Installing Linux Doesn't Need to Change. The Experience Does.
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Oh look. Yet another post demanding things from a volunteer-based community without actually volunteering their own time to work on solving the problem they're insisting needs solving.
I'm sure these demands will totally make a difference in ways that putting their time into actually writing code wouldn't.
I think it should be encouraged for non technical users to share their insights regarding UI/UX. People who are skilled in building applications often don’t have great skills in that area anyway. Actual UI/UX specialists are even harder to come by it seems.
The issue with this video is that it doesn’t bring in a ton of new insight. Issues regarding the variety of package management solutions are well know for example, and some distros are already solving this by having system packages and flatpaks managed by the same installer.
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Okie dokie boomer
You're both being silly. Ones a gatekeeper, ones a name caller
Want to know what's wrong with Linux? The community.
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Yeah I love linux, but it's user experience , while light years ahead of what I used in the late nineties and early aughts, is still clunky compared to others.
That being said, honestly most of linux's issues are GUI related, when it comes to going mainstream. The capabilities and efficiency are far ahead of windows and mac os but most users don't care.
Directions, examples and mundane work should all be seamless for mainstream consumers.
A good rule of thumb is, " if a user has to look for it to fix it, or open a terminal window to install software, then it won't be accepted fully.
Mainstream users don't want to type commands in a prompt. Why does everyone think windows blew DOS out of the water in sales? It wasn't because DOS wasn't working. It was, hell early windows ( I started on 3.11 so that's my limit of knowledge ) still used DOS.
So bottom line. Start putting the non tech consumer first or we'll forever be stuck in this "almost mainstream" category forever.
I don’t see them as mutually exclusive - can’t Linux be user friendly for the non-techie while also offering a techie lots of flexibility and command-line joy?
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Or users could maybe learn how to do things without having their hands held and treated like babies every step of the way; or at least how to search for information to find what they need...
️Or, maybe yo will understand when you grow up that people are good at different things.
Garuntee there's some pretty easy things for me to do that you would get left behind trying to do, and not just on PC
Same for you. You know some things you'd blow me away doing.
Just because you don't know what I know , and vice versa, doesn't mean people are dumb.
Means they've learned different things.
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I don’t see them as mutually exclusive - can’t Linux be user friendly for the non-techie while also offering a techie lots of flexibility and command-line joy?
️They can and should. But they don't. They really only cater to the techie, because that's who uses it
Then they got pissed when their "marketing" efforts fall shorts.
Stop acting like non Linux users are dumb. They aren't. they've used the time others spent learning other thing, while others spent their time on techie things . Their priorities were different. Or maybe their poor and don't care about that as they need a PC but have to work 80 hours to feed their family.
But no. Instead of making life better through foss for those who need it, you're making Linux some unattainable nerd toy.
We can tell ourselves we don't care. But we do. Or the thread wouldn't be here
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They could. But you and I both know they won't because most people don't care about anything beyond 'make the magic box work so I can do my job / play my game / etc.'
Because we keep feeding them stupid pills and encouraging them not to think. Microsoft was a pioneer of the whole "water down software and call it user-frienfly'" thing.
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You're both being silly. Ones a gatekeeper, ones a name caller
Want to know what's wrong with Linux? The community.
We really gonna pretend the name caller is as bad as the guy with the opinion that "critics are useless and should just learn how to do the thing the critique"? Cuz that's a classic shitty opinion
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Because we keep feeding them stupid pills and encouraging them not to think. Microsoft was a pioneer of the whole "water down software and call it user-frienfly'" thing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That's not it at all. You don't think accountants who juggle numbers and Excel formulas all day couldn't learn? Lawyers whose entire job involves absorbing and filtering vast amounts of information? Doctors who diagnose machines that are far more complex than computers (people)? Of course they could; I worked around these people in IT for 20 years, I can tell you that despite how stupid these folks seem around computers they feel the same way about your capabilities in their field of expertise, only they don't have the arrogance to assume that everyone should learn to be a mechanical engineer or dentist in order to understand their job.
