just installed linux mint over windows 10 on my mums laptop this weekend :)
I imagine it would make a huge bump if Valve were to announce “Wait no longer, SteamOS is here!!”, even if their release is just an overnight reskin-fork of (Bazzite/CachyOS/PopOS).
I say this as someone who tries to tell people, stop waiting on Valve, and try out a few of the options. I’m glad I found a distro that works for me, but I didn’t enjoy the original search. I certainly got pressured into it as Microsoft really put as much effort as they could into making Windows as terrible as possible; and it was not “Everything works 100% out of box!” But the move was worthwhile.
Its funny, seeing this article as a lifelong windows user, just after finishing a boot-up usb drive with Mint on it.
I have win11 at work and the whole experience feels awful. I have a new laptop coming up that comes without an OS installed. Ill rather deal with the hassle of installing and learning a new OS than paying Microsoft for license to have my PC full of ads and AI slop.
Where did you order the laptop without an OS?
It was local electronics shop (czech rep.) they offer same laptops with win11 or without OS. Dont know how things are on Amazon or other US based websites, but I know for a fact you can order one on Asus official website.
Tumbleweed with KDE is honestly the smoothest work environment Ive had since Windows 7.
Kubuntu is another great option.
Tumbleweed is a rolling release distro while Kubuntu has point releases. I’m not sure which is better for new users. I’m leaning towards rolling, it stays up to date.
For beginners? Totally; but snap gets annoying over time.
Well, it’s been doing great for my first foray into Linux so far. What are the limits of snap that end up being annoying?
Well yeah, I would assume Steam would be a big priority for this scenario…
I don’t mind DE to have a windows-mimicking workflow (cinnamon, KDE kinda) but modding Gnome to mimick windows is not great because it causes weird bug and maintenance issues. Aka it breaks easily and gives bad impressions to the user
Yes. GNOME is great, but you better learn the logic behind it, it’s not a DE that adjusts well to the user, it’s actually the opposite, but if you get the gist of it, it works wonders.
Yeah that’s why I hate Gnome, they have ideas about how you should use your computer and those ideas aren’t yours.
The way I see it, they have a proposal to make to you as a user. This is Linux, fortunately. There are plenty of choices to make, so you can try i3 or Sway to make things go exactly your way.
for me, gnome seemed unnecessarily cumbersome to use with its minimalism
I like the headline… former Windows users are picking up Steam on Linux, because it’s pretty much indistinguishable from Steam on Windows.
My mom loves Zorin OS! We’re strongly considering the pro version now.
Let me ask you a question: What does the pro version of Zorin get you?
Installed Mint on two aging family laptops. One is smoothly running 00s era games already and i barely needed to help the family member with that.
It will take some serious, I hate to say it, YouTube campaigning and such to make Linux a more mainstream thought in the public’s brain.
I am 100% on board with a media push to get people on board, across all platforms.
Problem is Youtube is known to censor these kind of campaigns. I think they literally got caught delisting Tiny11 tutorials recently. Imagine what they‘ll do if Linux Tutorials pick up steam. Big tech is one giant illegal syndicate and politicians have invested in all of them.
YouTube has done a lot of malicious removal, but I’d be surprised if Windows 11 was one of those intentional targets. YT is run by Google, purveyors of Chromebooks; I’d think they’d generally benefit from a move off of MS/Windows.
Is there another venue? Nebula doesn’t seem keen on DIY and anything not free is going to have an incredibly reduced audience. The people who need the info most are the least likely to be able to afford another sub.
What it takes is people being able to buy a Linux machine at the local electronics store. Installing your OS yourself is still a major hurdle for most people.
That is an important step, yes.
However another important step is that the default distro needs to basically not even highlight that terminal exists.
If you’re trying to learn how to use linux, and step 1 of the tutorial is “open terminal”, you will lose 97% of your new install base. Then headlines will flood that linux machines are being returned in high numbers.
As much as you guys hate to hear this, the first experience for a new linux user needs to be intuitive. Before they even turn the machine on, they have to know how to use this software. Not because they are experts, but because the space and experience guides itself.
