This is gonna be an unpopular opinion here but telling people who have used Windows their entire lives to just switch to Linux as if it's that easy is entirely unhelpful and makes the Linux community look elitist and out of touch.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Itβs easier to use than Windows
Just give GUI troubleshooting instead of CLI
Life is a long learning experience. Installing (or asking that nerdy relative to install) a Linux distro is no biggie anymore and when picking a good all-around distro like Mint, for example, pretty much anyone who has some basic experience on computers can do it.
I do agree that life is a learning experience, but I might say that you're overestimating what "basic experience on computers" means, and I tend to find that this is fairly typical of people who have more advanced skills because this stuff is basic to us. But we can sometimes lack perspective in that regard.
Basic experience on computers for most people means "can use Office apps, can send emails, can more or less use the internet". Essentially, they can use the computer for their work or for some light entertainment. It certainly doesn't mean that they know how to or that they even can configure the BIOS to boot from a USB, or for that matter what the BIOS is or that it exists. It doesn't mean that they can use the terminal, or use WINE to run their favourite Windows applications or troubleshoot an operating system that is entirely alien to them. I'd even go as far as to say that most people don't even know what an operating system is - to them, Windows is the computer and they don't know or care about anything different. This is the kind of person I'm talking about. Everything you said might as well be Ancient Greek to that person.
I get it. That's why I included the part about "the family tech guy". And I think some sparkle of interest must be had in order to learn about that stuff. Or any stuff, like learning Ancient Greek. One has to be able to use a web search (or write a prompt to an LLM) for "beginner install linux" or some such. If the spark isn't there, maybe buying a new Windows/Mac is the correct way to go.
try mas for activiating ESU
Id run Linux if it could run the apps I need efficiently
I stopped using windows while using Win XP, maybe 16 or 17 years ago. When I try using current windows I become useless, I can barely figure out how to use it.
That's how I feel when I use Linux or MacOS
Too bad, only 1 out of my approx. 150 customers have their IT dept. using Linux as server during my 6 years in - the rest of it is Windows... all the users have either Windows 10, 11 or they use Apple.
Halp.
Edit: not counting the educational users, as they come in hordes
My CPU and motherboard are from 2016. I don't mind updating harware to reach windows 11 compability, it's about time anyway.
I would be angry if updating to 11 from 10 would also cost money directly.
Probably what I'm gonna do. I used to live in a country where it was completely normal to illegally download software from ThePirateBay, and that's how everyone got their Windows versions, but I don't even feel like doing that anymore.
It's like they are not even trying. I have a laptop with 7th gen CPU that works perfectly fine. I don't have any choice than install Linux, lol.
Windows is becoming increasingly uncomfortable in that regard. I've been thinking about switching to Linux Mint for a while now.
Make a flash drive bootloader so you can preview what it is like? Why not?
if it is something I would like to do.
I did that 2 moths ago and rarley boot into windows any longer. It's a learning curve for sure, and I'm at the bottom part of it, but it feels nice to expand your knowledge bit by bit.
Yeah, I love the DIY mindset but sometimes it feels like people are trying to learn to surf in big punishing waves and deciding that if they can't learn to surf those that surfing is too frustrating.
It is totally legit just to dip your toes in bit by bit, thank you for making that point!
As someone tried to build the snes9x-nwaemu fork from scratch today after spending hours fighting the Linux mint updater getting stuck, ahhhhhhhhjjj. I still have to have windows for a couple of things anyway which makes this all the more annoying. The update also wrecked my davinci install which I need to produce videos. Also, I work two jobs so not a ton of time for this.
I get this, I have limited time and it realy only works "out of the box" on the surface. Still, so get it's been worth putting in the effort.
Don't build from scratch then. I also use resolve in Linux, other than the odd Nvidia driver botch it works fine
My alternative is to try to run a bunch of stuff in wine (not sure if it would work) for the one case and I'd rather run it natively. I don't know, for the video editing case, if it would run in wine (and if it did, would I lose my ability to use hardware rendering).
This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.
It's great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you'll have to do is remove it and re-add it.
If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there's a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.
Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks.
Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great.
I'm all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I've stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can't justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.
This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it's simply more work that I don't care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that's another discussion entirely.
Please don't take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there's a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems... More that printing doesn't work or something like that...
Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great
It doesn't work though, and official windows tech support is basically useless anyways.
My experience with Windows not working is looking through three sites of search results landing me on answers.microsoft.com where the expert doesnt really help so I give up.
Linux not working is being five forum cross links deep to find an issue on the gnome networkmanager gitlab, finding out the problem was already fixed but your distro hasn't bothered to release in like 3 years so you haven't gotten the fix yet, so I give up
I've used Windows 10 since it's release. I had to reset it twice because I had a virus, which very much was my misstake. Other than that it did just work fine.
I've switched to Mint 2 months ago and I am troubleshooting a lot. Most of that comes from inexpeariance, but the point still stands.
Windows is more or less stable most of the time.
I have tablets that run android and an old laptop I run on Linux and it's great. For video editing, games, and niche software, it can suck for someone with little time.
This comes up with every windows EOL announcement and it never really ends up with everyone switching to linux
Well the thing about the future is sometimes the thing that always happens doesn't, or sometimes the thing that "won't happen" suddenly does.
I understand the cynicism and I don't think anything will radically change overnight, but we are CLEARLY in a new status quo, you will start to see serious uptick in linux users, for a million different reasons.
Switching from Windows to Linux on an older computer is like when you finally get around to clearing the bathtub drain after years of hair and crud building up. Who knew a bath could drain that fast!? And now there's no pool of water building up when I shower. Anyway, I highly recommend both Linux and clearing the drains.
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