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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
Stumbled across this quick post recently and thought it was a really good tale and worth sharing.
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 people do it?
- If reading is so educational, why don’t more people do it?
- If junk food is so bad for you, why do so many people eat it?
The world is full of free invitations to self-improvement that are ignored by most people most of the time. Putting it crudely, it’s easier to be fat and ignorant in a world of cheap, empty calories than it is to be fit and informed. It’s hard to resist the temptation of minimal effort.
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.
Now I totally understand why most computer users aren’t interested in an intellectual workout when all they want to do is browse the web or use an app. They’re not looking to become a black belt in computing fundamentals.
But programmers are different. Or ought to be different. They’re like firefighters. Fitness isn’t the purpose of firefighting, but a prerequisite. You’re a better firefighter when you have the stamina and strength to carry people out of a burning building on your shoulders than if you do not. So most firefighters work to be fit in order to serve that mission.
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.
Besides, if you’re able to figure out how to setup a modern build pipeline for JavaScript or even correctly configure IAM for AWS, you already have all the stamina you need for the Linux journey. Think about giving it another try. Not because it is easy, but because it is worth it.
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What if I need a program that is only available for windows?
compatibility layers makes 99% software work
or try a virtual windows instance if performace is not critical
Because I need something that works 100% of the time and supports all the software I need to use. I loved playing around with alternative os’s when I was younger, but it’s mostly for fun, to see if I can learn something, not for being productive.
What issues are you all talking about? I m a Linux user for eleven years now, the only issues you may have with them are only in the beginning when everything is not installed or sometimes not everything is perfectly installed and set up, once you finish with that you may get bored by how extremely stable they are, you just do your work and that’s it, and they stay like that forever, the only reason people are using windows is because they are pre installed, that’s the only truth.
To be fair, i installed linux on an old laptop and i just cannoy get the wifi to be reliable. I found myself reading about the minutia of intel wifi drivers and how wifi works in detail just to try tonsolve this issue.
I outright gave up on getting a printer to work.
This is an unrealistic experience for most people who just need a tool that works. Life is too short.
because most people use what comes installed and apple and microsoft dominate that.
then again, considering apple is based on unix you could argue that anyone with apple does use a version of it
This is the obvious right answer. If computers shipped with Linux mint most consumers wouldn’t notice the difference.
Fuck DHH
Why? I don’t know much about this guy
Shit like this https://world.hey.com/dhh/are-we-past-peak-woke-c313b7d1
I’ll give an alternative opinion.
Im a software engineer and have been doing it for many years. I’m comfortable with various Linux distros. I build software for and deploy software to various Linux instances. I maintain Linux systems and overall like using Linux for these purposes.
When I come home, I turn on my windows PC and it just works. I don’t want to maintain a Linux system at home because it feels like work and I don’t want to work at home. Yes, most days I’d not need to do anything, but some days I would. And those days I’d prefer not to.
It is less about not wanting intellectual exercise and more about already having worked out today, so I’d rather relax with junk food and watch Netflix.
I do first level tech support for a living and help people with Windows and Microsoft products.
When I come home, I turn on my Linux PC and it just works. I don’t want to maintain a Windows system at home because it feels like work and I don’t want to work at home.
I get the sentiment of your point, and it’s a fair one. But I have found it to not really hold up to scrutiny anymore. Once I became familiar with Linux at a very base level, I found it ‘‘just works’’ more often than Windows. Especially for the ‘‘just relax, eat junk food and watch netflix’’ style of using a computer.
Like, in that sense, I feel like I have to ‘‘maintain’’ Windows more often, in that I am constantly having to get it out of my way (i.e. turn off adds, deal with automatic updates, etc). My daily use Linux install works the same every day I turn it on.
Don’t get me wrong, I get that learning a new system is harder than dealing with the problems of the one you already know. But if you can use Windows and Linux, and don’t require some proprietary software on Windows, Linux seems to be way ahead in the ‘‘it just works, and works predictably and easy’’ category imho.
I agree about windows maintenance. Mint has been easier and more stable than windows for me. The biggest hurdles were getting it set up - partitioning, mounting drives, etc. In windows that just happens.
But, actual day-to-day operation? Much easier in Mint.
The UIs and UXes in Linux are still shit and look like they are from 1998. Engineers are not great designers. I design UI and UX for windows and Android for a living. I’m not professionally educated in design, but I know how to make a GUI look like it wasn’t a collab by Mattel and M.C Esher for use on a museum computer. That goes for apps and system features. The Bluetooth device GUI in Linux Mint is fuckawful:
Being able to consistently install things by downloading an exe from a website and just double click it is lacking.
The names of Linux software are also regularly dumb. Trying to be punny, clever, or cool. If it resized images, just call it Image Resized For Mint or something, not “Nautilus” or Nemo", they are forgettable and tell me nothing about the app “Uhh, it was something ocean themed, I think”. (This is true of Windows apps as well, Audacity, Figma Director, and Irfanview, I’m looking at you)
Apps “forgetting” the last-used settings, inc last used save file path, or user config, is a common issue too. Out of the box, apps should remember last-used settings without having to be told.
Window focus interfering with key capture is an issue too. Use Flameshot (a screen capture app) to take a region screenshot of a right-click context menu in another app - you can’t. Greenshots on windows does it fine.
I still persist with Mint, but the process is further from ‘Seamless’ than even windows 11, the shitshow it is.
Maybe I just hate all operating systems.
So fix it.
I can’t code lol
Tell us what a good UI is
Being able to consistently install things by downloading an exe from a website and just double click it is lacking.
This is something I still have issues with. I’ve been running Mint on an old Mac mini for six or seven months now, and still have to think to remember what flavour of Linux it’s based on when trying to install software.