What they are is too busy doing other shit that they care more about. They don't have the time or interest to be farting around with a computer to do anything more than the absolute minimum requirements needed to do the shit they actually care about. Human society functions because people specialize, and people who don't specialize in making computers go just don't care enough about them as anything other than as a tool and maybe an occasional source of entertainment to waste their time learning. Just like you don't waste your time learning about how to run a nuclear power plant.
And I say this as someone who used to love tinkering with computers, turned it into a career, and slowly grew to hate it. I too no longer care about optimizing or fiddling or tweaking, I just want the magic box to work so I can do the stuff I care about (writing, gaming, etc.)
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I'm curious what OSs and what issues you had. If you want, make a post in a Linux community and reply with the link here. I'd be keen to see where I'm at in helping others with Linux drivers since I just had some issues I resolved. I want to move my grandpa's computer to Linux when Win10 runs out so it could be a practice opportunity.
I've tried PopOS 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS and 25.04.
PopOS mostly worked but almost none of my games worked, they acted like they weren't being hardware accelerated by my GPU when they launched at all, and every time I tried to update the driver the install process hard-locked my system and when I rebooted it it came back up with no video driver at all. I was finally able to get one driver version to work, after doing about 10-15 install/reboot/unfuck cycles (the 555-server closed source driver.) I tried a couple versions of the open source drivers and they didn't work either. I also had this weird issue with (I think it was) pipewire where my sound would cut out at random and the only way to get it back was to go into the sound control panel and toggle between speakers and headset repeatedly. I noticed this especially when joining a voice channel in discord, but it would just happen out of the blue too.
Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS installed fine but whenever it boots the monitor goes into standby with a no-signal notice. The system seems to be running, ctrl+alt+del reboots it, but I can't even us ctrl+F2-6 to get a curses terminal where theoretically the video drivers shouldn't matter at all? When I tried to install 25.04 (on the assumption that it would have a newer video driver) I booted on the USB key and even the installer didn't work, same issue: monitor goes no-signal.
In case it matters, my specs are:
Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9GHz 8-core
Gigabyte Vision OC 12 RTX3060 w/12GB VRAM
32GB DDR4-3200 RAM
Multiple SSDs, some SATA, some NVMe in M.2 slots, but I've only ever installed linux on my BPX Pro 1TB NVMe drive that's ~4-5 years old. -
We really gonna pretend the name caller is as bad as the guy with the opinion that "critics are useless and should just learn how to do the thing the critique"? Cuz that's a classic shitty opinion
Not pretending anything. Saying they're both acting silly. Eos.
Have a nice day
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Just saying, not my experience. I have used linux for over 25 years and nontechnical users in my family have also for almost 20 years. By in large it has worked just fine.
The big issue is Linux is not the OS that is supplied when people go to the store and buy something (well except for Android and Chromebooks which are Linux and are popular). It is also not the system or have the apps their friends use. It also does not have the huge supply, support, and word of mouth ecosystem. Buying hardware especially addons is confusing. Getting support is hard unless you have friends that use. Buying Linux preinstalled often costs more. Change too is hard and there has to be some driver and for most people there is not.
I've been a "heavy" user(/admin) of Linux in the server space for about 12 years now, but only recently through a new employment opportunity have I become a daily Linux desktop user. Last weekend - slowly coming to the realization that Linux can really satisfy all my personal needs (including gaming that supports DLL injection) - I thought I'd like to see how feasible this would now be for the kind of end-user that I encounter as customers and friends, family members etc.
Having chosen CachyOS for myself a lot of my needs are now met brilliantly by the AUR, but of course I don't see this being a realistic proposal for an end-user. Flatpaks on the other hand I am now (and previously through my Steam Deck) encountering as a super straightforward way of covering a lot of ground in terms of the kinds of apps people may need, and having them remain usable across system upgrades and such. I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but with Flathub I feel that there's not just everything there that probably covers 95% of non-tech-savvy people's needs, there's even stuff in there that you can't get anywhere else with a simple install button. Like a youtube-dl UI for example.
