Why don't more people use Linux?
world.hey.com
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking: "If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it?" And it's a fair question! It intuitively rings true until you give it a moment's consideration. Linux is even free, so what's stopping mass adoption, if it's actually better? My response: “If exercising is so healthy, why don't more peo...

And Linux isn’t minimal effort. It’s an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple. Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. With a sensei who keeps demanding you figure problems out on your own in order to learn and level up.

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That’s why I’d love to see more developers take another look at Linux. Such that they may develop better proficiency in the basic katas of the internet. Such that they aren’t scared to connect a computer to the internet without the cover of a cloud.

Related: Omakub

  • psychOdelic@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    162·
    4 months ago

    totally honest, I had MUCH more trouble with windows AND Mac.

    First off, Linux is so easy to install, while Macos and windows have all that unnecessary stuff, like iCloud and one drive (don’t even get me started on one drive, its awful, nobody wants to use it, and where do you disable it? and why did it enable itself again?) Then theres the thing where you can’t install anything on Mac without having to change about 500 permissions. And the main reason why I switched, customization. Windows has none of that, you can change the color and that’s it. even the cursors often get reset when you restart. Macos is even worse in this regard though.

    I think the main reason, why people don’t switch is because our generation of teenagers is lazy, or they’ve always been, I don’t know.

    I know from friends, that they just don’t care about privacy or functionality and think I’m a conspiracy theorist. And generally they make fun of everything I say regarding this topic and don’t take it serious AT ALL.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
      6·
      4 months ago

      A lot of people (regardless of age) have a very fuzzy idea (if at all) of what a file or a directory is. They wouldn’t know a operating system if it sat on their face.

      The only way to get them to use Linux is to switch the system on their computers. And they’ll probably manage just fine(after a bit of initial grumpiness), since most interfaces are pretty much the same anyway.

      But they’re never going to change on their own.

    • flashgnash@lemm.ee
      2·
      4 months ago

      Windows is not difficult to install, it’s just tedious and full of anti privacy options most people don’t care about

      Also don’t think 90% of people will ever install an operating system in the first place anyway

      Teenagers are not lazy and are definitely installing it have you seen the hyprland discord

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
          1·
          4 months ago

          I’ve seen maybe 4 people using Linux in real life and 2 of them are friends/family

          If you’re in any of the Linux related discords for long enough to pick up on it you’ll realize there are a lot of kids there

            • flashgnash@lemm.ee
              2·
              4 months ago

              Pretty sure a lot of the people here are deathly allergic to anything meta. I know a couple people irl who just get on and use it also

    • Random DentEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      When using Windows, I occasionally encounter this weird phenomena that I never experience using any other type of OS, whereby it generates a problem that’s so stupid on such a fundamental level that there’s no way to really work around it.

      Like when I recently tried out Windows 11, I made a manual restore point in case it fucked itself up doing a big update. Which it did, and then when I tried to restore it I found out that it only keeps one restore point, and that after it broke itself doing the update it overwrote my manual restore point with its own automatic restore point, ensuring that the fuckup it just did was the only thing to restore to. I tried restoring it anyway to see what would happen, and it said it couldn’t do it but didn’t explain why.

      Like when an allegedly modern OS so utterly misses the point of both system restore and basic error messages, I don’t know what to do with it really.