Linux

The sky-high barrier to entry was a MAJOR problem for me.

When I was seriously considering installing Linux, the first issue I ran into was the lack of tutorials - or, more accurately, the bewildering array of tutorials. You couldn’t just search the term “Linux tutorial” and expect an answer that was specific enough to your case to actually be useful. There was (and is) a wide variety of distributions, each with their own unique behaviors and requirements.

If you were looking for help with the Windows or Mac OS, all you needed was the OS version number, plus maybe some basic hardware info, and most of the time you were good. With Linux, answering even the simplest question required a focused, concentrated effort, and there was still a decent chance a beginner wouldn’t have enough background knowledge to understand the answer. Generally speaking, beginner-friendly tutorials were often too broad to be useful, and specific tutorials tended to assume knowledge that a beginner didn’t have.

Unless you had someone standing by who was willing to be your Linux Yoda, starting out was very difficult. I didn’t know such a person, so I just gave up.

Granted, this was several years ago, and things may have changed. I’m speaking from my own limited experience.

The Linux community doesn't understand what "just works" really means.

Whether windows or mac, I plug my machine to the docking station, and it just works.

With Linux, every day a different problem. Out of the blue, screens just stop working. Resolutions change. Every restart different behavior. Zero consistency.

I'm not 17 anymore... I don't have the time to keep tweaking. I need to be productive.

So what do I do? I SSH to a Linux machine whose desktop environment I don't wanna see, and code remotely. Most productive setting.

You asked. Here's the answer.

Because people like to do stuff using a graphical UI but since that varies drastically from one distro to another all the instructions and support is reliant on doing stuff from the command line. That almost was solved by Ubuntu becoming ubiquitous but then they lost the plot.

Because I like to play videogames.

That's it. That's all that keeps me back. I can't play Destiny 2 on linux and I'm an addict with a need.

Watch my dad use a any computer if you want to see frustration.

Many (most?) Windows users find Windows to be frustrating. I find Gentoo to be extremely frustrating a lot of times. Frustration doesn't really drive people away from tools that are necessary to them.

It is hard to adapt Windows habits to Linux for some cases. E.g. you sometimes use Adobe Photocrap for editing photos. Reasonable that ppl want to use what they know, so they will try to use it with WINE and obviously will fail. „Linux sucks, it cant run the properitary shit subscription software, going back to Windows!“ if someone really depends on such software then yes stay the fuck with Windows. For most other tasks there is a solution available. And for the fear of terminal: I bet most users never ever have to see or use it once since there are GUI tools available for such crucial tasks like updating. Mint does a great job in terms of windows like experience for beginners but also is a full fledged GNU/Linux distro. But yeah if you want to change to Linux it is not just the desktop that changes, it is a whole philosophy that opens up a new world if you are curious.

Linux gives you freedom.

Freedom lets you break stuff.

If, like Windows or MacOSyou just use it as intended by official support, it should be fine. If you start just adding everything and anything from anyone you're gonna break stuff.

Other stuff is made to be idiot proof, Linux is not.

Simple tasks can take you way more time than needed. For example, I have an old laptop under Bunsenlabs (based on Debian with Openbox). The other day, I wanted to connect a secondary monitor. I wasn't expected the nightmare I had to setup this thing. The layout was totally off with a dead space between the two screens where the cursor disappeared and ArandR was very rough to use. I ended up editing txt file if I remember correctly.

I absolutely love Linux but this kind of thing happen quite regularly to be honest.

I put Linux Mint on my grandmothers old computer because the hardware was preventing it from upgrading from Windows 7 without massive slowdown. Back when she was using windows (albeit windows 7) she would call me every week with a new issue. Since installing mint she very rarely has issues and whatever issues she does run into can usually be solved very easily over the phone. I would say that Linux is what you make it. If you want to copy and paste commands from sketchy guides, things are going to break. But if you just use it like my grandmother does, browsing the web and writing emails, nothing can really go wrong

My first foray into Linux was Mint on an old laptop. Then on my desktop I can't quite remember what I used, but I stumbled across the rolling release versus point release divide in distros. I think I wanted a more up-to-date PHP version at the time, and debian/ubuntu were both slow to update to cutting edge had me jump to Arch, at least for development purposes. That was 2017, gaming on Linux wasn't really great back then.

I ended up dual-booting Arch on my desktop, and for all the supposed complexity, if you can read a manual properly, and work through the guides on the wiki… it actually leaves you with a better understanding of how Linux is put together. So long as you're aware of what commands you're putting in.

If I were to compare it to anything, then it's the same sort of difference between building your PC for yourself (Arch), against getting something custom built (ubuntu) versus getting a prebuilt system (Windows). And you know, since migrating to Arch I haven't actually reinstalled once—people who do that are, and this may be controversial, but they're doing it wrong. If you fuck up majorly, like running rm -rf / then sure, you'll have to.

A tip for using the terminal, when you're trying to discover things, you can use tab completion to speed things up. You don't have to type entire commands, or entire directories/filenames. Of course it won't give you any arguments for a script or program, that is what man <command> is for, or a quick search online.

Only a few weeks ago did I finally scrub Windows from my system, I'm never going back, and if I really need it… I'll look into a virtual machine.

Contrary to what is often claimed Linux may in fact be better for people with realtively simple needs. I basically use Linux to run a browser and Steam and don't run into many problems on a day to day basis.

College for computers where I got exposed to Linux, used to all about windows but it changed so much over the years, I just can't do windows anymore.

I've been running Mint for years, I had a box on 17 until it went end of life. My plex media server or samba server that thing giving me issues, I believe some version of Lubuntu or something that went end of life, I managed to upgrade the OS in place without wiping it but the operating system has done change ways it handles static IP addresses, the box has 3 nic ports and I haven't put much effort into figuring it out.

Well, why should the average end-user use Linux, actually? If your answer is privacy, taking control back or something in that general line, you're essentially advocating for a technological solution on the individual level as a solution to what essentially are and always have been political and ideological problems. Expecting that to work out is wishful thinking at best. I have growing suspicions, though, that it's more like a different ideological layer, and in that regard quite akin to making the climate catastrophe about choices of individual consumers (of which they often have very few, actually).

There is some software that it will plain just not run. I moved over to fedora from Windows and was loving it for about 6 months, but I needed CAD software for work that I could just not get to work, no matter what tinkering I did.