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this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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There's always some post in here saying for people to use Linux. I find an admonishment to be pretty hollow, so I'll share my recent experience installing a Linux distribution rather than simply saying it's something people should do.
I installed one of the many Debian variants. Getting the installation media is certainly going to be a challenge for casual users. Otherwise, it was easy. It walked through the steps. It was different from installing windows, but I felt it was no more difficult. I am well versed in this stuff, but I feel like nothing in the installation process would be a problem for a casual computer user.
It offered several desktops programs at the login screen. This could likely throw off a lot of people. However, if you just logged in and ignored that you might never even know there were different options. The default was KDE. Everything worked. Nothing needed to be tweaked. This is in starck contrast to Windows, where once you get past installation, you need to get rid of a ton of crap it throws at you. The Windows 10 start menu is an unbelievable collection of weird boxes and shit and the task bar is similarly full of junk. The KDE start menu is just a menu. The task bar has your tasks. There's nothing to do.
I did try Cinnamon too. I prefer the simplicity. I don't think casual users are going to care.
Overall, I think for casual users, it's actually easier to set up and use than Windows. Getting installation media prepared is not something most people are going to readily do, but I think it's the same with Windows. They have the advantage there of having manufacturors install it. Otherwise, whatever issues there have been installing Linux distributions in the past aren't there now. Conversely, installing and especially the configuration after installation is much harder on Windows than it used to be. If you're slightly tech savvy, give Linux a try.
You're right to point out the difficulty of preparing installation media.
Also, for the average person, friction will probably happen during installation - possibly having to circumvent safe boot to install and run a new OS (knowing how to enter the bios, feeling comfortable playing around in the bios, knowing how to even disable safe boot once you're there, not exposing your device to security vulnerabilities by having safe boot disabled), the need for an existing understanding of how partitions work and how the partitions are structured on your specific device in order to test the waters with a dual boot setup on a drive that has data/functionality you want to preserve. Needing to know the 'what' and 'why' of swap, /home, and /root partitions. These points all came up on a recent installation, and I'm sure they would scare some people off.
Installation will be easy if you have the time, motivation, existing knowledge and/or bandwidth for a learning curve. But not everybody has that.
And that's just installation, to say nothing of the actual use of the desktop environment, which is not as intuitive as its often claimed to be.
I installed mint recently and I kept the windows partition because I thought I would need to dual boot a lot but I haven't launched windows in the past couple of months
I have a laser HP all-in-onr that I thought I'd have issues with but it worked automatically with the printing and scanner app, not even in windows it works so strangely
My only issue right now were self inflicting, because I created a shared NTFS partition to keep media a torrents and it sometimes give privilege errors after a bit update (it wouldn't happen if it was ext3 from what I've been reading)
My wife needs to use the computer occasionally and I think she had more issues with windows 11 than mint, the only "issue" was that she was trying to find Microsoft word instead of openoffice
i just set up virtualbox so i could install windows on it and use some simulation programs i need for school projects. what an unbelievable fight it was. first i can't download the .iso file because their website blocks me. fortunately i found an old w10 iso file on my external. got pissed when i realized i need to use edge to download firefox. takes like 2 hours to get everything adjusted the way i like and all crap out of my way. get MAS, damn thing killed windows boot somehow. start all over again. same thing again, only then i realized it was the activation that kills it. guess i have to use light mode. oh and setting up onedrive and office apps is a whole story for another day.
edit: it wasn't MAS, it was just failed windows updates. booted up with low resolution enabled from safemode settings in repair menu...
wait what?? downloading rufus and putting the installation media on it is too much for casual users (by this i mean fresh-off-of-windows)????
Yeah it is. Most computers come with windows pre-installed so most people never do this kind of thing.
And there's also things people need to be careful of. Like wiping all out all of their cherished photos by formatting the entire drive. Considering that casual users probably shouldn't attempt to do this. Not trying to gatekeep or anything, but there is potential for data loss for a user that doesn't back up their data properly, which is common for casual users.
isnt one of the first steps listed in any 'move to linux' tutorial is 'back up your data first'
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Yeah, I really should switch to Mint or something
I switched to Kubuntu (KDE Plasma with Wayland turned on) and it's absolutely wonderful.
Mint with Cinnamon is great if you like the start menu style of Windows 7/10. Generally speaking Linux distros are mostly the same under the hood.
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mint or something with kde.
There are a ton of options. Plenty of people (me included) wouldn't recommend Mint, but some will. Everyone has their preferences and tolerance for certain things. The most important step is to just switch. You can always move distros.
Personally, for a new user, I'd say Fedora with KDE is a good choice. I use the gaming version of Garuda, which just comes with some extra stuff for gaming you'll probably need anyway, which you can do manually or just grab this. Regardless, KDE is probably what you want coming from Windows. It behaves similarly to Windows, but is very customizable. Other DEs have other benefits though, so there will always be other recommendations.
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Switch to Linux, get it over with, get rid of the Microsoft bullshit
Screenshots here: https://www.windowslatest.com/2024/09/12/windows-10s-start-menu-design-is-changing-to-make-room-for-microsoft-365/
TL:DR: There is barely any difference at all. They added some account manager, but in general the start menu looks how it looked before.
Apparently it nags you if you don't have a 365 account. So it's just more enshittification.
Yeah, fuck MS and everyone should try to run away as fast as possible, but this isn't the big thing people should be worried about. I literally didn't notice what was different in those screenshots until I read more. Maybe this is done to add things in the future that'll be bad, but it itself isn't. I'd be much more concerned about Recall.
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