Let’s say just like for example like MacOS. It’s awesome we have so many tools but at the same time lack of some kind of standardization can seem like nothing works and you get overwhelmed. I’m asking for people that want to support Linux or not so tech-savy people.
Look at the Steam Deck as an example:
- Linux is preinstalled
- Integrated hardware and software
- Immutable OS that is very hard to bork
- UI is Windows-like which is familiar to the target market
- Good value for the price
- Offered by a well-known and well-liked brand
- Marketed and advertised to the target market
We need more Linux devices like this to gain market share.
You got it. The moment you surface the idea that there are multiple distros or DEs you’ve missed the goal the thread is suggesting. Presintalled, customized software built for the hardware is the way to ease people in with zero tweaking, which is crucial for newcomers.
I think this was Steve Jobs’ primary skill. He could see a clear vision of the product people didn’t know they wanted. Bottom to top, from the hardware to run on, to the typeface their apps used; he knew that the best user experiences happened when every level of the stack harmonized to create a very finely tuned user experience.
Unfortunately, the people who are that good usually don’t work for free. We’re very fortunate that Valve is choosing to open source their work and keep their SteamDeck platform an open one.
He shipped enough clunkers (and terrible design decisions) that I never bought the mythification of Jobs.
In any case, the Deck is a different beast. For one, it’s the second attempt. Remember Steam Machines? But also, it’s very much an iteration on pre-existing products where its biggest asset is pushing having an endless budget and first party control of the platform to use scale for a pricing advantage.
It does prove that the system itself is not the problem, in case we hadn’t picked up on that with Android and ChromeOS. The issue is having a do-everything free system where some of the do-everything requires you to intervene. That’s not how most people use Windows (or Android, or ChromeOS), and it’s definitely not how you use any part of SteamOS unless you want to tinker past the official support, either. That’s the big lesson, I think. Valve isn’t even trying to push Linux, beyond their Microsoft blood feud. As with Google, it’s just a convenient stepping stone in their product design.
What the mainline Linux developer community can learn from it, IMO, is that for onboarding coupling the software and hardware very closely is important and Linux should find a way to do that on more product categories, even if it is by partnering with manufacturers that won’t do it themselves.
System76 is doing that these days. They put extra hardware support for their Linux distro TuxedoOS and I’ve heard good things.
Edit: System76 make PopOS and Tuxedo computers make TuxedoOS
I think you meant Pop!_OS (is developed by System76). TuxedoOS is developed by Tuxedo Computers, which is a European Linux focused hardware company.
That said, the point stands… there are hardware companies making Linux supported devices.
Sorry, I mixed those up. Thanks for the correction
Underlying kernel aside, I think that the Steamdeck’s SteamOS is an excellent example of how “easy to use” != “smaller feature-set”. I’ve heard countless times from apple dudes that the reason that their stuff allegedly “just works” is because of the lack of some functionally that if present would overwhelm the user. You know, as if ios and android don’t share fundamentally the same user interface principles. But they do have a point, a green user can be overwhelmed when presented with a huge feature set all at once. Yet, despite SteamOS literally having a full-blown desktop environment, the UI frankly is way less confusing than my Xbox. It just goes to show that it’s not about the number of features, it’s about how they’re presented. Power users don’t mind digging into a (well designed) settings menu to enable some advanced functionality, and keeping those advanced features and settings (with reasonable defaults) hidden around the corner behind an unlocked door helps the newbie get started with confidence.
Yeah exactly.
But what about casual usage like office? The option to choose OS preinstalled on the laptops or desktop would be beneficial.
But Microsoft holds its monopolistic grip.
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
The only way to make sure Linux works like that is to have a closed hardware environment. But it has to play nicely with other hardware and services (e.g. printers, webcams, etc + office documents, etc). It has taken a very long time for MacOS to get to this point, but people put up with Mac compromises because enough things worked smoothly.
I’ve just commented about this in another thread…but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
Yeah. I consider myself somewhat tech savvy (I do software development for work) and I had a really bad time installing mint on my desktop. I got it to work after a day but that was far more than a casually interested person would put up with.
To make Linux more appealing to the average person, you’d have to be able to buy a Linux PC at your local computer store. Most people can’t be bothered to install a new OS.
That’s also true but also impossible. Linux isn’t a for profit company.
What are you even talking about? Anyone can sell a PC with pre-installed Linux. There are already several companies today so just that.
Let me clarify myself
*It’s impossible to get big corporate guys attention so they ship Linux by default and it’s clearly tested. For now the Valve, System76, Framework and Tuxedo are exception.
Edit: Also I was keeping in mind corporatr entity behind OS.
- Apple - MacOS
- Microsoft - Windows
- ? - Linux
Dell sells PC’s with Linux installed.
