this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I've been using Linux for so long that it's hard for me to give an approximation of what a new user might find challenging, but I think that something important to remember is that computers are hard. I've spent my entire life studying computers and I'm still learning every day.
Most people grew up with Windows and learned how to use it over the years, but remember that it took years, and most of them still aren't very good at it. Linux requires different knowledge than Windows, but it doesn't inherently mean that it's harder. If everyone grew up using Linux we wouldn't hear about "how hard Linux is" but instead about "how hard Windows is".
At least when something is broken in Linux, it probably has a cause (usually the user) and solution, and a way to debug what happened. When something breaks in Windows you've got about 3 things you can try before the solution is to reinstall.
As for solutions, I don't know if there's a certified pathway into Linux - I think installing something like Linux Mint and just using it like a computer would go a long way towards getting you comfortable with how Linux works without forcing you to study. Once you're comfortable using the GUI, you can take a peek behind the scenes at your leisure - there is documentation everywhere for everything on Linux.
From the point of view of a lifetime Windows guy, I have to disagree with this. Unless you have a malware problem (where it can be exceedingly difficult for the average user to know whether they've gotten everything out), almost all failures of Windows in the modern age are the result of hardware failures. If your Windows 7 or newer computer blue screens, it's very likely a bad piece of hardware, occasionally a bad driver. The OS itself is quite solid.
In my experience and perspective, I've found the documentation for Linux things to be of varying quality and usually for an audience who already knows their way around Linux. Admittedly, I haven't had to go looking in quite a while, so maybe that landscape is different today than I am aware of - but when I was looking, I found myself quite frustrated more often than not.
Finally, with Windows, if you really have to, you can pay for support incidents from Microsoft. They're not cheap, but I've found their server and server application support to be reliable. Is there something like that available to a Linux user?
I don't have a ton of experience with Windows lately, but from trying to troubleshoot family members' PCs, it usually ends up being corrupted drivers or bricked bootloaders/failed updates.
As for documentation, the Arch wiki (and Gentoo wiki, Debian wiki, etc. etc.) is usually a good source of information for general topics, but there's also decades of forums and stackexchange posts on various problems if you're just using a search engine. Every program also has extensive official
manpages on how to use them (example), and you can even use something liketldrto shorten the man pages into something usable right now (example). If you're willing to read documentation, everything you use on Linux probably has a manual behind it.With regards to paying for support, it's not really my wheelhouse but to my understanding that's what companies like Canonical, SUSE, and Red Hat offer.
| If your Windows 7 or newer computer blue screens, it's very likely a bad piece of hardware, occasionally a bad driver. The OS itself is quite solid.
Okay, really, though? Windows is solid and good because it doesn't kernel panic much? Who's getting kernel panics out of Linux without faulty hardware or doing something risky? I think you've equivocated a bit here: either we're comparing kernel to kernel or we're comparing userland to userland. You're comparing Windows itself to Linux userland or using some kernel even freakier than the weird patched-up stuff I like to play with.
I feel like discussion of this topic is plagued by double standards and shifting goalposts :-\ Apples to oranges comparisons, refusals to even consider things just because they're 'foreign,' blaming "Linux" for things that really aren't its fault (neither in the OS sense nor in the broader sense) ... including of course (sometimes) turning the discussion into an "us versus them" thing. Software on Linux has iffy documentation! ... But the same software exists on Windows, or the equivalent(s) is(/are) just as bad. Linux kernel documentation is scary or weird! ... But no one relevant is touching it anyway and wasn't touching Windows kernel anything either. The UI is different! Yeah, so's the new one on every version of Windows you get forced into. Casual Windowsers all hate it every time but somehow "Linux" is unusable because they won't learn a new UI unless Microsoft tells them to.
You can buy (a licence to, if MS likes you lots, borrow) a copy of Windows and apparently buy support for it too... yeah okay, but that's business, not a software issue. There are enterprise distros and software packages with all' that business-type support, unless they've all vanished? That's how that stuff works, no?
I'm not demanding anyone switch and distro hop over the course of months to find a distro they love but I'd really prefer to see some more fairness discussing the matter. "Linux" is never going to be "usable on desktop" if it's always just the enemy to be spurned and derided.
(Also, sorry this got so wordy. It's not meant as a diatribe, just I feel like there's a lot to say and I'm not saying much of it 🤷♀)
TLDR: It's unfair or outright dishonest to blame an apple for not being tart enough and hide that your actual standard is "is it an orange."
Windows auto-recovers from almost any issue the average user might encounter. It cannot be understated just how hard it is for an application or driver to break modern Windows. It goes much farther than just fixing a kernel panic. It will reset to a serviceable state for almost anything you can think of ( e.g. bad display settings, borked application install) and even in the worst situation will still give you some sort of GUI and try to walk you through the problem.
Linux sort of just gives up and lets you shoot yourself in the foot if you really ask it to. It's up to you to then figure out how to fix things and that usually involves diving into the terminal. But even ignoring that, a lot of Linux applications have a serious UI/UX problem. I cannot count how many applications just do things like throw a config file at you even for common tasks and expect you to read a doc page in order to figure it out. I have better things to do than read yet another wall of text just to do something simple like remapping key bindings (e.g. mpv). That would be an unthinkable thing to do to a Windows user.
Linux developers seem to want to develop software for other developers. Windows developers develop software for average people. The fragmentation of 1000s of Linux distros, each with their own quirks only make matters worse by further complicating where and how to get help.
When Windows 3.1 came out I had a hard time understanding any of it and never left my cozy DOS CLI with its Norton Commander.
Granted I was still a child, but one might think that mouse-first and colorfulness would have driven my curiosity. Instead I switched when Windows 95 arrived.
The average person would fail on step 0 of Installing the OS. In fact 90% of the problem could be attributed to Linux distros not coming preinstalled on PCs sitting in big box stores.
All of Linux's success stories for the average user (Android, Steam Deck, Chrome book) have one thing in common. They are low cost, simple, purpose built for very specific tasks with a bunch of exclusive games/software that people want to use. We need to start looking at PCs almost like they are highly moddable game consoles. It should come with the expectation that most users don't want to leave the comfort of the walled garden.