linuxmemes

It'll probably be 2025, when adoption hits 5% a few months before Windows 10 support ends. The 5% will make people take Linux more seriously when looking for alternatives to Windows 10, which will increase adoption even more, which will cause hardware and software providers to offer better Linux support, which will just cause the whole thing to snowball.

I use Linux myself, but my work laptop they gave me is windows. I can honestly say that I believe in near future the average Linux experience is going to be smoother than windows. Because I cannot believe how insanely annoying windows 11 is. It's really not good. And modern Linux has more than good enough software and hardware compatibility.

But of course it's gonna take a long while before Linux overtakes windows because social inertia. And that's not gonna change easily because there is no humongous international corporation that spends billions every year to get their Linux based OS pre-installed on almost every new computer.

i doubt the average user even understands what an operating system means and they'll just go with thatever it came with

it's interesting they call it windows subsystem for linux

- oh, so it's a subsystem for Linux?

- no, it's a windows subsystem

- ...for Linux?

- kind of, I guess

WSL is the best thing that’s ever happened to windows

WSL is great but the NT kernel was/is more important, then userspace GPU drivers (which Linux still lacks), then WSL.

People now in their 20s don't realize how utterly bad Win9x and then the first consumer grade NT-based WinXP were (and those older may have forgotten). Win7, 10, and 11 are paradise by comparison. These days I can cope with Windows. I don't love it but it's not a daily cause of anger like the Windows dark ages. Heck, winget even makes software installation bearable.

Yeah I honestly legit enjoyed my fond time with old Windows machines back when they were fun and user-oriented instead of the user-exploitative SAAS monsters they are now.

Win10 wasn't even SO bad as everyone says...well, until recently when they started forcing Microsoft Accounts on install and harass you with their ads every 3 forced updates. Ugh.

Now they're on the Ai bandwagon? Yeah they're real small in my rearview mirror now.

I think it's just a different landscape now, and I'm glad Linux was there to jump to after all these companies started losing their collective minds.

i have been lucky with all my computers and peripherals, everything worked out of the box. but there's a weird issue in our household, none of the windows machines can connect or stay connected to our wifi but all phones and linux machines have no issues...

What brand? In my experience Linux is very persnickety about USB Wifi/Bluetooth adapters.

When I was buying mine a couple years back I had several failures before finding some kind of master list of supported devices.

I dont have the list anymore, but everything I bought was TP-Link cause TP-Link appeared very frequently in the list from what i recall.

Based dad

XP was totally a wild time, to Dad's credit though! hahaha

It was that funky era of needing like 4 different anti malware programs, and downloading game patches from various hopefully-trusty file hosts, or nabbing the suspiciously convenient "Linkin-Park-Meteora-FULL_ALBUM.exe" off of Kazaa which would promptly rootkit your whole system.

Routinely running Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG, and CCleaner to combat constantly-reinstalling spyware.

Heck, I consider myself kinda smart but I still had Bonzi Buddy for a while! ...I mean, c'mon, funnee purpl monke. Who could resist?

Like wow, now that I think back on it, you really needed a bit of "street smarts" back then. Nowadays security has gotten a lot better and one can get away with just "Not downloading weird Russian Web3 games off the dark web" and they'll usually be relatively fine. Lol.

TL;DR: Windows XP was compatible with Bonzi Buddy, Mandriva was definitely a more secure choice, seeing as it couldn't run Bonzi Buddy unless you were determined with WINE maybe?

... It's cool you got introduced to Linux so early. Cool dad. :)

If you send me a message on matrix or a dm here I can help you with that unlimited no strings attached, I have over 10 years of experience and am very free!

Fair disclosure, I personally run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, BUT...

Honestly for this situation I think Linux Mint might be your on-ramp. It's very familiar from a user experience perspective from someone coming from Windows, and everything can be done with GUI apps.

It updates the entire system smoothly through an "app store" so it stays nice and secure. "Cinnamon" is also a highly attractive and smooth desktop environment.

I've switched a few people to it who were sick of Windows on older machines, but NOT computer people at all, and they've enjoyed it a lot! The nicest thing is it will feel like your computer again, not like you're leasing it from Microsoft.

Don't try and "completely switch over" in one go.

Look up how to try Linux in a virtual machine on your existing setup (so you don't have to risk anything!) and just try it and play around with installing and using it.

An old laptop or something is also a great way to try it out.

You can always dual-boot if you want. I sure did for a while until Win10 started BSODing for no discernable reason, and refused to let me "refresh this PC" because "Sorry, can't. Goodbye."

I still have it, just in case, but it's been most of the year since I've even bothered logging into it.

If you game: you'll want Heroic Launcher for your GoG/EA stuff, and Steam of course, and maybe Bottles to run your old CD/DVD games maybe. :)

Sometimes things take a little tweaking, but Mint's community is fantastic and helpful. You really will start to learn a lot about computers just by using Linux a little and trying things, while Windows makes every effort to hide things from you. ("wE'rE gEtTiNg ThInGs ReAdY" who's "we"?!)

As you start to get comfortable with it, it will grow with you. You can start trying to get the hang of the terminal, or jump to another distro once you learn why you might prefer to.

But you really can't go wrong just trying Mint out. It's overall just a pleasant OS.

ProTip: You'll be asked about a file system when you install any distro. I spent COUNTLESS HOURS on researching this question. BTRFS can be a bit of an advanced file system, but if you just "set it and forget it", it has the ability to take incremental snapshots without taking a ton of space! So if something really goes south, you can use an app called "Timeshift" to just roll back.

This is great for your root drive / partition, but I wouldn't suggest it for your home folder. :)

(Just like Windows rollback used to do, but...more reliable lol)

Lol sorry for the ramble but I hope this might help you feel a little less lost at the grocery store. ;)

You could try OpenSUSE, it has Yast2 GTK GUI control panel for everything, no command line needed. Assuming CLI is what you find troublesome.

And GUI package manager