Not in retail stores though AFAIK
Correct. I was just touching on the big corporations point since they listed some online only retailers.
It would be a real leap forward, if Linux PCs were sold in big box stores. Which is why Microsoft will do anything they can to prevent that.
The big guys won’t sell Linux to consumers because of Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices. That’s the main thing that’s holding back Linux acceptance right now. But if some big player (e.g. Valve) would take the leap, things might get interesting.
“It’s impossible. Let me list 4 exceptions though”
Dell have at times sold laptops with Linux pre installed.
Can you buy a Dell laptop with Linux at a retail store?
I’ve seen this type of question elsewhere. Why is it an issue?
Standardisation? Corporate Linux? Just like the big boys? Big fish eat little fish.
Careful what you ask for . .
Perhaps someone could make a business of it then.
Chromebooks sold well enough. Google made $30 billion on that in 2023.
Anyone willing to put together a physical Linux machine, market and support it could take a chunk of that.
No major OEM will do a consumer Linux PC because MS will punish them with Windows licence pricing. You’d have to be a newcomer that’s not beholden to MS. At the same time, you’d need a shitload of cash to start a hardware business with enough volume to get into big box stores. That’s why it hasn’t happened yet
For me it was always a niche that wasn’t taken full advantage of.
Chromebooks never really made sense outside of schools and old people.
The OS is hyper limited to essentially just a web browser, and android apps (so just a web browser). Nobody wants to buy premium hardware to use with just Chrome. But at the same time it’s Chrome, so you really need at least a good chunk of RAM. So it really just limits you to the super light use cases, but those could realistically be replaced by a tablet.
The other day we saw an extremely odd device at malwart. They had a $270 laptop/tablet hybrid thing with a fairly nice OLED display, and a snapdragon CPU that should have been more that sufficient. But 128gb of EMMC storage, and 4 gigs of ram. Such wasted potential. It would make a nice RDP machine I guess.
lol wtf are you talking about? You can literally take $100 off the price of a computer just because it’s not bundled with a Winderps license - the price is straight up lower because the license cost is $0. You can order some models like this straight from Dell or Lenovo or whatever.
OEMs aren’t paying $100 per license. They’re also making deals with McAfee/Norton/whatever to package a bunch of extra crap on your windows laptop to lower the price further.
I don’t see it as impossible. Like various brands are distributed with windows, various brands can be distributed with various Linux distros, customizable by distro and features, pre-order. These brands can work out a donation contract with distros.
Yes, but also companies say that Linux support is not worthit (gaining money and spending on the support) compared to - slapping barely working Windows port and call it a day.
For now Linux support is more like pleasant surprise than a official respected thing.
I bet when demand crosses a certain threshold, support supply will quickly follow, gatekeepers bedamned.
If you sell a Linux machine to consumers, Microsoft will screw you over on Windows licencing. No current OEM will risk that.
Contacts end and contracts begin. While it may be a good while, I think we are goingseeing large corporations like Microsoft enter autophagy.
I’m a very casual Linux user and in my experience, I’ve NEVER had a problem with a documented solution that didn’t require going down a rabbit hole of other references.
Something like this: “To get the trackpad to work with Ubuntu, make sure you’ve installed the hergelbergelXX package.” (No link, find it on your own!)
Visit the HergelBergelXX page. To install Hergelbergel on Ubuntu, you must install the framisPortistan Package Manager. (No link!)
On the FramisPortistan GitHub readme, we discover it requires the JUJU3 database system to be installed. “JUJU3 may cause conflicts with installed USB devices under Ubuntu” JUJU2, which shipped with Ubuntu, is no longer supported. Also we recommend Archie&Jughead Linux over other distributions.
And this essentially never stops.
All of this is comparatively a happy result—I actually DID post a question on linuxnoobs about getting my trackpad to work with Ubuntu… and have not had a single reply. I have no idea how to find out how to make it work.
I had similar stories getting Wireless Networking to work on some devices before. Good thing is, there are drivers for most, if not all, default hardware interfaces directly in the kernel nowadays and if a device has any sort of popularity it will be supported before long if it isn’t out of the box.
I’m not talking about a long-ago problem. I’m talking about a current install of Ubuntu.
Yes, presumably on hardware that’s just a bit too old or rare. Might be unlucky as Linux compatibility isn’t high up on OEMs lists
Hat a problem with WLAN on a laptop when I tried to install fedora. The solution was to install Linux mint with LAN\internet and let the driver manager figure it all out.
Maybe that helps.
Simple, start teaching it in elementary school all the way up through high school. Apple did it long ago and got apple users out of those kids. Microsoft does it now, and now you have Windows users. Just need the computer education to be Linux centric from the start. It’s not that it’s different, it’s that it’s not what they grew up with and were taught.
