That small niche that you are mentioning, I agree with you. But the people who for example turn down Linux because it is difficult, most of the times they would be right.
I know I will get downvoted but bear with me. To the average Andy who has grown up using Windows XP and then 7 and then 10/11, never having to open up a terminal, not dealing with software repositories and just downloading an exe from the web, and just having the most compatible operating system in pretty much any scenario, is more important to them, than the privacy and security snd freedom that you get with Linux, which as they say, with great power, comes great responsibility (and headaches). Yes, I know there’s Linux Mint, but for example something like my new laptops microphone not working with ANY distro because the kernel does not support it yet, that is a Linux issue that is a huge pain in the ass even for an experienced Linux user, let alone a fresh user who has no idea what is going on.
I still think we should push Linux as much as we can because as the market share increases support for Linux will also grow making it a more n more viable option to switch to, but generally Windows users turning down Linux DO have very valid arguments for not wanting to use Linux.
As a long time Linux user, I had a humbling experience when I started using OpenBSD and had to look up all the details like “what is /dev/rsd1c?” or “how do I connect to wifi automatically?” It’s not hard, and it’s right there in the manpages, but it was a little overwhelming figuring out everything. And then I was already used to the unix-like terminology, I can only imagine coming from windows.
I think the key statement there is “has grown up using windows”. Using Linux is no harder than using Windows, and in many scenarios it can even be easier. The smart kids these days are learning Linux first instead of taking a detour through old-school Windows.
Better hardware support will come with more popularity, there are always bugs with any operating system.
I doubt those issues, like the mic not working, are worth having ads in the start menu, candy crush being installed automatically at various times without user consent or being dropped from updates like a hot potato after a few years, even though the hardware is still okayish.
Apropos hardware: Windows is slow AF. It always runs dozens of silly services that waste resources. Now some Linux distros run a lot too (like cups when you don’t have a printer), but for some reason Linux doesn’t eat RAM for breakfast.
oh trust me, it is pretty annoying to not have a working microphone in a day and age where zoom and teams are used at so many work places and/or so many job interviews. Having a dual boot just because of thator using my old laptop and also having to have signed in to my emails and blah blah blah is a major inconvenience that once again,the average Andy who does not care about the privacy or ads, just does not see it worth putting up with.
Listen there will always be case by case scenarios but the fact of the matter is that there are WAY more things that go wrong on desktop Linux compared to Windows. Plus, who the hell is using Windows Server 2016 on their personal computer? Nobody. They are most likely running Windows Home or Windows Pro that came preinstalled on their laptop and it just works out of the box. In my whole life that I have used Windows I have ran into less issues that I had to spend hours searching online fixing the issue than I had to using Linux for the past year (and once again the problems I have been having are kernel dependent not distro dependent). I still use Linux as my main OS for 95% of my tasks because I value the privacy and security and open source nature enough to put up with the troubles of Linux. Preference and tolerance is not ab objective measurement. If Linux was already as easy to use and as compatible as windows, every single Linux user would delete their Windows partition and VMs and Wine wouldn’t need to be a thing.
So considering most everyone who thinks Linux is too hard is going off the state of Linux 10 years ago or longer, I cannot agree with you. “You can possibly have an issue” is not something that even Microsoft’s huge budget can save them from.
I’ve spent 0 minutes trying to fix it, but in my defense, that’s exactly as long as I should have to spend fixing it, and it’s exactly as long as I had to think about it on Windows.
That has as much to do with installing the os yourself vs buying a machine with the os preinstalled… I’ve had plenty of machines where some part or other doesn’t work well or at all because they need drivers that aren’t available for whatever reason…
That sucks. Yeah, there’s a million combinations of hardware out there. I on the other hand installed linux on two pretty ancient laptops and revived them from being too slow to even use with windows, and the builtin web cam worked perfectly on both. /shrug
No one is saying Linux has no challenges, just that the image of it that most people have is outdated. I’ve had issues on windows with some extremely stupid hardware issues myself. Can’t pretend it’s perfect either.
