Oh look. Yet another post demanding things from a volunteer-based community without actually volunteering their own time to work on solving the problem they’re insisting needs solving.
I’m sure these demands will totally make a difference in ways that putting their time into actually writing code wouldn’t.
I think it should be encouraged for non technical users to share their insights regarding UI/UX. People who are skilled in building applications often don’t have great skills in that area anyway. Actual UI/UX specialists are even harder to come by it seems.
The issue with this video is that it doesn’t bring in a ton of new insight. Issues regarding the variety of package management solutions are well know for example, and some distros are already solving this by having system packages and flatpaks managed by the same installer.
By that logic I should demand to get payed for testing your “free” software in real environment
And that attitude is why adoption will remain low
ROFL. Kiddo, I’ve been contributing to OSS for over two decades. The day I start caring about what non-contributors think is the day I stop writing code. Either show up with patches or STFU.
Okie dokie boomer
You’re both being silly. Ones a gatekeeper, ones a name caller
Want to know what’s wrong with Linux? The community.
There goes the Q4 profit goals of the FOSS community.
Just saying, not my experience. I have used linux for over 25 years and nontechnical users in my family have also for almost 20 years. By in large it has worked just fine.
The big issue is Linux is not the OS that is supplied when people go to the store and buy something (well except for Android and Chromebooks which are Linux and are popular). It is also not the system or have the apps their friends use. It also does not have the huge supply, support, and word of mouth ecosystem. Buying hardware especially addons is confusing. Getting support is hard unless you have friends that use. Buying Linux preinstalled often costs more. Change too is hard and there has to be some driver and for most people there is not.
The vast majority of people have no experience installing an OS and likely never will.
The typical user uses whatever is preinstalled when the get the hardware.
My father-in-law wrecked his windows pc with malware over and over so I bought him a Wow PC https://www.mywowcomputer.com/ and he loves it. I don’t think he has any idea its running linux.
How do updates work with WOW computers? Or does the software just never get updated? Or do you just update the computer for him every now and then? What distro is this using underneath?
The updates are automatic. They seem to have rolled their own desktop environment. Not sure which distro. The main selling point was that I don’t need to maintain it for him. I am registered as his “tech buddy” so they contact me if something needs to be done hands on. In 3 years no issues/calls so far.
From the website landing page :
New programs and updates are provided automatically for the life of your WOW! Computer.
From https://www.mywowcomputer.com/open-source/
Distro is based on tiny core
The source files can be found by following 3 links deep to https://www.telikin.com/source/ doesn’t look like they include their frontend though, which might be proprietary, idk.
(you lazy bastard /j)
Yeah, I was just thinking this needs a lot more upfront info. I mean, kudos for the site that harkens back to the 90’s infomercial era and keeping it comfortable for those generations, but a page with some specs and actual info would go nicely with that.
Lol only $1300
Honestly I think the bigger barrier is the BIOS. The button to get to the boot menu is different on every motherboard.
Didn’t watch the video… but the premise “The biggest barrier for the new Linux user isn’t the installer” is exactly why Microsoft is, sadly, dominating the end-user (not servers) market.
What Microsoft managed to do with OEMs is NOT to have an installer at all! People buy (or get, via their work) a computer and… use it. There is not installation step for the vast majority of people.
I’m not saying that’s good, only that strategy wise, if the single metric is adoption rate, no installer is a winning strategy.
I looked for a reasonable Linux laptop for my wife and either it was European (large shipping costs) or ridiculously marked up.
She just went with a windows laptop 🤷♀️
I bet the local Linux User Group would know. Seems too late for that purchase but worth checking for the next one.
Most people who go out and buy a computer doesn’t understand what an OS is. If Linux was standard when you bought a PC, it would be the dominating OS. I mean, you could switch the OS to Linux on the computers and I think most people wouldn’t realise when they buy it lol
Indeed, so my argument is that sure a “better” installer might change a small fraction of the marketshare, say 1%, but it’s not enough to change significantly, say 10% or even reach parity.
An interesting example is the Steam Deck coming with Linux installed. Sure there are few people who do (by choice) install Windows alongside Linux but AFAIK the vast majority do not. That’s IMHO particularly interesting on a topic, gaming, where Windows has been traditionally the #1 reason people picked a specific OS.
Doing dual install is advanced. No nontechnical user should consider it.
I think they would. I tried Linux again for the first time in 10+ years and kept running into issues like my sound would randomly die or change to headset, when I tried to update the video driver it hard- locked the system, etc. I just installed Ubuntu the other day and whenever it boots the monitor just goes into standby with no signal. It’s been nothing but trouble, and I have pretty normal hardware. Most people aren’t going to know or care how to deal with those problems. As far as Linux has come, it’s still not ready for widespread adoption by most people on the ‘it just works’ front.
TBH do you actually think that there’s some chance that nobody is testing these releases and this is happening to a massive number of people?
I’ve installed linux countless times on a SHITLOAD of computers and never faced any of these problems, realistically, you’re very unlucky, and these sorts of things happen with windows all the time too.
