alt Hacker NewsMy non-technical friend installed linux on her 10yo old laptop by herself after a windows update slowed down her device and rendered it unusable. She said she said she read about it somewhere and that the Ubuntu installation was pretty intuitive.
I was both amazed and proud. She's daily driving Linux now
(to be fair, it's just tv shows and web apps like chatgpt or docs, but still, Linux is now a good-enough alternative, at least anegdotally)
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My Dad, who's well into his 60s, managed to install linux himself on his computer. His kept the windows partition in a dual boot setup just in case, but spends just about all the time in Linux, he loves it.
AFAICT the only thing that should be keeping people from Linux nowadays is gaming (especially VR) and systemd doing dumb shit device naming so that changing the physical location of an unrelated GPU renames your NIC and breaks your internet.
My late grandfather (passed in 2022 at the age of 104) showed us all how it could be done. In 2014! During one of my infrequent visits to his house; he was complaining about the state of the latest Windows installation on his new laptop, and saw me driving Debian+KDE and asked about switching.
I told him that Ubuntu was probably the best fit for someone changing/doing one's own install. And that was pretty much the extent of the conversation, we went on to talk more about raising beef on land without petrochemical fertilizers, and how he missed the flavor from his youth, circa 1930's vs what he could get in the store today.
A few years later, the next time I was in his living room, his somewhat older - the same - laptop was on his kitchen table with OpenOffice spreadsheets and something he was working on, running the latest Kubuntu flavor. I asked who he had asked to install it; he has a number of technically proficient descendants who live much closer and who visit far more frequently than I did, so I presumed one of my cousins had helped.
He acted a little gruff, told me he had switched to Ubuntu+gnome by reading and following the instructions, and had then decided he tried out the K Desktop and preferred it enough to just make the switch without reinstalling.
Had a bit of fun hearing him explain how he "hadn't been fond of some of the Ubuntu decisions with window managers but liked having both environments installed as somethings were better in K, and other things were better from Gnome."
In thinking about how ready he was, in his 90's, to fully read and follow instructions reminds me that he was from a generation whose automobile user manual came with instructions for adjusting the piston timing as well as how to bleed and adjust brake pressure.
Why does everyone act like switching to Linux from Windows is just too hard for "Kathy and Wayne"? The fact of the matter seems to be we have lost either the _ability_, or the _willingness_, to read-and-follow-directions in the general population. The end result of either is the same.