Windows hasn’t been in schools for a while. It is all Chrome OS
I think it depends. If a school has a laptop for each student, it is most certainly a Chromebook. However, a lot of schools also have a mix of systems. In elementary school, I was taught to use Microsoft Office on Windows, for instance. At my high school, all the students had Chromebooks, but there were also some labs with Windows machines; graphic design, photography, and film classes had labs full of 5K iMacs.
Chromebooks are low cost and easy to manage. Unless it is for a highly specific use I wouldn’t be surprised if a school was all Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.
Also there is a public high school full of expensive macs? That’s wild
Not exactly “full of” - it was more like 3 classrooms with 30 each. Still a lot of Macs, but keep in mind this was a high school of 2000 students. Also, I’m pretty sure the Macs were paid for with grants for the visual arts programs rather than standard public funding.
Atomic OSes should be evangelized more aggressively to laypersons. IMO, they’re great for 3 specific use cases:
- gaming (bazzite) - personally, I want my gaming box to “just work”
- thin clients/low-powered laptops used as an entry point to your homelab or other remote systems - again, I like having at least one fairly bulletproof and super stable system to use as a human:homelab gateway/admin machine
- non-techies. If the update fails, just roll back. Can’t remember if that’s generally an automated recovery process or not, but that sort of idiot-proofing is precisely what the general public needs in the context of Linux. Because there are a lot of idiots out there.
Absolutely. Look at Aeon. I turn it on and do what I need to do.
Later I might see a quick pop up that says system has been updated. It didn’t require intervention. It didn’t even tell me it was happening, it just informed me after the fact.
If anything broke, I would never know because on the next boot if something failed it just uses the previous snapshot to boot. As far as I am concerned the system is working just like it always has.
But even as recently as this week I see people saying: immutable? No don’t make it a bad experience for them! Just recommend Ubuntu for newcomers! >:/
I installed Bluefin on my mother’s laptop and it’s like a Chromebook for her. She just wants to surf and consume media, and the OS stays solid and out of they way.
Atomic distros are the biggest advance for Linux in recent years.
you can’t because it’s explicitly against the whole point of having endless choices. when everyone works on something different, the quality spreads out to where it’s mostly just mediocre stuff across the board.
hardware compatibility is also a huge problem. for everyone that says “it works fine for me” there are a thousand others for whom it does not.
I feel like there’s also the point that on Mac OS a lot of stuff “just works” because everything else just doesn’t work at all. I have a number of things that just aren’t going to work at all on Mac. Linux is obviously much more permissive, which leads to a lot more kinda working stuff that just wouldn’t work at all on Mac.
when everyone works on something different, the quality spreads out to where it’s mostly just mediocre stuff across the board.
I wouldn’t say that’s the only problem. We have pretty high quality stuff on Linux. The other problem is that choice always means differences between options which makes perfect integration hard or even impossible.
I get downvoted to oblivion when I point out “just works” isn’t true.
You make a great point about endless choices.
No single UI, no single set of tools, those are massive barriers. And it’s why Windows became the de facto standard: single UI, consistent toolset.
And it’s why Windows became the de facto standard: single UI, consistent toolset.
No so true after win 7, there’s a bunch of legacy menu.
It’s at least the same inconsistent toolset as everyone else. Windows 10? Ok go through this multi step process. 11? Ok this other slightly different process.
VS Linux you have 700 consistent toolsets, and 70000000 inconsistent toolsets.
Yeah but you can have default choices that are guarantee to work.
And yeah preinstalled checked hardware would be ideal.
Need hardware with it pre installed with a reason to buy other than because it has Linux
Maybe use the lack of a requirement for a Windows license to bring the price to performance ratio down
If they’re really performant machines also helps break the idea Linux is only for old and slow machines, I only ever used to put it on laptops as they were reaching the end of their usefulness, the moment I put it on my pc and a new laptop it changed my perception on it entirely
I also think the majority of technical users still use windows, maybe we should concentrate on getting them first and maybe we’ll see more support
Most people have had great answers coming from the company side of things. I’ll take it from the standpoint of individuals like us helping someone linux curious see the light, while still having the “just works” experience.
Do not give them any choices. None. Put them on your stable distro of choice for a new user, call whatever that is “Linux”, and be on your way.
But why? Isn’t that antithetical to everything we value? Yes and no. We value choice almost above anything else, but that doesn’t “just work” for most people. Which of those do you value more?
No-one who buys a PC with windows preinstalled gets any choice at all… and had the preinstalled malware cme with it.
That’s true. Most are perfectly fine provided they have a computer ready to use. Straight out of the box. Immediately. The lack of choice itself is comforting. Everything moves forward. No lateral motion.
We must provide them that type of “thing that just works”. Constantly move forward. What is comfortable. What is familiar.
More GUI front ends for stuff. This takes away the need to understand command line tools and syntax, and makes the out-of-the-box experience feel more like it just works.