Anyways this isn't even the story I'm trying to tell, sorry for the tangent. So I thought if I'm ever going to recommend any distro to someone it's gonna have to be an immutable one, but based on what I just said I'd say any distribution (immutable or not) is going to be dead in the water if it doesn't come with Flatpak support out of the box. And so the choices in terms of popular ones (according to ChatGPT) were VanillaOS and Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. (Personally I use KDE now but I think the most approachable DE is always going to be Gnome hands down unless you're talking outdated hardware.)
So I set up VanillaOS in a VM, latest ISO from their website, went through the installer, all went fine until the reboot where I was basically just met by a lengthy splash screen and then some GTK error saying it failed to launch or whatever and then the screen just remains black indefinitely. Obviously this isn't supposed to happen, it's probably something to do with my virtualized setup, but if there's any chance of this happening on the physical machine of a person in need of a digital revolution in their life then this is certainly not what I'm going to recommend to them.
Next up, Fedora Silverblue. Went through the installer, the Fedora one is already a great starting point in terms of simplicity. Rebooted into a working Desktop Environment, so already winning on that front. I had one minor problem there where the last step of the Initial Setup process would just hang if I wanted it to enable Third party sources straightaway. If I left that off I could finish and finally get to my Desktop. Then I would open the Gnome "Software" app and it would basically ask the same thing in a more convoluted manner but basically that means there's a second "chance" to enable third party sources without having to find something in a settings menu. It's a little more fussy than if the checkbox had just worked on the Initial Setup but I guess I could see many people work through this if I told them "don't check that last checkbox and then check it in the Software app".
It's weird that both avenues I tried came up with problems that seem way too on the nose to be overlooked. Or who knows what factored into those problems, but really they shouldn't even be within the realm of possibility. For a setup process to yield a black screen or hang itself if the wrong checkbox is clicked are the kind of things that (imho) are going to define when the "Year of the Linux Desktop" meme will stop being a meme. If you can give me an immutable Linux with Flatpak support out of the box which can be booted on a SecureBoot enabled computer and which will reliably install to a working Desktop then we're talking. For now, my recommendation is Fedora Silverblue. Slap that onto a USB-Stick and you have a somewhat attainable Linux installer that mere mortals can make use of.
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You're both being silly. Ones a gatekeeper, ones a name caller
Want to know what's wrong with Linux? The community.
Nobody is gatekeeping. One of us is asserting that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
The features being requested do not come for free. Someone has to sink the time into doing the work.
So, in an argument between people doing the work and people insisting someone else do the work for them, but it must be to the specifications of the armchair quarterbacks... well... I've got bad news about the things the non-paying non-coders want.
You can either pay money or pay time, but nobody cares about the freeloaders demanding things without offering any kind of compensation.
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Nobody is gatekeeping. One of us is asserting that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
The features being requested do not come for free. Someone has to sink the time into doing the work.
So, in an argument between people doing the work and people insisting someone else do the work for them, but it must be to the specifications of the armchair quarterbacks... well... I've got bad news about the things the non-paying non-coders want.
You can either pay money or pay time, but nobody cares about the freeloaders demanding things without offering any kind of compensation.
" the day I start caring about what non-contributers think .."
Be sure not to wear your actual gate keeping opinion on Your sleeve if you want to deny them .
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By that logic I should demand to get payed for testing your "free" software in real environment
Not testing, using.
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My concern is we are solving a wrong problem from the beginning.
GNU/Linux is an OS designed by hackers for hackers(at least in my age). The target users should be admin, not end users like grandma. That's why Linux desktop is never mainstream despite our community put so much effort on the user experience (but the effort has not wasted)
Before you yell at me, on the other hand, android (shipped with Linux kernel) has a great success because it's dummy proof design. Even a 2 years old can mess around tablets by his/her own. We can invent million theories, argue and hate each other all days. But there is only one fact. The fact is that mainstream users enjoy the fruit of open source is brought by Android from tablets. Unfortunately, tablets' gui toolkit is dominated by big corps.
