this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Fuck Libre Office and Open Office.
I really hate the, "we should all use Linux" mentality and I see it on here a lot. Let me tell someone who barely knows how to send a fucking file over the internet how to fix their broken repository that decided to randomly break during an Linux upgrade.
Linux and Windows do different things in different ways that make sense in both ways for different reasons. Not everyone should hate Windows or vice versa, Linux, because this entire Lemmy community thinks it is superior in every way.
I get pissed off by office as well but you know what it has some pretty damn good features. It works in the cloud it's easy to sync across my decides.
Windows updates break things but at least MS and Windows has a massive catalogue of fixes and ways to go back.
I love Linux but holy mother of fucking God it is an absolute pain in the ass to fix when it breaks and you expect me to tell my Mom to understand that.
No, we should not all be using Linux because Linux does not work for all models needing to be met. I hate to be that aggressive asshole but Jesus Christ I keep seeing this on Lemmy and it's just a god damn stupid fucking statement. Oh and for fucks sake. If I see, "what kind of Linux system are you using that breaks." Dammit, I have literally seen Linux break in the middle of a college classroom demonstration of just installing it and wouldn't you know it just like Windows it isn't perfect. Get off your high horse people. You don't know something more than the average person because you use Linux or Windows or hell even Unix.
People who "barely knows how to send a fucking file over the internet" can't fix shit on Windows either. I spent a lot more time fixing my mom's Windows install than her Ubuntu.
Small anecdote, roughly in the same line as yours:
As W7 was close to end of life, I asked my mum about it, as her laptop used W7. And after highlighting the privacy nightmare that W10 became, she decided to try Linux out. So I installed Mint in her machine. At the start she asked for help often, but the amount of "pls help" decreased over time. The last time that she asked for help was because she wanted to access "her computer" from her phone, just like I do with mine. (i.e. local network.)
My neighbours though? I often get some spare change from them, by helping them out with their Windows machines. And they're in the same level of tech expertise as my mum, you know, those folks who can download and install a program and not much else.
Linux Mint really impressed me when I decided to try it in a VM earlier this year (was already using fedora in VMs for build environments on a Windows company machine). It installs quickly, runs smoothly, and the updates have been painless.
I like having a terminal open constantly, and learning about technical workings and power user features I may not have known about. However, for non-techie "email and web browsing” use, I would put it in front of my parents no problem. Right out of the box it even looks a bit like windows (cinnamon version, didn’t try others). It even has an “app store” like experience with the software package manager.
If a power user has trouble because they’re used to configuring windows, they can probably learn how to do those settings on a user-friendly Linux distro.
That does not mean it would work for everybody, and that does not mean it won’t break in frustrating ways. It was programmed by humans, after all.
I’m not gonna comment on the Linux portion because you seem quite passionate, but both Libre Office and Open Office are cross platform apps. So they’ll work just fine with your OneDrive / Dropbox / Backblaze / whatever to give you the wonderful fully cloud synced experience on either Windows or Linux.
Linux is just the kernel and infinitely superior to anything Microsoft has ever produced by itself. Stability and usability issues arise from the distribution that is being used, there are many that are tailored for the average consumer and that are just as simple to use as Windows. People like to forget it, but Android also uses the Linux kernel and is the most successful operating system in the world, with the amount of installed instances dwarfing the amount of Microsoft Windows installations.
Chrome/Linux is very easy to use too. Easier than Windows.
Yeah ... No. Ubuntu is way more stable for me than win10. And much lazier to use. This argument was true ten years ago but Ubuntu and friends are really just install and click browser just like most people use Chromebooks
Windows randomly decided to break for me many more times than Ubuntu did for my parents. Every time a sudden new update is pushed on the background, stalling anything I would be doing to a halt, it's a roll of the dice if it will still function properly when it's done.
Sure, and how easy was it to fix those issues?
Usually it is nothing more than either reversing an update or waiting for the next update in Windows.
While in Linux you'd have to re-import the correct repositories through command line and it might still not work, explain that to your parents.
How easy? Not at all. I've had to format the whole computer several times that reversing updates failed. At which point using Linux wouldn't have been any harder.
Poke about in registry, Google problems where the solutions are for the wrong version of windows, wade through driver problems, find that the issue is in a toggle that used to be easy to find in control panel but now is buried under layers of crap
...Waiting with a non-functional computer until the next update?... Really?...
Why would a non-technical person ever need to use 3rd-party repos? Besides that, "reimporting" a repo is just adding 3-5 lines of text to a file, which can be done via gEdit, or, in most cases, through the settings in a distro's package manager UI.
Your mom would do just fine on Mint, and you know it.
Open office and libre office are bad because you don't like linux?
Oh, fuck off with that. I've used Windows since the beginning, and the number of times the solution to a problem is "reinstall the whole marianne" is astounding. I've installed Windows thousands upon thousands of times, just because that was the fastest way to get someone working again than to try to sort that mess of an OS out, with absolutely no real support from the supplier of the OS than a few MVP articles that are utter stabs in the dark 90% of the time.
Your user that can't send a file or fix Linux isn't fixing Windows either, or even reinstalling it. And I'll put an install of Ubuntu for a tech-illiterate person that does 99% of what every tech-illiterate user does on a system up against any Windows install. You know for a fact that install will be brought to its knees in a couple years and need to be blown out, and the Linux user will be merrily using some ancient Linux version a decade later, and it won't run like dogshit.
What broken repository yiu talking about? My mum used Linux for over 10 years and she never saw Windows in her life. Email, YouTube, eBay... Never a problem. I can't even imagine leaving her with Windows.
Who hurt you, Arch Linux?