I’m not saying your issues don’t matter, but unless you have statistics that back you up, you can’t say “it just works” to either OS.
I’ve had more of an “It just works” experience with linux literally hundreds of times.
I actually think there’s some chance that linux has a lot of parts that were developed individually and thrown together and they don’t always work great together. I think linux still has markedly worse driver support (especially for nvidia GPUs apparently) than windows, and that in terms of just working out of the box on a wide range of hardware and use cases that windows has it beat and it’s not even that much of a contest. Yeah it can work, but it also seems to not work at least some of the time and then you don’t have repair shops, tech support, etc you can call to figure out why. The best you can hope for is to trawl through old reddit threads and hope the answer is contained within, that it applies to your distro, and that the commands and files it tells you to run and edit are in the same places with the same name, which is frankly by no means as guaranteed for linux as it is for windows. When I tell someone to go into their windows/system32 folder and find foo.dll then 99 times out of 100 there is a file called foo.dll in the windows/system32 folder that does exactly what I think it does. Linux is too varied. And that’s not a bad thing for most use cases, but it very much is for the widespread adoption use case.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate windows and would love to switch to linux full time, it’s just not working for me with some pretty bog-standard hardware on two different distros now with no indication as to even how I might go about fixing it other than ‘lol buy an AMD GPU’, so the odds are pretty good that I’m not the only person in history that that has happened for. I’ve never had problems like this on windows, I’ve never installed windows on normal hardware and had it just fail to work for no explicable reason, etc. I did IT for more than 20 years on both windows and linux computers and while I don’t have statistics I can tell you that anecdotally linux was generally more stable and had fewer problems once it was running, but that was also on servers doing (often-headless) server things, not desktops playing games or doing stuff with sound or multimedia or running general software and shit.
I think that until most people can figure out how to install linux - and I would say probably 80% of them, minimum, lack the time, patience, or technical knowledge to do so because it’s not just ‘press button, receive OS’ like windows is - and have it just work the vast majority of the time then it’s not ready for widespread adoption. Preinstalling on known hardware is a different matter and could probably work for many cases until something goes wrong though.
I’m curious what OSs and what issues you had. If you want, make a post in a Linux community and reply with the link here. I’d be keen to see where I’m at in helping others with Linux drivers since I just had some issues I resolved. I want to move my grandpa’s computer to Linux when Win10 runs out so it could be a practice opportunity.
Same issue though. If manufacturers actually had linux preinstalled, they would ensure compatibility. This isn’t a windows/Linux problem, this is a manufacturer/default os problem.
I am amazed by what you say though. I’ve had 0 hardware problems installing Linux on many different machines in the past 5 years. All the incompatibility issues of old are gone by my perspective
Even then those who have to installers don’t really have a good experience with distros of wide market share (narrowing to Linux distros only), especially with whatever fresh hell Calamares is. (It doesn’t even support LVM or just installation with specified mounts points if you already set up your partition layout!)
Seriously, I’ve had better experience with the installer Ubuntu Server uses.It does “support” LVM, but with a wacky/hacky workaround and that’s a real shame !
Also, there is some talking on github on how they will probably completely drop LVM in the near futur… That’s not what someone should expect from a Linux installer!
Also, there is some talking on github on how they will probably completely drop LVM in the near futur… That’s not what someone should expect from a Linux installer!
It’s a shitshow. Looking at their repo’s issues list has lots of noise, but the worst of them is that the LVM issue has been open for over a year now. Sure, open source, anyone’s free to work on it by why would distros use such a feature incomplete installer?
well now I understand why is suse transitioning to a different installer instead of improving it
Using LVM is advanced. No nontechnical user should consider.
Not really an “Average Windows/MacOS user will run into” issue but most power users would run into it
I don’t think that’s true. Administration tools could build on top of it, like snapshotting, which even if it does not work the best that way, it will work. and that can just run in the background, automatically, just like it does with snapper on btrfs now on some systems.
Linux definitively does dominate the end user market. You just mean the end user desktop/laptop market.
I agree though that preinstallation is the biggest deal. The fact that people have to install Linux at all is the problem. The installer itself is already 100x better than the Windows one, but that’s not enough.
Not to mention it means manufacturers ensure all the hardware is compatible, drivers etc are installed and working, which is why windows users feel it works better.
If you mean unrootable Googled Android then I don’t consider that Linux. If you mean something else please clarify.
its corporate locked down linux, but its linux alright.
So… Linux the kernel but without the freedom?
It’s the Linux kernel. Android is inarguably a flavour of Linux.
Or users could maybe learn how to do things without having their hands held and treated like babies every step of the way; or at least how to search for information to find what they need… 🤷🏻♂️
Or, maybe yo will understand when you grow up that people are good at different things.
Garuntee there’s some pretty easy things for me to do that you would get left behind trying to do, and not just on PC
Same for you. You know some things you’d blow me away doing.
Just because you don’t know what I know , and vice versa, doesn’t mean people are dumb.