When do we start to put focus on gui toolkit for tablets? We did try, but far away than enough. When do we able to admit new generation use tablets way more than desktop? Seeing the open source communities keep heading the wrong direction make me sad.
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I've tried PopOS 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS and 25.04.
PopOS mostly worked but almost none of my games worked, they acted like they weren't being hardware accelerated by my GPU when they launched at all, and every time I tried to update the driver the install process hard-locked my system and when I rebooted it it came back up with no video driver at all. I was finally able to get one driver version to work, after doing about 10-15 install/reboot/unfuck cycles (the 555-server closed source driver.) I tried a couple versions of the open source drivers and they didn't work either. I also had this weird issue with (I think it was) pipewire where my sound would cut out at random and the only way to get it back was to go into the sound control panel and toggle between speakers and headset repeatedly. I noticed this especially when joining a voice channel in discord, but it would just happen out of the blue too.
Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS installed fine but whenever it boots the monitor goes into standby with a no-signal notice. The system seems to be running, ctrl+alt+del reboots it, but I can't even us ctrl+F2-6 to get a curses terminal where theoretically the video drivers shouldn't matter at all? When I tried to install 25.04 (on the assumption that it would have a newer video driver) I booted on the USB key and even the installer didn't work, same issue: monitor goes no-signal.
In case it matters, my specs are:
Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9GHz 8-core
Gigabyte Vision OC 12 RTX3060 w/12GB VRAM
32GB DDR4-3200 RAM
Multiple SSDs, some SATA, some NVMe in M.2 slots, but I've only ever installed linux on my BPX Pro 1TB NVMe drive that's ~4-5 years old.Okay, so I'm assuming with Pop you used the nvidia driver edition which meant it loaded using that. It's possible that Ubuntu tried using nouveau and failed to work I guess but I think I need to know more. Tell me about how you are connected to your monitor. Display port or hdmi? Do you have a docking station?
Were both installs using Wayland, xorg or dont know?
It's interesting that Pop installed and showed everything but Ubuntus later version didn't because Pop is based on Ubuntu and theoretically has most of the same drivers. I've experienced it not working exactly the same before but yeah, that's odd.
Does your computer use secure boot and was it on at the time you tried installing Pop, and Ubuntu?
Was anything above the usb in the boot priority during the Ubuntu installation? If the screen was unresponsive and the device rebooted using Ctrl,Alt,Del then how do you know that was ubuntu?
Do you have a spare device such as a laptop around with an Ethernet port?
What other distros have you tried and have you ever used Linux Mint? It's my GOTO for anyone new to linux (including myself).
Sorry that's a lot of questions but I think more information could be very useful.
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I've been a "heavy" user(/admin) of Linux in the server space for about 12 years now, but only recently through a new employment opportunity have I become a daily Linux desktop user. Last weekend - slowly coming to the realization that Linux can really satisfy all my personal needs (including gaming that supports DLL injection) - I thought I'd like to see how feasible this would now be for the kind of end-user that I encounter as customers and friends, family members etc.
Having chosen CachyOS for myself a lot of my needs are now met brilliantly by the AUR, but of course I don't see this being a realistic proposal for an end-user. Flatpaks on the other hand I am now (and previously through my Steam Deck) encountering as a super straightforward way of covering a lot of ground in terms of the kinds of apps people may need, and having them remain usable across system upgrades and such. I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but with Flathub I feel that there's not just everything there that probably covers 95% of non-tech-savvy people's needs, there's even stuff in there that you can't get anywhere else with a simple install button. Like a youtube-dl UI for example.
Anyways this isn't even the story I'm trying to tell, sorry for the tangent. So I thought if I'm ever going to recommend any distro to someone it's gonna have to be an immutable one, but based on what I just said I'd say any distribution (immutable or not) is going to be dead in the water if it doesn't come with Flatpak support out of the box. And so the choices in terms of popular ones (according to ChatGPT) were VanillaOS and Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. (Personally I use KDE now but I think the most approachable DE is always going to be Gnome hands down unless you're talking outdated hardware.)
