• xyguy@startrek.website
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      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

      • demizerone@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Most ppl can’t be bothered to install an ad blocker. Microsoft knows ppl will just take whatever they offer.

      • xyguy@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        Definitely. I can genuinely say that the autotiling in PopOS completely changed my workflow for the better.

    • pentagrammar@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • xyguy@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        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.

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      I’ve said this multiple times in other comments, but what would be amazing is a linux-installer.exe that 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.

      Anti Commercial-AI license

      • xyguy@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        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.