not until Linux bros find a way to appeal to newcomers. being curious about Linux is the worst user experience anyone will ever have about any tech related issue.
You aren’t trying to suggest that experienced Linux users are a bunch of arrogant fart-sniffing a-holes who expressly enjoy gate-keeping inexperienced users by being as condescending and unhelpful as possible?
I tried talking about how absolutely horrendous their behaviour was recently, pointing out how completely unhinged and self-defeating it is, and someone actually literally said that this was a good thing because Linux is hard work and they should keep away people that aren’t experts.
And first of all, if that’s right it’s an admission that linux will never succeed, and secondly I agree that’s the effect but I think that’s bad actually.
I honestly think there must be at least some amount of psyops in the community poisoning the discourse for everyone.
Microsoft running psyops to keep the Linux community as toxic as possible
I’ll counter your anectdote with my own. Every single Linux community member I have encountered on my journey to use this as a daily driver (arch BTW) has been incredibly helpful.
I just came from another post where the user said they would love to switch from Windows and just needed someone to explain how to do it with a list of features and programs they always use and asking what the Linux equivalent would be.
They made the mistake of saying they needed Outlook for work and there was a commenter that basically said that that person was never going to like Linux and they needed to stay far away from it because the user “painted themselves into a corner.” The commenter even took the time to call it “Micro$oft” lol
Micro$oft
I dislike Microsoft and basically everything they’ve done with Windows post-7. Every machine I own that isn’t expressly for gaming is running Linux, and one of the two that are for gaming is also running Linux. When I build a new gaming tower to replace my current Windows one it will also run Linux, I just can’t be bothered to switch OSes mid-way.
And yet people using childish denigrating nicknames like this immediately makes me disinclined to engage with the conversation. I don’t understand how anyone expects to be taken seriously while throwing around schoolyard-grade name-calling like this.
This is my life right now.
I put Linux on my HP laptop…
Speakers give weird sound Media keys don’t work Worst of all: ever since I updated the laptop somehow crashes my router? Like, I don’t even know how this is possible, but it’s happening.
I’m not an idiot but all the solutions to getting these seemingly basic things to work as intended are extremely contrived.
The problem is that HP writes drivers and software for those things for Windows, but not for Linux, so Linux depends on random people to write software for those things for free (which often involves complex reverse-engineering). With Linux you need to make sure you use widely-used hardware that someone has already written support for (this is mostly applicable to laptops and peripherals, which often use custom non-standard hardware). There may be a way to fix your problems, but you’ll have to search forums or issue trackers for the solutions, and they’re probably pretty involved to get working correctly. The router crashing thing is probably just a coincidence though, or the laptop is using a feature that’s broken on your router.
Yes I completely understand that. But it also undermines the “give your older laptop a new life with Linux” narrative that’s out there at times. It’s actually not that easy. I’m happy running Linux but I wouldn’t put it on my moms old laptop…
I agree. However there are some gems. Got one good piece of advice from https://lemmy.world/u/BombOmOm and now I’m on the Linux train (at least on one laptop anyway).
I don’t think Linux Bros will ever find a way to appeal to women newcomers. I think it will take a company that can afford to hire UI/UX designers, marketing people, etc.
But, that’s hard because there’s a chicken / egg situation. Selling a Linux-based computer to the general public is going to be very difficult because of the network effects around Mac and Windows machines. Everyone else uses them and so there are people you can ask for help, there are software vendors who make stuff for the platform (also with nice UIs meant for normal people). I can only see someone spending money to make a mass-market friendly Linux in some limited circumstances.
One situation where a company might make a truly user-friendly Linux distribution is if a company like Valve decided to make a game console. They already have the Steam Deck which is doing really well, but nobody’s going to be doing their taxes on a Steam Deck (although they could). But, if they made a desktop-replacement game console that could both play games and also act as a normal home PC, they could afford to spend the money needed to sand the rough edges off the experience.
Another situation might be if a big country mandated Linux for something, either for government computers or for kids in schools. They’d probably have to have a support contract for that, and whoever was supporting those systems would want them to be as user-friendly as possible so they didn’t have to deal with as many support issues. So, if say Brazil mandated that all government employees switch to Linux, that could result in some company making a Linux desktop experience that was comparable to Windows.
Agree with you that gov and education should really be using open source software and hardware. Having said that, a normie friendly UI is what killed android and windows for me. Gnome does a good job being easy to use but I prefer KDE because I want configurability more than out of the box simplicity. I do agree with you though that having hardware paired with Linux software like System76 does would increase adoption. Just don’t take away my ability to configure things how I like them.
Most of the time the fact there’s a beginner-friendly option doesn’t mean that there aren’t also options for more advanced users. This is especially true with Linux.
On phones both Apple and Google lock things down so much that your options are limited. That’s mostly an issue with monopolies not with phones. Macs have a bit more freedom than phones by default, Windows has a bit more than that, then you can go back to Mac if you’re willing to hack around and run QT apps and so on. But, I can’t imagine a Linux distro that didn’t let you ditch a beginner-friendly UI for something more powerful.
I’m still hoping that the success of the Steam Deck will get the ball rolling. Steam Deck success might lead to more games that work really well under Linux. That means less of a reason to keep using Windows. More people using Linux might lead to more software being fully available for Linux, which might get more people to use it. I still think eventually you’re going to need non-hobbyists to come in and smooth a lot of the rough edges. But, stage 1 in that whole process is getting more people using Linux, and maybe that’s actually happening now.
(It also doesn’t hurt that Microsoft keeps shooting themselves in the foot with things like the Cloudstrike bug, and the Windows Recall snoopware failure. Long may that continue.)
