/install & stability.
Slight learning curve, but that goes with anything new to a person when it comes to tech. Linux Mint forums are also legit for quick answers.
Good luck regardless of what you choose! Don’t let the negative feedback get you down! 🍀
-sent from an old MacBook running LMDE
I’ve been curious about LMDE, I use the Xfce version of regular Mint, but am comfortable in Debian (at least, server Debian). How does LMDE compare?
They’re both great starters, imo! Xfce or LMDE is a solid choice for Linux beginners.
Xfce was a little too minimal for me & iirc it’s canonical-based. I chose lmde specifically bc I prefer Debian. I can’t recall if I had any major issues setting up either of them. I think it also just comes down to visual/aesthetic preferences. They’re both highly customizable so either way you’re good!
I’m gonna set up xfce for my dad on an old Dell desktop & i’m sure he’ll appreciate how close it is to windows right out of the box. 📦
I specifically like Xfce or LxQt, because I generally run older hardware; I suppose my biggest question is how easily I could use either (not overly picky about which). I’m not sure which desktop environment LMDE defaults to, but both Gnome and KDE are deal-breakers for me, unless it’s easily changeable.
I don’t have that problem on my actual Debian machines, because they’re headless anyways, there is no desktop environment at all
Ooh, I gotcha! LMDE doesn’t default to gnome or kde. LMDE installs w cinnamon.
Not sure I’ve seen much of lxqt. Will def give that a once over our if curiosity!
LxQt is nice, it is barebones like Xfce, but built on the Qt framework like KDE. Xfce uses GTK, like GNOME.
Simple Answer: No
The moment you need to think about what distribution you need to choose from is where it’ll stop any (dumb)user. Most people want a simple process with very little thinking.
If you are interested in learning linux and willing to take the time to understand the entire process that comes with it then yes.
I wonder how these people function in a supermarket
People learn how to do that while growing up. The same doesn’t apply to software, people usually choose what they know.
It’s the same process as choosing which loaf of bread you like, or which car. You try a few out and decide which one you like. It’s not hard.
No, it absolutely is hard, and those are bad comparisons. Growing up you interact with bread and cars, and you build a preference based on what you’re taught and what you experience. If I go into a new store and see a dozen types of bread I’ve never eaten, I can still make inferences about their taste, texture etc. This is not the case with Linux distributions - if I’ve never used Linux before, I literally don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
And it’s absolutely unrealistic to expect your average person to try a few out. They won’t be able to decide on technical grounds, and they’ll have to use the distribution for some time to build enough experience for a preference. Going back to your car example, it’s like suggesting people buy a few cars and decide which one they like (since they don’t have the experience to make judgements based on short test drives) - you’re asking them to invest a lot of time for something they don’t really need or want.
I disagree with you, I happen to think that the average person is intelligent enough to make an informed decision about their computing. They just have to forgo the learned helplessness that Microsoft and Apple have fostered since the early nineties.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone who is dissatisfied to try a few out. Let’s be clear here, if you’re satisfied, then you’re not going to even think about moving but more and more people are becoming dissatisfied, you can tell by the number of people on Reddit (yes I still lurk Reddit) asking about switching. Also, unless you’re really a geek, it isn’t going to be close to a technical decision - it will be purely gut-feel. I like this one, I don’t like that one.
You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding my point, as I didn’t mention the average person’s intelligence in any way. All I’m saying is that minimizing the effort required to really try multiple distributions is a terrible way of introducing people to Linux. It will only lead to frustration and rejection. Choosing your bread doesn’t require investing dozens of hours.
Simply put, I need to buy groceries.
It’s not that I will have issues learning or researching, it is that I don’t have the time too.
If the barrier to using Linux is needing to spend time troubleshooting and researching to do simple tasks, I just won’t.
So far this thread has been very enlightening to me, I’m excited to try something new. But my OS is not my hobby.
There’s certainly a learning curve as it’s a completely different OS. That’s going to take time for sure. The problem is that people are so used to Windows or Mac that they forget they had the same learning curve when they started with whichever one they’re using.
Those are decisions about things everyone already understands, choosing a distro for a new user is like deciding what your favourite photo is from a blurry, black and white album
It’s more like buying a car. Try a few out and settle on the one you like. You can even try them out online at distrosea
Problem is buying a car most of the different brands are quite different, there are so many distros that are just Ubuntu underneath that are basically identical with a different desktop
What do you typically use your computer for? That’s going to have a major impact. If it’s pretty basic stuff (web browsing, text editing, etc) you shouldn’t have any issue. If it’s something that’s more complicated or unusual, then sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes not, depending on what you want to do. In general, a little bit of comfort searching the web and working in the command line helps a lot with troubleshooting Linux
A test could be to start by using Libre software on Windows.
Switch to LibbreOffice or some other alternative instead of Word. Gimp, Inkscape, and Krita for graphical stuff. Whatever proprietary software you use, check if it exists for Linux; if not, see if you can find an alternative you’re happy with.