Then as you learn, you can customize a bit more, and from there linux can become a rabbit hole. But the point is, let the individual user control the depths which they dive. Because I suspect 90%+ won’t even change the desktop background. And thats ok.
Make it easy for the dummies, but then you individually can tinker if you want to. And it’s linux, so…ya know. Go nuts. But some people don’t want to do all that tinkering. That vanilla experience is what gets remembered to represent that OS. Even if you customized it and experienced it very differently.
Yup. I’m using my terminal every day, but I program for work and don’t mind a keyboard-friendly interface for a few forms of tinkering and program updates I’m doing. But even I wanted to prefer the GUI for common actions.
The stupidest reason I started going back to my terminal was, my GUI package manager didn’t have a “Select All / Select None” button for package updates, so if I only wanted to update one app at a time, I had to do it from the terminal. That’s not “terminal being awesome”, or “terminal being my preference”, that’s just lazy UI design.
If you use something like Mint or Ubuntu, you never need to see the terminal.
You say that, but there are plenty of posts on the Linux mint forums where solutions requured using the terminal for basic troubleshooting (especially WiFi and bluetooth).
Gnome is very good at this
But its very unfamiliar for people coming from Windows. That said, ZorinOS does a very good job of reworking it to look and act like Windows, KDE, cinnamon or previous versions of Gnome.
That’s where I think Bazzite really shines… I didn’t need the terminal to setup all of the normal stuff at all, and new apps I discovered right from the start menu so I didn’t need to go far at all.
Steam Deck + Steam Cube
The Deck probably looks too toylike for many people. The GabeCube might really make an impact, if the price is right.
I’m afraid price won’t be right or I have to say it’s hard for to it to be right when pc components are soaring in prices. They just ran into a bad timing.
More than system76 and Lenovo think pads without graphics cards.
And soon there would be a corpo that will make a closed source commercial OS based on Linux and people will somehow use their crap.
Like Android? It’s getting more closed every day.
Oops, completely forgot about it
I don’t think ChromeOS is going to win though
Red hat is still around…
Redhat is opensource, it’s just not free to use
Rocky and Fedora are based off it ig
Iirc, didn’t they start basically selling access to the source code?
It might. I just don’t see any use in it. Says a former Linux advocate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m writing this on a Debian stable machine, I’d never even think of using anything else for a daily driver and have been doing so for 25 years, but Windows users will be Windows users and I don’t see any reason to adapt Linux to their needs. Or to that bundle of vague illusions that they believe to be what they need. The evolution of Windows has produced such a horrible, parasitic product that its’ users don’t see any other way now than to jump ship. They’re mostly lost cases, IMO.
Microsoft’s ecosystem has been slowly pushing some users toward the exit. Hardware requirements for Windows 11 left millions of perfectly functional PCs behind. Ads on the Start menu and in system notifications have frustrated many. And for gamers, launcher problems, forced reboots and background processes that siphon resources have driven a search for alternatives.
No shit? That’s crazy.
I don’t truly understand things like this. Most DE’s are similar enough to Windows that anyone who’s spent a minute on a computer should be able to intuitively get to a web browser to surf the web. That’s what most people do. Word processing and the likes is tough since most are ingrained in Office, but something like (pukes in mouth) Google sheets is decently popular and good enough for most people.
If you give most someone a computer with a browser and auto updates, they’ll be able to do almost everything they are already doing on Windows with minimal thought.
There are exceptions, but those people suck at Windows already, so it’s a moot point. If you can’t find the start menu in Windows, it doesn’t matter what OS you’re using.
It’s always “one little thing”, and often an OS-local feature that many wouldn’t be aware of.
eg, You go to your grandma’s to help with her computer. She mostly uses her web browser to check on news. BUT, she has one specific home-network file operation she performs regularly, using an old network drive that got set up decades ago by who-knows.
That’s one tiny example, but there’s hundreds of others around, and not from tech nuts. Someone has one specific VPN app they must use, on their personal device, infrequently, for work. Someone runs one app that still mentions Windows 95 compatibility. Someone with learning disabilities is very very used to the pattern of logging in, so much so that they’re confused and ready to call IT when they don’t get a Ctrl+Alt+Delete prompt.
