this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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I've really gotten rusty on my computer stuff over the years, but it's only made it more clear how openly bad and user-unfriendly Windows is. A day will come when I start leaning into Linux or even Apple (I'm a musician, so may as well).
Apple is just another digital landlord with more glossy stripes. They sell shiny e-waste with high powered chips that act more as state secrets than actual technology. The only way to be free is to use a free operating system such as GNU/Linux and support free software projects.
i wouldnt necessarily say user unfriendliness, its more privacy unfriendliness.
part of the reason why people use the industry major stuff is because their basic needs is covered for the most part.
While im enjoying my partial transition to Linux, I would not necessarily call it user-friendly, despite me being technically inclined. How i perceive it, windows is niche and hardware friendly, but modification unfriendly. Linux is friendly for self customization, but falters at times on getting what some people would consider very basic things (e.g how long it took to get monitor features working. like how long it took mixed resolutions working. Hell barely any distro yet is HDR ready) which is why Linux is a game of finding the right hardware to make your experience less of a pain rather than the reverse.
There has to be a niche for pre-built Linux rigs where all the configuration issues are solved and it just works out of the box. That's what's needed IMO to get Linux to been taken seriously outside of a small group of techies.
I personally see it like this:
Linux is REALLY good for people who do very basic as fuck shit, basically chromebook adjacent. if all you do is use a browser and use web apps to do work (e.g google docs, google sheets). Linux is amazing. Your hardware never ages and slows down because there isn't major additions to the OS to bog down the system down the line.
its also amazing for people who are extremely technically inclined, because you have a lot of tools to fix or create a lot of shit, and modify stuff due to its open sourceish nature.
where it's not exactly ideal are for people in the middle. If you use it for specific programs (e.g youre a gamer, you mess with hardware drivers and worry whether your game will even run on linux. Youre an artist, you have to use alternatives to adobe suite. youre a streamer, you have to worry about which hardware you buy because not all off the shelf streaming hardware works on linux, list goes on) then you play this game of merry go round to get something working. Sometimes theres an easy solution, sometimes you have to jump through several hoops.
That first group is where I see an untapped opportunity. If someone can build a sleak machine that runs Mint or Ubuntu and boots into a good GUI, has Firefox ready to go, LibreOffice or similar, etc. then it could compete with the likes of Chrome books or all of those "budget" laptops that feel like ass to use.
No ads, no Spyware, no bloat, no subscriptions. Your grandma's new favorite laptop. And without needing a Microsoft or Google license maybe it can undercut the existing models on price?
There are.a bunch of companies that do this already. System76 is probably what you're looking for.
I’m a Linux person. Daily drivers for work and for play are both Linux, no dual boot, including my gaming setup. That said, I have a little Mac mini that I got for pretty cheap and keep off the internet as much as possible. It’s for audio production. I just can’t reach the quality of plug-in support on Linux that I can on OS X or Windows. It’s not even close. The compatibility layer stuff just isn’t there yet.