alt Hacker NewsFor not much prior research, he sure has done a lot of prior research to even know about desktop environments or bootloaders compared to your average windows user. This article read like every other promising Linux is user friendly and easy, then proceeding with the author fixing issues the average user wouldn’t be able to even diagnose.
I think anyone technically savvy enough to follow the article is already aware Linux is a viable primary OS, the question is can you manage it without having to become a Linux nerd? I want to be able to tell normal people they can use Linux.
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I use Linux exclusively for almost 20 years. I can tackle any tinkering of almost anything in a Linux environment, alongside of heavy use of Vim and Emacs.
Nowadays every time I want to run a non-trivial command of a program, configure a file somewhere, customize using code Emacs or anything else, I always put the LLMs to do it. I do almost nothing by myself, except check if said file is indeed there, open the file and copy paste the new configuration, restart the program, copy paste code here and there and so on.
No need to be a nerd to use Linux, that's so 2021. LLMs are the ultimate nerds when it comes to digging into manuals, scour the internet and github for workarounds, or tips and tricks and so on.
If you get someone to help you with the installation, or buy a pre-installed Linux, then yes I believe this to be true. I only have anecdotal evidence, but I have my dad who is very non-tech savvy who after about a day with gnome actually said it's the first desktop environment that he liked more than Windows 95. There has been one time in 5 years that he had to reach out for technical assistance. It turned out that he had been misled by a prompt to buy Ubuntu pro and had gotten into a weird state. I blame that one solely on canonical, not on Linux in general. After that I switched him to Fedora, and he's been running that now for a few years and didn't even realize I had changed his underlying OS. He is able to install anything he wants from the graphical storefront, and same with updates. In the early days we did have some trouble getting his printer to work, though once we switched him to Fedora everything on that printer worked out of the box. When my sister came over to his house with her MacBook, she had to mess with the Mac to get the printer working for over an hour, and it was still pretty hit or miss. It would lose half the jobs she tried to send to it. It truly is remarkable how usable Linux is for the average person now. For people that have to run software that only runs on Windows or Linux, excluding games of course since steam and other game managers handle those wonderfully now, there is definitely still a bit of pain. But for people who can get by with cloud-based or Linux friendly software, it's really quite good.
Well said. There’s a lot of angry comments below but it’s all people who don’t want to deal with these hard truths.
*GASP* OH NO THEY MIGHT LEARN A SKILL!!!!
Snark aside, I really really don’t understand the aversion, even within the tech community, to learning new skills especially as it pertains to Linux.
Would having new knowledge be such a burden? Why is it something to avoid? Why is it not a good thing if normal people learn more about computing?
Do we want a population of iPad baby Linux users? Normal people can use it now, don’t gate keep.
We have people going “I don’t have to read, I could just have the AI do it for me” and pretty soon they’re not gonna be able to think. People don’t want to think or learn because we have such a cultural aversion to being a nerd. Nerd is not a bad thing.
My Dad managed to install linux (Q4OS) on his computer in a dual-boot setup, having never even touched Linux before. He hasn't asked me for help once, whereas historically I've been his tech support when he was running Windows. He's loving the linux experience.
I believe if my Dad is able to install, use and benefit from Linux, anyone can.
Windows is worse , just latest example: a USB WiFi antenna for the PC, on Linux it just works, on Windows you need either to buy a CD drive to install the drivers - not sure if your grandma can buy a cd drive, install it and install drivers. On Linux it just works.
People like buy a computer and use whatever is on it, they can't manage to install windows, the drivers needed for the hardware, I had to setup emails, or other online accounts for this kind of people so give them a preinstalled Linux and they should manage,.
Linux is a lot more user-friendly than Windows, with generally useful error messages when things go wrong.
How do you fix Windows when it breaks every couple of weeks and the only information you get is a bright blue screen with a couple of lines of hexadecimal on it?
What's funny is, the author is only having these questions because they chose a wacky Arch-based ultra-techie distro that I'd never even heard of.
If they'd just installed normal Ubuntu or Fedora, they wouldn't even know what a bootloader was, and they'd just use whatever desktop environment (probably GNOME, maybe KDE) came with it.