Thankfully, those are often exaggerations, and it’s good that most people’s use cases for niche stuff has migrated to web apps. You’re right that a lot of people really do only rely on their web browser. These days, even Edge is “sorta” available on Linux if someone is that dedicated to their list of bookmarks. Just don’t expect it’s always as simple as people not finding the start-menu-equivalent.
funny you should say it like that. I just recently I tried using Debian’s default GNOME desktop and thought I had corrupted the install somehow. I reinstalled the OS two more times because it kept dumping me into a nearly blank screen with no obvious buttons to click aside network/sound/power.
I’m used to LXDE, KDE, and Cinnamon, so this was completely foreign to me… and trying to find the web browser had me at a caveman level of confusion.
That’s weird, and sucks you had that experience. I should take a step back and say that I haven’t used a lot of different districts, including Debian. What I have experienced though, was either a star menu like button either in the bottom left, to left, or a floating dock.
I went full in on Arch when I made my permanent switch a couple of years back to make myself really learn more rather than just plug and play. That may be skewing my perspective some. However, I did throw mint on an old laptop that I have to my brother, and I was shocked that everything was exactly ready to go after install. Libre office, browser, other useful tools, updates, etc. I spent more time verifying things than configuring them and just passed it off.
I know that at least when I install kde in Arch, there are a few different build options from fully loaded to no extra apps. Perhaps with Debian there is a similar selection and you grabbed something stripped down rather than fully loaded? I’m not sure, but it’s good to hear this stuff to check my ignorance when discussing this with people.
yeah, it was wild. I was trying to do set up some computer labs. Debian was the first suggestion in the guide:
After the second reinstall of Debian, I gave Fedora a try as it was the second to be suggested. Only to be greeted with this:
It took me forever to realize that dash-dot at the top left was not some stylization and was a button to show the overview.
Oof yea. I can see how that’s missed. Knowing it’s there, I kind of like the minimalist design. Not ideal for a new user.
That’s strange - vanilla gnome should start in overview mode and dash is populated with gnome apps by default. Aside from that, there’s a button in the upper left corner that goes into overview if you press it.
Maybe your install did get corrupted, because literally my grandma could figure it out. On the other hand, most mainstream distros ship with dash to dock and discoverability must be the reason.
Debian was not a great choise, it is not for beginners. I wonder why you chose that one.
If you want to try again, I recommend using a distribution that is recommended for beginners. For example Ubuntu.
It’s people with attitudes such as yours that give Linux a bad name. Your response to someone who’s just told you that they’re used to 3 different Linux DEs is that they must be a beginner and should use a beginner distro is the height of arrogance. The person you responded to is clearly not a beginner, and that’s the response you have for them when they share their totally valid experience? Shameful.
Then I misread it. He seemed like he expected a beginner-friendly experience.
If he is experienced, and use Debian as an example of how Linux is not beginner-friendly, then he must be trolling.
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I do agree: Debian can be a bit tedious to set up and upgrade at times. It would not be my choice if you had to install a Linux distribution for the first time with no help. But, if you were able to set it up then you’re good, no reason to change now.
It’s not about ease of use. Remember Windows RT? It worked exactly like normal Windows and it still died because people didn’t understand what it is and were confused but the limitations. Making Linux as similar to Windows as possible is not a solution for the masses. It works for people that understand what they are doing or have someone who does at hand. Normal Windows user will just try to install Word and download exe files and be confused that they don’t work. If you want normal users to use Linux you need to make it clear that it’s something different, like OS X or Chrome OS does. You basically need a major OEM to create immutable Linux distro with clear branding and offer commercial support for it. Android for Desktop basically which will be very similar to Chrome OS.
Only Office has a UI very similar to Word. I generally prefer LibreOffice for its functionality, but Only Office has an easy layout for Word users to learn.
Seconding Only Office. I had a few docs I needed to print in a hurry, and Libreoffice kept corrupting the fonts/text format. OnlyOffice worked clean.
The latest Libreoffice update has ribbon menus (optionally).
Still looks and feels nothing like microshit office. For this, onlyoffice definitely has the upper hand.
So… just like… KDE?
Not that it is designed for it but it is a similar workflow and should be familiar to Windows users
Or COSMIC in the second configuration option