For the people I know, Word is the biggest deal breaker.
If you mean “dumb friendly” by “An exact Windows clone”… there are plenty of “Windowslike” Linux distros out there.
If you mean “user friendly” by “Easy to understand by any user”… then yes, (any) Linux distro is user friendly as is.
Yes it is. Pick a newbie friendly distribution. Say Ubuntu.
IMHO Windows is only “user friendly” because it’s preinstalled on most PC’s.
User friendliness comes with experience.
Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon is a pretty painless transition.
I guess uBlues main images are. I use Fedora Atomic Kinoite, which is not ready at all.
I assume you’re talking about Desktop Environments. Yes, of course. KDE and Gnome rival MacOS as far as usability goes. The better part is that other software development groups port their software over to Linux as well and make it as seamless as possible.
People run into confusion here when people flood the comments on user questions like this, so let me shut that down right now.
If you need something that is a straight Desktop Environment, get a distro with KDE or Gnome, and a known OS that will have a lot of user base getting questions and answers if you even run into any.
Fedora or Ubuntu. Don’t listen to anyone arguing for their preferred favorites.
Don’t listen to performance comments.
You want a solid, no issues, not needing to look for help kind of distro. It’s those two, no question, and they both have KDE and Gnome variants.
That’s really about it.
Fully agree with this. There will be a slight learning curve since it will be different from what your used to, but it’s friendly enough to figure out.
If you know the windows program you want to use just search something like “Linux alternative for x” (sometimes there is specific KDE or Gnome progs)
I would maybe add Linux Mint to that list, but otherwise you’re spot on. Fedora and Ubuntu are the easiest and most robust systems for novice computer users.
Linux Mint is Ubuntu with specific changes.
That’s how all distros work. They exist so that you don’t have to make changes yourself.
Depends. If someone is gaming with new hardware, don’t use a distro that doesn’t update the kernel quickly and regularly.
Almost every problem with hardware on mint is solved by going through the process of updating the kernel or switching to a distro with up to date libraries.
It’s fine for a lot of people, but it doesn’t “just work” outside of the use case of only browsing the internet and word documents.
This is coming from someone who used mint for 4 years. There was about a dozen times where the software on the software center was so out of date that it simply didn’t work and I had to resort often to using random ppa’s which often broke other things. Definitely not user friendly.
That being said, Cinnamon is probably one of the most user friendly DEs for people switching from window. It is very nice.
Fair points. I’ve only ever taken Mint for a quick spin and that was a decade ago. I just see it constantly recommended as one of the most user-friendly distros, thus the maybe recommendation.
Personally, I’m all in on Fedora Atomic for my hosts and (mostly) Arch in my containers.
Only thing I might add would be potentially Bluefin. It is Fedora with Gnome, except Atomic. It markets itself as:
The best of both worlds: the reliability and ease of use of a Chromebook, with the power of a GNOME desktop.
It’s been fantastic for me with automatic updates and everything installed through flathub so you don’t bork your system with any misconfigured installs.
No. This is your own spin.
Why the fuck can’t y’all just let people have it easy and try shit out before you feel you MUST say your piece about your own fucking experience and offer complicated alternatives?
Fedora and Ubuntu for beginners. That’s it. Nobody’s asking for performance or immutable bullshit until you confused them with it. STFU!
Well this is literally Fedora, and I offered it for consideration, not a recommendation. This seems a tad hostile.
*Immutable. Get lost.
deleted by creator
Also: should you wish for something with Fedora literally in the name, Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kionite are the upstream—published by the Fedora Project—versions of Bluefin that use GNOME and KDE, respectively.
Either could be an excellent choice should you wish for
Atomic
The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
I had a friend who was about as computer illiterate as they come, they had a crappy gateway laptop(netbook maybe) that had kubuntu on it they preferred it to when they had win vista(yes this was forever ago, i replaced vista with kubuntu because it was lighter than gnome at the time) they loved the kde interface and most of what they did was Myspace Tumblr and Facebook, but even they managed to figure out play on Linux and wine after a few months
Most operating systems these days are just micro-kernels to run the actual operating system, your browser. Most users will be perfectly happy using whatever in most cases as long as you can get one of the major browsers on it.
If they have special requirements, then you need to figure them out first.
Yes. If you want something easy, look at:
- Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
- Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
- Spiral Linux (Debian, easy to set up, rock solid)
- Aurora (Fedora Atomic based, hard to break, automatic updates)
Never heard of Spiral, and I’ve heard of a lot of distros, so I’d steer clear of projects like it, that are new and/or niche, as there will be lower reliability and support available. Aurora is also pretty new, but it (and Fedora Atomic, and uBlue in general) has a strong community, so I’m more likely to trust them.
PopOS and Linux Mint get a thumbs up from me.
Spiral is to Debian as Endeavor is to Arch. It’s a painless way to get Debian (bookworm) set up.
Everyone is saying yes.
They are wrong.
