God i wish. And most everyone here could install a new operating system in about 20 minutes. But nobody else is going to because the learning curve for a regular user to install an os is basically perpendicular. Even if they had a linux installer already on a flash drive.
Oh just boot into the bios and find the option to boot for a flash drive and then boom installed.
Which requires a user to know, What a bios is
What booting means
What boot options mean
What the model of their flash drive is
What button on their keyboard they need to press to get to the bios
What secure boot is
Where they need to go to turn off secure boot
How and where to back up their important files
What a disk partition is
How to reverse the changes made to the bios so that it doesn’t boot to usb by default.
And that’s assuming they know why they want a different OS, why they care and that they know about Linux in the first place.
Most people dont and never will. All you can do is install Linux for the ones you like the most and say a prayer to your favorite deity for the rest.
Agreed. All those things in your list are the hardest part of modern linux, if someone gets past the UEFI, BIOS secureboot hurdle the modern GUI experiemce is superior to Windows
Most ppl can’t be bothered to install an ad blocker. Microsoft knows ppl will just take whatever they offer.
Definitely. I can genuinely say that the autotiling in PopOS completely changed my workflow for the better.
Linux distros have gotten friendlier and with better HW and SW support but PC makers and already established ecosystem have also made customizing more difficult. This means end users are increasingly discouraged to do anything that is not “authorized”, further driving away adoption of alternatives.
This is definitely the case. And by the time someone is willing to experiment with their PC its so old that the experience with Linux is hampered by the older hardware.
I’ve said this multiple times in other comments, but what would be amazing is a
linux-installer.exethat shows the normal installer wizard with non-techie, beginner, and advanced options that allows installing linux from windows and booting right into it.The ultimate goal would be for the desktop environment to have a windows theme by default, have all the alternatives installed for previously installed software with desktop icons that look the same, and all files to be where they were previously. That way you could just say “go to https://windowsupgrade.com / https://linux.install and run the installer” to anybody non-technical and have them running linux in under an hour.
It should be so simple and unassuming that people don’t even realise they installed linux. If they message back “I ran it, but I’m still on windows”, that’s a success.
That would lower the barrier to entry significantly. It doesn’t address the issues with the bios but someone mildly adventurous would have a much easier time going forward.
I think something like that would have to be sponsored by and maintained by a big distro though. I’m afraid if it was a community effort the amount of bikeshedding would stop it before it even began.
It is satisfying to see stuff like this. Thank you for sharing.
there are 400 bajilion how tos on how to install Linux. If you aren’t going to do it then you arent going to do it, enjoy your corporate mandated spyware. I think it was Ben Frankin who said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little new user ease of use, deserve neither Liberty nor ease of use” or something like that
I’ve always had some interest in learning more about switching to Linux from Windows and the news lately has made me even more so; however, I have to use Adobe apps every day for work and school, and from what I know, there’s no great compatibility solution for them in Linux, and I don’t have hardware strong enough that I feel confident that they would perform well in Wine/a VM. Not sure what a good solution for my use case would be
I was about to post this video, lmao. But this man still thinks Linux is difficult and not easy to use. When in fact its become way easier than running Windows
Linux. Linux has surpassed Windows and Mac on the Desktop usability in the last 2 years. And it just keeps getting better.Linux is easier than Linux ?
I know it was a typo but it is not wrong either lol.
Linception!
Factos 🐧
IMO Linux has had superior usability for at least 8 years.
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lol. I love Linux, but nothing is easier to use than macOS
with the help of chatgpt, this Linux noob is able to use an arch based system no problem! I even get to use better versions of every software I’ve used in the past!
Copy pasting my own comment and guide:
I сrеаtеd а whоlе guіdе 2 уеаrs аgо, Кnоwіпg ехасtly thіs would happen with their “special” “security” chips like Pluton or proprietary form of TPM, and Al NPU chips that also exist on Google Pixels, for example. I will NEVER trust Google/Apple/Microsoft hardware. I also made this guide knowing in advance about the EOL for Windows 10, which still has over one year left.
And to all the FOSS zealots going around saying use this or that favourite distro, STOP. They should be the focus, not you. Windows users need the most well community supported, LTS tier stable distro that everybody develops for as first or second preference. Ubuntu LTS with GNOME fits the bill best. This is how I selected my first distro 7 years ago when jumping from Windows 7 to Linux, and successfully mitigated my Windows usage. Now I am a Debian Stable user since last year, since I gained enough knowledge.
I think there are two major hurdles keeping Linux adoption back (besides the obvious installation bit). The first is that our backwards compatibility is terrible. It is easier to get old versions of Windows software to run in Wine than it is to get some old Linux software to run natively.
If something like Photoshop did finally release a Linux version, even if they only did one release to make 2% of people happy, it likely wouldn’t be able to run natively after 5 years.
The second is a good graphical toolkit. Yes, GTK and Qt exist, but neither are as simple as WinForms or SwiftUI/Aqua.
To allow modern windows to run legacy applications a lot of caution is given to updating libraries or fully new ones are given while keeping the older ones. Also static builds are more common on Windows, or come bundled with a copy of the required libraries as .dll files.
- Let’s say an application requires
libexample1. It works, the library is available too. - Eventually the application gets abandoned, but still works.
- But eventually a
libexample2gets released that drastically changes how the library works. The program doesn’t work on this version. The older release of the library then get’s abandoned. - Distributions now start removing the package from the repositories as the older library is slowly requiring no longer supported releases of its own dependency.
- Now application is borked
Aplication could have still worked if it came bundled with its own copy of libexample1 and of its dependencies, or was statically linked.
An example of this is Nero, a software kit for managing CD/DVD disc media. They made a build of some of their tools for Linux, meant to run on Debian 7. This builds were an experiment and got abandoned because of the very few users it had. Yet, these tools still work perfectly fine on Debian 12 despite being based on ancient libraries because it bundles all its requirements as a copy in its own proprietary blob.
I talked about caution on updating libraries on Windows. You can find many deprecated methods in any native Windows library that will likely never be removed from the library binaries, as many applications require it. The new, better and more feature rich method is given a different name instead, and is pointed out in the documentation for the older method.
Projects like FUSE are very nice for this, where an AppImave bundle of prebuilt binaries is given and can potencially not only be ran everywhere that can run FUSE but also in the future too.
Isn’t this what Flatpaks are doing?
Flatpak is definitely a possible solution. We will see how it will be managed in the future
- Let’s say an application requires
I appreciate the enthusiasm Linux fanboys have about this. But ain’t nobody but the most tech savvy would even consider it.
Linux is not consumer friendly, it typically involves putting in a shit load of effort to get working with your hardware, the ones that don’t still need a ton of work to make “Windows-like” and compatibility is always going to be an issue.
Yes, there have been a ton of strides toward this dream situation. But without financial incentive, making things user-friendly isn’t going to happen. In fact, much of the Linux community prides themselves on having a “difficult” OS.
Once Linux can, by default, have an easy to use interface, can natively run Android apps and windows applications, and can work with a huge range of hardware, it will never take off. Linux might get a few points of market share due to some business applications finding Linux a better option than updating HW and windows build, but those companies are going to struggle and will be even more dependent on their IT staff for the simplest of things.
the ones that don’t still need a ton of work to make “Windows-like”
Perhaps that’s where you’re going wrong?
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