• ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A non-technical end-user once had a problem with Windows. A technical friend said “SWITCH TO LINUX”. Now they have thousands of problems.

    I’ve been a non-stop user of Linux as my primary OS since before Ubuntu was a thing. I do not recommend Linux systems to my non-technical friends.

    • Aggravationstation@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My Aunt bought a new laptop to run her eBay/Facebook selling business on. She’s not particularly techy but has used Windows machines for admin work for prob 20 years or so. Laptop had no office apps installed and she tracks everything in a spreadsheet. Original plan was to install Libreoffice but it was running some budget version of Windows 10 you can’t install anything on, can’t remember what it’s called. So I installed Fedora. Chromium and Libreoffice Calc open on login, her ancient HP printer works, she’s able to access her camera as USB mass storage when she lists items and unattended upgrades are enabled. That was 2 years ago, no problems since.

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Cool story, bro. And for every such cool story you can bring up I can bring you a hundred, probably, of people who got set up on Linux and returned to Windows because it was a horror show from their perspective.

        Let me give you the clue: “The Year of the Linux Desktop” has been declared with monotonous regularity since the 1990s. It still hasn’t arrived. There’s a reason for this, and the quicker Linux (and other F/OSS) advocates grasp why this is, the quicker will the year actually arrive.

        Until then, Linux is a fringe OS for techies. (And there it excels. As I said, I’ve been a non-stop user of it for ages.)

        • Aggravationstation@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I totally agree that can happen. My first experience with Linux was installing Slackware from a CD I got with a magazine at 16. Install worked but I couldn’t really do much with it with no internet connection so abandoned it. Also I hosed the Windows partition when trying to set up dual boot so got banned from the family PC for a while.

      • slowcurrent@vlemmy.net
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        1 year ago

        All you have to do is turn that off and you can install anything you want. You took a simple problem and made it hard.

      • Dohnakun@lemmy.fmhy.mlB
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        1 year ago

        My dad thought the XFCE-Materia-Theme is the occasional Windows redesign until i told him.

        And last month he wanted his antivirus back, even though i explained it already. But he’s good at other things.

      • hillosipuli@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        There is fine line with being tech illiterate and being able to use linux when it all just works. The problems arise only when you are just slightly more advanced and want to do something weird without actually being able do it in linux with some things being a bit too much for the average Joe.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I tried to install I think Ubuntu for my parents. I failed to find a way to properly allow short/simple passwords after like 2 hours of fiddling with configs. Gave up on it after that.

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well, its between allowing that and not using Linux at all so that is that. If I could get them to remeber a strong password, it would not be for PC login.

            What distro would you recommend? I was under the impression Ubuntu was furthest with UIs.

            • Clasm@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’ve found that OpenSuse Tumbleweed is better than both Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

              They set out to make a distro that is kept up to date perpetually instead of managing different versions.

            • heimchen@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              I would recomment Mint to users who use their Computer for more than just Webbrowsing. If its just webbrowsing and you know Linux, try setting up Fedora silverblue. In my vm’s two digit passwords work.

              • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Hmmm, I had mint for a little bit once. I don’t remember having any issues with it which probably means it is good. Paradoxically it also made me forget about it somewhat.

                But I really have an urge to try NixOS for myself… And I don’t really want to mess with my parents setup now.

      • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You gave Ubuntu to your grandmother and she fucking died?
        OMG, Linux kills grandmothers!

        (I know, I quit Windows around 95, it’s just that I couldn’t resist)

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t because I don’t wanna be that guy.

      But in general these days, I’d absolutely recommend it. Anything in the debian family is just as easy to use as windows. As long as you hook them up with some good cron jobs for auto updates and rollbacks on failures and stuff, they’ll be right as rain.

      To be clear, I wouldn’t have in like 2015.

    • Eugenia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      As long as the distro is stable anyone can use it to use a browser and browse the internet. I had put Ubuntu Linux for my mom on a laptop, back in 2010, she was using just the browser. She had it for 2 years, no problems. She did nothing else with that laptop though, because that was the first time she was using a computer. She was mostly facebooking.

      • mustkana@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Exactly. My parents have been using Linux for years, they have no technical expertise, and most of the time they don’t need it. For the average user, I find linux more stable than windows.