So I set up VanillaOS in a VM, latest ISO from their website, went through the installer, all went fine until the reboot where I was basically just met by a lengthy splash screen and then some GTK error saying it failed to launch or whatever and then the screen just remains black indefinitely. Obviously this isn't supposed to happen, it's probably something to do with my virtualized setup, but if there's any chance of this happening on the physical machine of a person in need of a digital revolution in their life then this is certainly not what I'm going to recommend to them.
Next up, Fedora Silverblue. Went through the installer, the Fedora one is already a great starting point in terms of simplicity. Rebooted into a working Desktop Environment, so already winning on that front. I had one minor problem there where the last step of the Initial Setup process would just hang if I wanted it to enable Third party sources straightaway. If I left that off I could finish and finally get to my Desktop. Then I would open the Gnome "Software" app and it would basically ask the same thing in a more convoluted manner but basically that means there's a second "chance" to enable third party sources without having to find something in a settings menu. It's a little more fussy than if the checkbox had just worked on the Initial Setup but I guess I could see many people work through this if I told them "don't check that last checkbox and then check it in the Software app".
It's weird that both avenues I tried came up with problems that seem way too on the nose to be overlooked. Or who knows what factored into those problems, but really they shouldn't even be within the realm of possibility. For a setup process to yield a black screen or hang itself if the wrong checkbox is clicked are the kind of things that (imho) are going to define when the "Year of the Linux Desktop" meme will stop being a meme. If you can give me an immutable Linux with Flatpak support out of the box which can be booted on a SecureBoot enabled computer and which will reliably install to a working Desktop then we're talking. For now, my recommendation is Fedora Silverblue. Slap that onto a USB-Stick and you have a somewhat attainable Linux installer that mere mortals can make use of.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Keep in mind you choose basically uncommon niche distributions. Go to distrowatch and choose one of the top 5 or so and use the distro repos and security updates. No flatpack is not needed for a well supported distro. That is especially true for one of the common Debian based distros.
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The fact that Linux still sucks for regular users after all this time is infuriating. What the hell have people even been working on all this time??
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You're both being silly. Ones a gatekeeper, ones a name caller
Want to know what's wrong with Linux? The community.
Yeah, you don't pay for software, you pay for support that won't insult you. Seeking support for FOSS stuff is like running a gauntlet of people who insist you're too stupid to use it.
If we want normies to use FOSS, the community needs to stop saying normies don't deserve FOSS.
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The fact that Linux still sucks for regular users after all this time is infuriating. What the hell have people even been working on all this time??
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeaaahh, but does it though?
I've put loads of regular users on Linux and on average they have less issues than they had with windows
That is ignoring the installation. Linux install is download iso, burn it on USB, boot computer with said USB, run the install program, go through the 5-6 pages which takes about 15 minutes, reboot and the machine is done.
Windows 11 install is downloading ISO, burn it on USB, boot computer with said USB and then the boot up immet fails with this vague error. Spend a good hour on Internet searches to find that it's some bios setting which is fine for Linux, but whatever. Make setting, reboot USB! Setup now crashes again on other gauge error. Spend another 4 hours on sraxhes only to find out that windows iso burning requires a special windows only burning program that will "fix" it and is totally not done on purpose to sabotage Linux users, but fine, were only 5 hours in and still have to start so boot up a VM in Linux, find that usb burner somewhere, download and install that, then download the iso again, burn it, dump it again in the machine and presto, er have an installer, yay!
Go through the pages, and more pages and more crap and install this sponsored content and watch ads and now you need an account at Microsoft and more pages and do you love me? Please let me know that you love me, more feedback because I'm Microsoft and I need feedback and now do you want these games that you hate, and you must install office you will love it even though you'd rather commit sepuku, and a fucking hour of clicking a thousand times later, windows is finally installed ..?
Seriously, if I say that installing Linux was ten times easier than windows, it would be the understatement of the year.
In it's general use, nobody will run into weird shit like they do on windows and to top it off, you got no issues with viruses, no ads nor spyware in the operating system itself, and shit just works.
Yeah, Linux has bugs, just like windows, but the experience is ten times better, I'll die happily and proud on that hill
