linuxmemes

RTFM is not a working formula. Because most people skip reading the manual for one simple reason, the manual is hard to read.

I remember my early arch days when asking a question about an issue I'm having was always met with a wikipage I already read but did not understand.

Rather than pushing for a magic manual, the best is to provide sane default or point to tutorials.

I mean, people are gonna bite my head off for this, but most non technical folks are turned off by someone calling them stupid... That's what "RTFM" sounds like. I think there needs to be a culture change to drive adoption, but stuff like the Steam Deck is helping a lot.

I feel like linux demands an understanding of the relationship between hardware and software more than windows does.
If all personal computer users were tech tinkerers like they were in the 70s and 80s, then linux and its distros would basically be the default OS everyone used. But that is not the world we live in. Microsoft saw a world where everyone was a computer user and Windows was designed in a way to support that vision.
Theres nothing inherently wrong with catering to the lowest common denominator, linux apostles just need to understand that not everyone can be uplifted to their level, nor do they want to be - or, even, should be.

Windows users and Linux users are not seeking the same thing from their machines. The common mistake I often see from Linux advocates.

From personal experience, when I was a Windows user, I didn't care (or even know) about privacy, open-source software, nor owning my machine. I didn't care if I had to sign up for a Microsoft account, and I never changed defaults ever (except for my wallpaper). I just wanted the machine to turn-on, work, and play some games.

Why am I bringing this up? Because Linux requires the user care about their machine and defaults. You need to know your architecture, graphics card, and threat-model. You need to know what your apps are called and where they come from. You need to know what tools you need to troubleshoot (and devs will not help you). This is the biggest the pain-point of Linux. Do not succumb to the survivorship bias of RTFM or command-line.

This issue cannot be fixed from simplifying Linux interfaces (though we should do this anyway!). The soul of Linux is adventure, collaboration, and tinkering. To get the most from your machine, you're going to have to interact with several communities. This is what makes Linux great, and frankly I do not think we should kill this for the general public - this is how you get enshittification.

The general public needs to understand that incompetence (being brain-dead) will lead to misery. It is simply the rule of the land. You need to care and you need to collaborate. We should not welcome nor accommodate users that refuse to do this.

Windows is to Linux what McDonald's is to cooking your own food.

I'm probably gonna get hated on for this but here's my story:

About 3 weeks ago I bought a new gaming laptop with no OS with the intention of installing Linux myself and ditching Windows.

I'd read a lot online about how Linux was now competitive with Windows as Linux emulators could run Windows games with a 10-15% boost in performance. I read that it was all a case of finding the right distro and that Linux is much more user friendly and compatible now. So I did a little research, made myself a ventoy boot USB with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Pop, Garuda and Fedora to see which one I liked best.

None of them worked properly. All of them had weird little quirks. Some I could live with, some were completely infuriating. So l did a little tinkering as I was determined not to give in. None of the distros detected my hardware properly, and so I went away found forums with similar issues and I fixed most of them. However, no matter what I tried I could not get the laptop speakers to work. No problem, I thought, I'll be either using headphones or BT to my soundbar (as that worked fine). So having given up on the speaker issue, I downloaded some games. In all of the distros they ran like shit. Sound bugs, laggy game play, some wouldn't play at all. Again, I tried tinkering with the settings, using a different version of proton, different sound drivers, different graphics settings, different commands and programs which might solve the issues. No. Each different distro threw up different issues which I spent hours and researching and experimenting. I tried a few more distros and found new issues which needed more research and more experimenting.

Over the three weeks or so I was trying I became irritable and depressed. I'd spent a lot of money on the laptop and I was unable to use it because no matter what I tried, even with relatively low resource hungry games, they did not run well at all, and even linux itself seemed slow and unresponsive in comparison to what I was used to.

So after hours and hours of climbing the walls and snapping at my wife and neglecting my kid, I downloaded Windows. And everything just works. There are bespoke programs for my graphics card and everything in my steam library runs beautifully with very minimal tinkering. So now I have a dual boot system, windows for games only and Linux for everything else.

I hate that I'm still enthralled to Windows, but seriously, Linux is just not ready for mass adoption. If something doesn't work on Windows , it's usually a case of just downloading the correct driver and Windows normally knows which one you need. If something doesn't work on Linux it's a slog through paragraphs of text which all assume some basic knowledge of coding or Linux's file system or some other jargon, or watching endless YouTube videos and then still getting nowhere. As a working husband and father I just do not have the time to put into it.

Tl;Dr - Windows is much easier than Linux. That's why everyone uses Windows.

Literally had a former co-worker who has taught computer science classes at universities, ran his own PC repair business, and avoids the command line like the plague. Says it feels ancient.

If you're under 30 and read this and have been on the fence about getting good with computers... Just setup a Linux VM and play around with the terminal. You'll be leagues beyond so many active professionals it's scary.

Windows is just as hard as linux, harder even with all the layers of obscurity.

Windows used to be easy. Now, it's so obscure and locked down that only Microsoft can maintain your computer. And they maintain it for their own benefit, at your expense, with mandatory ads and lockouts.

One thing I have noticed a lot of lately is that people just don't want to have to fucking read at all anymore and it kind of is wrecking my faith in humanity. Asking people to read isn't a big ask.

I recently switched to Linux after a lifetime with Windows. Last night I went to install a backup program on my media server but it couldn't see the destination drive. I downloaded a partition manager and it crashed trying to load the external drive. DDG'd the issue, but I couldn't find a clear cause/effect that applied to me. So I downloaded a different partition manager and backup program, and they worked right out of the box. Turns out the non-working apps were written for Gnome and the working apps were written for KDE, (which is my desktop environment). It was a very frustrating half hour, but it pales in comparison to the time I've spent troubleshooting (storage) driver issues in Windows. The point I'm making is, Linux isn't really that hard to learn, it's just unfamiliar and therefore scary. Getting past your fear unlocks a whole new world of wonder and possibilities! 🐧

Make the manual super short, pretty, interactive, unobtrusive and spread it around the system contextually. Then users might “read” it.

Sorry, I love Linux and wish everybody was on it but no way is Windows “just as hard”. Maybe if you want to look behind the curtain and start tinkering Linux is easier but on the face of it I’d say Linux is somewhere around early Windows XP when it comes to usability for a normal person.

I know some of the issue is the manuals themselves are out of date. Ive literally had to have something explained to me via the developers Discord. I hate going to a projects Discord in order to find out crucial info.

Sometimes manuals are in 5 different places so you don't know what applies to your specific system.

I usually try and improve the manuals when I do come across this with a quick PR, when I have time.

I’ve used a Mac since forever. But I started using FOSS apps. Then I created a Hackintosh, until it borked. Then I installed ZorinOS and almost didn’t need to fix the Hackintosh. I did fix it, but Zorin convinced me that Linux is legit and I’m going all in on it.

Linux isn't hard anymore because I have ChatGPT to come up with all the command lines for me. And they work 60% of the time!