I don’t think anyone is deranged enough to call Windows “perfect”. It’s just the most supported operating system by virtue of being the most widely used operating system. And it will likely stay that way until enough people like us show up in the usage statistics for manufacturers to consider first-class Linux support.
The comment I made originally though doesn’t imply that Linux is anywhere near the most supported. I’m just saying, in like 90% of cases someone who could install and use Windows could do the same with Linux, and many would even prefer it.
You found an example of Linux being a pain, dude I could talk all day about Windows doing the same. The last time I tried to give Windows a chance as a dev machine – WSL would be broken literally every couple of days. It’s a joke of a broken system especially in light of how solid people think it is.
WSL works fine. The only issue I’ve ever had with it pertains to mouse weirdness with SDL, and I had the same exact issue in a level 2 VM due to the way they handle mouse input. I still use it all the time when I’m not working in Linux for one reason or another.
More importantly, that’s not the point: bringing up WSL already means we’re talking about at most 1% of Windows users. You’re failing to consider the user experiences of
the person who can’t tell you the difference between an OS and a web browser (usually also the person that thinks pressing the power button on the monitor turns off the PC)
the prolific email answerer, who generally refuse to use anything other than Gmail (see person 1) or Outlook (bonus points if they still have an Exchange server with a custom “lastlame.com” domain they set up before the dot-com bubble burst)
the godmother of lost kitten posters and printed-out recipes (LibreOffice doesn’t have Comic Sans or WordArt, and my beige-plastic printer from 2001 is difficult enough to use on Windows!)
the Gamer™, who would be pissed to find out they can’t install Razer spyware to make their $500 in peripherals induce seizures to the beat of skibidi toilet
the Nvidia user, who wouldn’t have that bad of an experience these days, but has heard enough horror stories to not even consider it
the artist (unless the state of drawing tablet support has changed recently; I haven’t checked)
the hi-fi boyz (this post was brought to you by HDR gang)
THESE people represent a strong majority of PC users, and they all have reason (good or bad) to avoid Linux. The fact of the matter is, if you’re a programmer like me or yourself, your opinion is skewed strongly towards Linux because the last 20 years of development were mostly fueled by the Android kernel and enterprise/datacenter deployments, both of which disproportionately benefit our use case.
I said “fine”, not “flawless” haha. I don’t think your experience is invalid, just that it is verifiably atypical. If your experience were commonplace, nobody would use it.
That small niche that you are mentioning, I agree with you. But the people who for example turn down Linux because it is difficult, most of the times they would be right.
I know I will get downvoted but bear with me. To the average Andy who has grown up using Windows XP and then 7 and then 10/11, never having to open up a terminal, not dealing with software repositories and just downloading an exe from the web, and just having the most compatible operating system in pretty much any scenario, is more important to them, than the privacy and security snd freedom that you get with Linux, which as they say, with great power, comes great responsibility (and headaches). Yes, I know there’s Linux Mint, but for example something like my new laptops microphone not working with ANY distro because the kernel does not support it yet, that is a Linux issue that is a huge pain in the ass even for an experienced Linux user, let alone a fresh user who has no idea what is going on.
I still think we should push Linux as much as we can because as the market share increases support for Linux will also grow making it a more n more viable option to switch to, but generally Windows users turning down Linux DO have very valid arguments for not wanting to use Linux.
As a long time Linux user, I had a humbling experience when I started using OpenBSD and had to look up all the details like “what is /dev/rsd1c?” or “how do I connect to wifi automatically?” It’s not hard, and it’s right there in the manpages, but it was a little overwhelming figuring out everything. And then I was already used to the unix-like terminology, I can only imagine coming from windows.
I think the key statement there is “has grown up using windows”. Using Linux is no harder than using Windows, and in many scenarios it can even be easier. The smart kids these days are learning Linux first instead of taking a detour through old-school Windows.
Better hardware support will come with more popularity, there are always bugs with any operating system.
I doubt those issues, like the mic not working, are worth having ads in the start menu, candy crush being installed automatically at various times without user consent or being dropped from updates like a hot potato after a few years, even though the hardware is still okayish.
