Follow-up video to https://lemmy.world/post/32690521
Spoiler alert: the main reason he says the experience “hasn’t been great” is because shortly before posting the video his Linux install mysteriously broke and he had no idea why. Therefore, he recommended dual-booting Windows just in case.
Cue sea of comments explaining that the reason for the error he was getting was that Windows screwed up his bootloader (i.e. the problem was caused by dual-booting to begin with, LOL).
the idea that you can just jump to linux with zero research needs to go
Honestly, in that case, don’t expect mass adoption. Simple as that.
If the idea is to keep Linux as a niche, then that’s fine. But if you/the community want Linux to rival Windows/Mac, than these are the exact bullet points that must change.
A lot of Mac knowledge can translate. I learned the basics of bash on Mac OS X. I also kept my boot partitions on different drives before I switched to Linux only(I was never Windows only or even Windows Primary).
I want to make sure I am understanding what you are intending to communicate correctly. At first I thought you were basically saying, “normies need to get good”. But in reflection you could be attempting to say, “Linux advocates are communicating unrealistic expectations which lead normal people to frustration and disappointment.” Or is your intent something else?
I’m not OP, but I agree with the latter.
Go in expecting to need to learn some stuff, and you’ll probably need to learn less than you expect. Set aside a couple hours for the setup process, you probably won’t need it, but you might. Figure out where to go for help before you start. Leave yourself a backup plan in case you don’t finish.
Linux is pretty easy to use these days, but it’s a new thing and will take getting used to. Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised when things work out.
This is what burned me. I was promised that Unraid would be easier than windows. Dozens of people all promising me that I would have fewer issues, and I would never need to touch the CLI, and it would take me an afternoon to set up. I have spent 200+ hours on this thing. It’s finally where I want it to be, but if I never, ever touch another Linux OS again I will die happy. If I had gone in with different expectations I would have had a VERY different experience. I wouldn’t have thought that every issue I faced was me being dumb. I have since learned that my experience is totally normal, and I’m pissed off at the people who lied to me.
Yeah, Linux is definitely oversold.
I get where people are coming from, if you say it has a learning curve, fewer people will try it, and a lot of those people would’ve had a fine experience. But those that have a rough time will convince others to not bother.
I think it’s much better to undersell it and have people be pleasantly surprised.
100%. I’m not sure if it would have put me off, but I wouldn’t be as bitter as I am now.
And the next part of the equation is that when you go online to ask for help, people tell you you are a noob and it’s a skill issue.
Well…
What lunatic recommended Unraid to you, lol? Setting up Linux mint is easier than installing Windows. And it‘s free, reliable, open source and not stuffed full of bloatware and subscriptions. Please give it a try if you ever need a new OS
I have 15 HDDs and like unstriped RAID. My options were SnapRAID on Windows or Unraid. TrueNAS only offers striped RAID, and I am not aware of an unstriped RAID feature in Mint.
bit of both i guess? “normies need to get good” could be diluted into “do your research before going to linux”, which in most sensible online discussions is already the recommended way: test things out in a VM, try out different DEs, practice configuring things, finding alternatives to your current workflow, etc etc. it’s a harder sell than “just switch to linux” but IMO it’s absolutely necessary
but my comment is more of a reaction to influencers not doing that at all and making le funny challenge of jumping to linux blind and breaking shit because it’s good content and “trying out linux” is still trending
problem is they must be getting this idea that “linux is so easy and fun and seamless and you don’t have to research anything” from somewhere, which i do think is probably way more from people in their audience hyping up linux and not necessarily the wider linux community but these voices gotta be out there
The main issue I see is that a ton of people (influencers but also users) tend to massively downplay the difficulties you might encounter when using Linux.
Every thread where someone asks whether they should try Linux is full of people claiming that it’s super easy, super seamless, much less issues than using Windows, you’ll never need to touch CLI and so on.
But mostly these are users that are already quite good with Linux (or users who just about managed to install Linux a week ago and haven’t seen anything yet). These good users have difficulty understanding how difficult easy things are to regular users.
I encountered this when making an open source physiotherapy game console for kids with cystic fibrosis.
A big issue with CF therapy is that pretty much every therapist is doing something slightly differently, so the therapy needs to be configurable. For that I made a very simple .ini file to configure the therapy. Every single person I showed that to went into instant panic mode.
I then made a simple WebUI where people can configure the same thing, but instead of a text file there are now separate text fields for each value. And suddenly everyone gets it instantly and has no difficulty at all using it, even though all that changed was going from a text file with
key=valueto a Web UI with[label for key] [text field for value].Linux is easy if it comes pre-installed, pre-configured and with first-party hardware support both by the laptop manufacturer and each and every component in there. And first-party OS support by the device manufacturer. Like ChromeOS and Steam Deck.
If that’s not the case it will be difficult for normie users. Same as installing Windows on hardware not primarily intended to run Windows or making a Hackintosh. Both of these experiences suck just as much.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why that crowd doesn’t just switch to an Apple ecosystem when leaving Windows. The entire design philosophy is intended to cater to non-tech savvy people, and to keep them that way. Not saying every Apple user is non-tech savvy, but it is built to be stupid simple to use for anyone.
This YouTuber’s “I can install Linux but abandon it because I can’t figure out why it won’t boot anymore” mentality shows his own limitations.
Buy an Apple if you want to leave Windows, but have no interest in becoming proficient enough to use Linux as a main driver.
Tbf none of the points you listed are negative to me. I mean how boring would linux be if it was just go to [random site] and paste the commands into the terminal? There would be no brain training involved, no way to get better at computers.
Most people use an OS to do things, not to do an OS.
It’s like with cars: There are some car nerds who tune their own engine control parameters and replace broken transmissions and engines themselves.
But for most people a car is used to get to work (or other places) not to play with them.
And while there’s nothing wrong with using an OS as a hobby because you love debugging things, it would be strange to expect that everyone wants to play with an OS instead of using an OS to accomplish something.