Means they’ve learned different things.
search for information when Google intentionally lies to you and hides results to keep you on their site looking at ads longer …
A person can only specialize in a small number of things.
I’m happy to learn about computers, but when it comes to, say, cars, I have no desire to learn. If I have a car problem, I don’t have the knowledge of how to even look up a problem.
In today world, you don’t need to specialize in something to fix basic issues. Simple online search will help you with most basic issues You encounter which is probably 60-70% issues most people have with cars, computers or etc.
I don’t blame people that they can’t recompile a kernel, applying a patch to fix some random issue. But I blame people that didn’t want to spend 30s on searching how to fix their minor issue like for example checking execute permission for appimage, Search engines today even tell you how to do it in a small AI window on top of the page.
Internet really helped people to gain a basic knowledge in a matter of seconds and yet they still don’t want it
Just built a new PC literally this weekend. WiFi mouse and Bluetooth drivers did not work out of the box. I had to spend hours searching through what little info exists out there tangentially related to my problem to find:
WiFi drivers were fixed in kernel 6.10, which fortunately Mint let’s you upgrade to 6.11 at this time with relative ease.
Bluetooth drivers do not appear to have been fixed, but I might have a shot if I switch over to a rolling release distro and relearn everything I’m used to from using Debian-based distros for years. Dongle is on order, but I don’t love having to have 2 bluetooth devices.
It’s unclear if mouse drivers have been fixed in the kernel, but I was able to find a nice set of drivers/controller on github which fixed some mouse problems but only if i used their experimental branch and it did not work with my wireless adapter. Very fortunately I had an old wireless adapter from a mouse from the same brand that was able to close the loop, but that was just dumb luck.
By EOD today I should have everything I want working, but it wasn’t “30s” of searching - to your point, 60-70% of problems may be solvable that way, but having 1/3 of your problems require technical expertise is not going to bring Linux out of the hobbyist domain.
Note: this is not a complaint against Linux, just a statement of fact. These things have gotten a lot better over the years, and things get easier to find as the community grows and these struggles get discussed more openly, but there’s still lots of challenges out there that take more than a 30s search.
They could. But you and I both know they won’t because most people don’t care about anything beyond ‘make the magic box work so I can do my job / play my game / etc.’
Yeah I love linux, but it’s user experience , while light years ahead of what I used in the late nineties and early aughts, is still clunky compared to others.
That being said, honestly most of linux’s issues are GUI related, when it comes to going mainstream. The capabilities and efficiency are far ahead of windows and mac os but most users don’t care.
Directions, examples and mundane work should all be seamless for mainstream consumers.
A good rule of thumb is, " if a user has to look for it to fix it, or open a terminal window to install software, then it won’t be accepted fully.
Mainstream users don’t want to type commands in a prompt. Why does everyone think windows blew DOS out of the water in sales? It wasn’t because DOS wasn’t working. It was, hell early windows ( I started on 3.11 so that’s my limit of knowledge ) still used DOS.
So bottom line. Start putting the non tech consumer first or we’ll forever be stuck in this “almost mainstream” category forever.
I don’t see them as mutually exclusive - can’t Linux be user friendly for the non-techie while also offering a techie lots of flexibility and command-line joy? 🤷♂️
Idk mainstream users should learn to learn and empower themselves with knowledge.
The enshitification of hardware and software by constantly catering to the dumbest of people is hurting everybody.
This exactly.
I enjoy the level of control I have on my Linux machine but I spend about 40% of my time in CLI.
I recently had to troubleshoot a windows machine, and the lack of control was frustrating but every step for that problem was GUI-centric. Everyday people don’t want to remember commands so they can set up their browser and word processor. They want (to them) simple and straightforward.
To us it’s a low bar, and most of us are from the generations that dreamt of a predominantly tech-literate society, but that’s not reality. We have to meet them where they are, and if they want to learn beyond that then we welcome them in.
Super glad you understand my point. it honestly is the one thing holding us back I believe
is still clunky compared to others.
Wut?
So bottom line. Start putting the non tech consumer first or we’ll forever be stuck in this “almost mainstream” category forever.
I’m okay with that.
“Mainstream” users are getting stupider. Even Windows is to difficult for them. They want the Apple walled garden with a subscription plan for their devices and no permissions to do anything that a corporation doesn’t want you to do.
Fuck. That.
So. We just encourage ignorance and security threats so we… can… be … better than them? I don’t think that’s the healthiest outlook …
What we really need is to improve the technical literacy (and overall education too) of the general public. That will help towards solving many other issues as well.
By all means, Linux’s UX should be improved as long as it doesn’t come at the cost of freedom or functionality, but we need to improve as people too.
Wut?
Are seriously that obtuse.? Why would Anyone think any better of your conversation when that is the level of discourse you bring?
"Wut? " What a classic symptom of the dumbing down of society, but you go ahead and keep feeling superior
“Wut”. Way to make yourself look less than literate.
In any case I’m done with this. Have a good day