SUSE / OpenSUSE has this. You can open Yast2 GUI utilities and access all the GUI utils like Windows old Command Center. Hardware, package and driver installs, add hardware and configure, network, enable services and tweak parameter, printer tools, mess with boot options or kernel parameters, etc. The average user would never need to touch CLI
Exactly. That’s Windows’ secret. Give us a control center where it’s easy to control NetworkManager, Pipewire, systemd, and other parts of the OS, and give them not-so-technical names. That’s one of the keys to Windows’ success. Others involve EEE and anticompetitive practices but we don’t want Linux going that way now, do we?
It’s not that Windows isn’t complicated, it’s just that there’s a GUI for everything.
Yip. I was trying to find a useful front end to manage the audio settings on my focusrite audio interface. Pipewire has the functions and capability to set the sample rate and buffet size on the fly but I failed to find a gui until for it that wasn’t part of some other complicated thing. When I suggested the Devs of pipewire should provide a GUI I was politely shot down. The reasons given were; it takes too long, and Linux users don’t mind the CMD line. I think this is a mind-set that needs to evolve.
Needs to be pre installed, most people don’t know how to reset their PC, let alone install a new OS.
The way to get Linux more appealing is to get proprietary software makers, like Adobe, Microsoft (Office), you know the actual things people need to do their job, to make software for Linux. Steam Deck is a good example of this, it works because Steam ported the games to Linux…
In some ways this is true. However, I feel like in the case of Adobe, someone needs to take another shot at a good FOSS image editor. Adobe is really starting to mess itself with generative AI; knowing many artists, they hate generative AI image tech as a threat to their job, so I find it weird that Adobe is alienating one of their largest user bases. I find it weird how Inkscape is really good and has evolved (I actually switched to it from Adobe Illustrator and don´t regret it), while GIMP has barely changed in 10 years.
I get that some parts of an image editor are complex, but at some point, it’s just a chain of mathematical operations. Maybe I’m wrong, but when I get the time, it’s almost tempting to take a stab at the issue.
While I don’t disagree with you about the potential of those alternatives they won’t cut it for the average graphic designer… usually not due to the lack of features but most likely because of the network effects / dominant position that Adobe holds over their field. People who need to collaborate with others and are pressured to get stuff done can’t afford the slightest compatibility issue.
Looks at the current state of Microsoft and Adobe
I’m good.
Anyway you can’t really do much about a company not supporting Linux. Either find an alternative or don’t use Linux.
Honestly Linux does work pretty much just as well as MacOS if you run it on hardware thats super well supported and that tons of linux users use. MacOS has integration with its hardware because its all made by the same company. They only have to support a few models of computer.
If you installed Linux Mint today on a Thinkpad t480, and on some obscure weird laptop with rarely used hardware your gonna get 1 install that just works out of the box and your gonna get 1 that you have to hunt for drivers, and do tons of work on. Its just the nature of being able to use any hardware. Some will work better than others.
If you want an example of how to increase adoption you pick a line of computers thats of high quality and have them be supported by the community a ton. Then you convince the company that makes these computers to ship a version of them with linux pre-installed, and potentially help atleast with funding the development of whatever distro they use.
If your average user bought a laptop, opened it, turned it on, and it had linux on it and worked relatively well, they are never going to change it. Its not a normal thing to just change your OS most people don’t even know that you can do that. I gave my grandmother a linux mint laptop and she thinks its windows.
Whether any OS could ever just work isn’t even going to solve the issue.
Getting OEMs to sell laptops and desktops in Best Buy (or the like) that have Linux installed and is properly supported — that is what will help solve the issue.
having it just work is a necessary step to gett there
When there exists an operating system that can satisfy that qualification, I’ll concede the point. Until then, OEM and retail support is what matters.
Maybe we are too used to Linux working on anything but with some imperfection.
And yet it again leads to oficial supported hardware.
From a non techy perspective, having what is used and installed being secure is a big one. I am new to Linux Mint. Mostly user friendly until something gets corrupted or suddenly can not be verified.
Looking for why is not always simple, and there are some explanations/instructions easier to understand than others.
I preface most of my searches with Linux mint (whatever I am searching for) for dummies. This helps some.
I have been forced to use mac now for like a year, and I don’t get the whole “just works” opinion of it. Like I have had so many issues with just basic stuff. Turning off mouse acceleration and the mouse still feels all slimy. Highest mouse speed is so slow and setting it higher requires some crazy tricks, which also does not work consistently through boots. It can’t wake up a lot of monitors, I have to turn them off and on manually. If it cannot connect to a monitor properly but tries, it like disables your keyboard for a few seconds while trying. Some items in the settings menu take a long time to load, as in if I reboot, log in, open settings, there is no mouse settings.