You will absolutely have to troubleshoot in order to figure out how to do what you want to do.
Linux is different than windows or macos and you’re gonna have to gain an understanding (however dumbed down you might describe it) of those differences in order to use the computer.
If you can get over that hump of understanding then I think you’ll be fine.
Dude, your wrong. Not what OP was asking about.
Desktop light usage only. DFQOH and don’t come back.
DFQOH
I can’t work out what this an acronym for. Please help!
They are wrong.
The sad truth. Enough said. Linux is still not there, as much as we’d like to pretend it is. And it’s especially not there for dumb users.
Another dumb user here Been using Arch for a year now, things just works without much tinkering… mostly
If you’re ok Arch I guess it at least signals a willingness to learn! I would never dare to go there haha.
Dumb user here. I completely disagree with this.
I was using Ubuntu for a few years, now I’m on Fedora. I don’t really know how to do anything. For my needs it’s just very easy.
Maybe my needs just aren’t sophisticated enough for me to encounter all those problems I’m supposed to be having. But I’ve been using it for years and my experience is that it really just works.
While there’s a little bit of getting acclimated to slightly different programs for the same tasks, I kind of imagine sophisticated needs primarily comes down to hardware. A company making some sort of computer hardware doohickey might design and test and provide support for something with Windows/Mac in mind, and maybe for other operating systems they’re not cooperative with documenting support, under the mindset that it would reveal trade secrets or decrease shareholder value in some other way. Linux support then comes from other means like reverse engineering. This could mean that it will take time before all the kinks are ironed out, or if the product was short-lived the linux community might not care enough to have someone volunteer to keep up with support. Common, time-tested hardware will have good support. Plugging in some old printer that was discontinued shortly after launch will be more of a crapshoot.
Yeah. I’ve double checked that my last few laptops worked well with Linux before buying them. But I don’t buy very flashy technology, so it was never really any question.
My printer is from Brother, and it’s just plug and play. At work it’s all web print and has been since I started working for pay, really.
I’m just speculating on reasons behind why people might feel it’s still not user-friendly. It was a pretty easy transition for me too, and that was years ago.
Yeah, I think you’re right, and I think that’s exactly why it’s a blind spot for me.
On several occasions I’ve also lent an old laptop to friends when theirs broke, and all of them ended up using Linux for months no questions asked. They later went back to Windows because of the Word grammar check, but other than that it just worked for them.
But of course, if you can’t get your drivers to work it’ll be a completely different experience.
I consider myself a reasonably tech literate user and tried to set up dual boot on my pc using a whole separate ssd just for Linux to be safe. Installing it went fine but GRUB wouldn’t let me boot into windows, somehow the instalation nuked my windows boot partition and no amount of repairing would work, I had to completely reinstall Windows and now I’m seriously worried of trying Linux again.
That sucks. I’ve done that a lot of times by either not understanding what I was doing or fat fingering some decision.
If you do decide to try again, tag me and I’ll set up a vm environment similar to yours and walk you through any confusing steps.
So you are saying that dumbs can’t read? Because hey, that is all it takes to troubleshoot a problem on linux.
Thus, even your grandmother can “do google” nowadays.
I’ve got to agree with this. I love Linux and have run it on my servers for years. That said, I’ve got Mint on my laptop and tried to print an image over wifi at a friend’s place and could not for the life of me get it to print properly.
For the most part things do just work, but there are a lot more “obscure” scenarios that are handled correctly in windows but not Linux.
I also find that when things go wrong on Linux, they are harder to fix. I’ve had several times I’ve had to deal with circular dependency hell to get something to install properly. I did eventually get those problems resolved, but it was often a single person having a tangential problem that hinted me to how to solve it.
Edit: I think if your usage patterns are straight forward enough, it is by far and away the better choice. If you do the same stuff all the time, it’ll pretty much never break, which is not something I could say about windows. So for OP, it sounds like it would be a good fit.
If you pick a new user-friendly distro, nine times out of ten it’ll run like a dream out of the box.
If you want to change something minor like a desktop background, you might need to search through menus for the settings or ask for advice.
If you want to install new hardware, like swapping in a new video card, you’ll definitely need some assistance.
Yes. Linux Mint works “straight out of the box”.
It comes with a preinstalled browser (Firefox), so if you only use your computer for online stuff, then you dont need to do anything at all. Just use it.
The only technical thing you might want to do is to enter the WiFi password and find the software manager to install any additional apps you need.If you can install apps on your phone, then you can also install apps on Linux Mint.
I actually found that it was a lot easier to install Mint than setting up a new Windows pc. The most difficult part was using a windows pc to download it and making a bootable USB stick. Your friend can help you with that or you can follow a guide.
I have had zero issues and I have never written a single command line. It just works.
No more tricky than windows these days. Nice thing is there’s a lack of commercial BS - spyware, ads, unwanted apps etc. And pretty much no matter how old your computer gets, you can still run brand new linux on it.
