this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
280 points (96.4% liked)
Privacy
31998 readers
1000 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes that's all great, but really you're just proving my point here. How do you get a non-techie past this whole obstacle? Tell them to ask instructions on an obscure forum, whereupon they'll get a wall of text like this, full of obscure geeky jargon? (That is roughly how Debian does it, by the way.) Obviously you know exactly what you're talking about but I'm a bit concerned that you - and most other Linux users - are slightly out of touch about just how obscure and forbidding all this is to a non-technical person. The problem is that we need at least some of those people to succeed if Linux is to thrive.
I don't disagree that it would be great if it were easier for non-techy people to try Linux. But we're speaking in the context of an OP who said that they're not afraid of using the console, which indicates a certain level of technical skill to start from. They've asked for directions and I'm trying to provide them.
Beside that, I think there's a limit to how simple I - or anyone - can make the process of installing a new OS. That isn't a "Linux" thing - there isn't any simpler option if you want to install Windows from scratch either.
If you want to get Linux in the layman's hands as easily as most people get Windows, buy them machines from System76. Sorted.
In the meantime, what would you suggest, vs my "wall of text [...] of geeky jargon"?
Agreed that the best one-stop answer is to tell people to buy their next computer from a Linux specialist (and be able to name 3 of them).
And yes, there's a limit to how easy the DIY solution is going to be. But I think that the bar is now pretty low if we make it as easy as possible. As you suggest, installer software is now pretty much "just hit Enter" until it works. The weak link is now the boot medium. I'm pretty experienced and yet whenever I have installed Ubuntu from Windows I've had to struggle with Powershell (or whatever it's called) and go googling for
ddcommand parameters. The alternative is third-party software, as you say, which has its own security risks and learning curve.This s a crazy situation. The OS should bundle all software you need to get it running and it should hand-hold the user every step of the way. Big button "Get started", step 1, step 2, step 3, done. It doesn't have to be walls of text full of jargon and useless technical asides (as Debian does it, and even Ubuntu to some extent). And the user doesn't need to understand what exactly is happening, they just need to get up and running. When I was beginning with Linux I had no idea what I was doing but I persisted. So many others are not going to persist in the face of this unnecessary complexity. It really irritates me that FOSS shoots itself in the foot like this.
Rant over. Last time I checked, the specific answer to your question was: Fedora. Big buttons, 1, 2, 3, and the boot-creation binary is right there as part of the process. Probably some further refinements are possible, but Fedora seems not bad.
I've been in IT since before Linux exited, and installed my first Linux box the other day.
You're spot on. It's a frustrating nuisance to me (especially as writing tech docs has been part of my job), but for a non-technical person it's a no-go.
I don't know what the answer is. CDs like AOL used to do?
It's a better walk-thru USB-stick-creation process. See my response to sibling comment. I really think this is a solvable problem but a lot of Linux users are in denial about just how geeky and perseverant ordinary people can be expected to be.
Yes, even that USB creation walk through has been too much, for me, let alone a non-technical person (or even less motivated, which I have been for 20 years now) .