Apropos hardware: Windows is slow AF. It always runs dozens of silly services that waste resources. Now some Linux distros run a lot too (like cups when you don’t have a printer), but for some reason Linux doesn’t eat RAM for breakfast.
oh trust me, it is pretty annoying to not have a working microphone in a day and age where zoom and teams are used at so many work places and/or so many job interviews. Having a dual boot just because of thator using my old laptop and also having to have signed in to my emails and blah blah blah is a major inconvenience that once again,the average Andy who does not care about the privacy or ads, just does not see it worth putting up with.
I can make Bluetooth work under Linux, but not windows server 2016…
Listen there will always be case by case scenarios but the fact of the matter is that there are WAY more things that go wrong on desktop Linux compared to Windows. Plus, who the hell is using Windows Server 2016 on their personal computer? Nobody. They are most likely running Windows Home or Windows Pro that came preinstalled on their laptop and it just works out of the box. In my whole life that I have used Windows I have ran into less issues that I had to spend hours searching online fixing the issue than I had to using Linux for the past year (and once again the problems I have been having are kernel dependent not distro dependent). I still use Linux as my main OS for 95% of my tasks because I value the privacy and security and open source nature enough to put up with the troubles of Linux. Preference and tolerance is not ab objective measurement. If Linux was already as easy to use and as compatible as windows, every single Linux user would delete their Windows partition and VMs and Wine wouldn’t need to be a thing.
So considering most everyone who thinks Linux is too hard is going off the state of Linux 10 years ago or longer, I cannot agree with you. “You can possibly have an issue” is not something that even Microsoft’s huge budget can save them from.
My laptop camera still doesn’t work on Linux lol
I’ve spent 0 minutes trying to fix it, but in my defense, that’s exactly as long as I should have to spend fixing it, and it’s exactly as long as I had to think about it on Windows.
That has as much to do with installing the os yourself vs buying a machine with the os preinstalled… I’ve had plenty of machines where some part or other doesn’t work well or at all because they need drivers that aren’t available for whatever reason…
That sucks. Yeah, there’s a million combinations of hardware out there. I on the other hand installed linux on two pretty ancient laptops and revived them from being too slow to even use with windows, and the builtin web cam worked perfectly on both. /shrug
No one is saying Linux has no challenges, just that the image of it that most people have is outdated. I’ve had issues on windows with some extremely stupid hardware issues myself. Can’t pretend it’s perfect either.
I don’t think anyone is deranged enough to call Windows “perfect”. It’s just the most supported operating system by virtue of being the most widely used operating system. And it will likely stay that way until enough people like us show up in the usage statistics for manufacturers to consider first-class Linux support.
The comment I made originally though doesn’t imply that Linux is anywhere near the most supported. I’m just saying, in like 90% of cases someone who could install and use Windows could do the same with Linux, and many would even prefer it.
You found an example of Linux being a pain, dude I could talk all day about Windows doing the same. The last time I tried to give Windows a chance as a dev machine – WSL would be broken literally every couple of days. It’s a joke of a broken system especially in light of how solid people think it is.
WSL works fine. The only issue I’ve ever had with it pertains to mouse weirdness with SDL, and I had the same exact issue in a level 2 VM due to the way they handle mouse input. I still use it all the time when I’m not working in Linux for one reason or another.
More importantly, that’s not the point: bringing up WSL already means we’re talking about at most 1% of Windows users. You’re failing to consider the user experiences of
THESE people represent a strong majority of PC users, and they all have reason (good or bad) to avoid Linux. The fact of the matter is, if you’re a programmer like me or yourself, your opinion is skewed strongly towards Linux because the last 20 years of development were mostly fueled by the Android kernel and enterprise/datacenter deployments, both of which disproportionately benefit our use case.
No, it doesn’t. You’ve said my experience is invalid so no more engagement can happen on my side.
I said “fine”, not “flawless” haha. I don’t think your experience is invalid, just that it is verifiably atypical. If your experience were commonplace, nobody would use it.