Then there’s the way it has software installed via the store, Flatpak, and the terminal, meaning I have multiple places that need software updates. And that doesn’t necessarily cover OS updates.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Mint, and I do enjoy the tinkering, but I kinda go by the “Could I put this on my mum’s laptop without her having trouble?” rule, and the answer is no. It’s close, but no.
KDE discover is one shop for all. You do update system, flatack, snap, addons and more with it. There is nothing to forget.
We have appimages too now
i mean with debian based instances you can basically do that with debs.
Well…
Don’t forget the common use issues, where to put file for startup in different distros, attaching external drive being able to access in all and every Software without touching terminal, not too have to use terminal at all for ANYTHING IN 2025
IMPOSSIBLE! But shhhhhhh , we are on Lemmy if you say Linux sucks you will be negatively marked , cause Linux is the best /s , gained 4% market share and what not Linux for consumers SUCKS! NO matter the distro
I’m perfectly happy using terminal, both in Linux and windows. But not for basic things like installing a simple program. Sure I’ve done this in windows using wget or whatever, but maybe like 5 times ever? Like 2% of the time requires terminal with a 90% success rate on first try, and 95% success when trying for half a day. With Mint, require using terminal it’s like, 80% of the time, with a 30% success rate, and maybe 40% success rate after dickimg about with the errors for half a day.
Look, I don’t take preference with sides. Windows, Linux, android, Mac, I’ll happily call them all out on their various bullshit.
It took me a while to work out that the reason so much of Linux goes through the terminal is because that’s what the people who build Linux are used to. They put little to no effort into UX, then grumble that more normies aren’t adopting Linux.
I got my first Macbook in 2007, and honestly don’t think I touched Terminal for maybe four years. It just wasn’t at all necessary for day to day use. So having to wrap my head around terminal commands in order to do so much in Mint is quite a head fuck.
Linux UX philosophy:
But most people do use Linux; Android is the most common OS, isn’t it?
Also guess what the Internet has always run on? *Nix.
Man, I wish the Windows-only shop I support as a sysadmin “just worked.” I spend the majority of my time troubleshooting random Windows issues.
Driver issues, firmware issues, Teams breaking, Outlook breaking, SharePoint and OneDrive sync issues, Edge freezing/crashing, UI scaling issues, routine updates failing, random connectivity issues, random audio issues, printer issues…
I won’t lie, my Linux computers have random issues too, but way less often than the Windows machines I have to support every day. And when I encounter the Linux issues, I actually can fix them in a way that is permanent almost always.
Windows on the other hand, I typically fix and then the same problem starts happening again a few months later after an update, or the only “fix” that works is restarting the computer several times in a row.
To be fair to the Windows defenders, Windows 11 has easily been the worst for this in my experience. Windows 10 was more stable, and Windows 7 was even better. XP had lots of random issues, but back then you could still get under the hood pretty easily and make Windows do what you wanted.
Every personal device I have runs Linux and has for several years. I removed Windows completely from my life thank God, and I can’t imagine going back. I honestly would be more likely to stop using computers altogether before I went back to the horror show that is Windows/Microsoft.
Let them eat ads
See…
The RTFM condescending, contemptuous attitude doesn’t help.
A lot of us are not teens, or 20 somethings, and have other responsibilities and duties.
We just want the shit to “Just Work.” We don’t want to research why the last version upgrade broke the graphics driver, or why our printer doesn’t work anymore, or any of that stuff.
Granted, the distros that try to fix this have advanced light years over the last actual 20 years, but it’s still not good enough.
And yes, I have my “Compiled From Scratch Arch” membership card. Never again.
Have you tried driving without learning ?
Have you tried not trying to funny? Because you are not.
The reason is that Linux usually doesn’t come preinstalled. I’m pretty sure at least 50% of the users wouldn’t even notice they have Mint Cinnamon instead of Windows on their Laptops.
I’d crank that up to like 80% Linux users somehow always seem to overestimate how tech savvy most people are.
I’d say 50% of users can’t tell you what an operating system is. maybe more. and ya’ll expect those people to be able to CHOOSE a Linux distro and actually install it. no way. that’s way way too much to ask of the average end user.
Jorge Castro of Universal Blue (Bazzite, Bluefin, Aurora) likes to say that normal people don’t install operating systems. And he’s totally right.
I’m 💯 sure at least 99% of steamdecks run the ootb steam Linux
I know a guy running windows on a steam deck. Absolutely mad
What a pervert.
That’s like buying a Ferrari and dropping in a Lada engine.
I’m sure I would like Bazzite on my Deck. But I don’t use it a ton and Steam OS works fine. So I’d only install Bazzite if I was bored and wanted a project.
I see no need for anything but steamOS on my deck but i put bazzite on my desktop the other week. Best thing i have done.
I don’t use Linux. I’m here from /all. I last attempted Linux probably around 2006 or so. The biggest thing I remember was driver support being awful. I guess it’s a lot better now?
My biggest hurdle to making the switch is that it takes effort. It’s not because I’m lazy; it’s because I don’t see any need to put in effort. Because I already have an OS, and it works fine. I know that to some, particularly in this community, there are a lot of things about Windows to complain about, but the vast majority of users can’t come up with a list of things that bothers them about their daily OS. If my computer already had Linux on it, I’d probably feel exactly the same way.
My first experience was from back then also. It is much easier today than it was back then. It drove me crazy around 2008 or whenever I was fiddling around with it but today I would say it is easier than windows if you have an open mind.
I was a Windows user for around 30 years and loved it. But I got so frustrated with Windows that I switched. My computer didn’t feel like I was the one in control of it anymore, and I hated that.
I’m very happy on Linux, now.
Yeah, the issues with Windows are mostly a ton of really small things. There aren’t too many major issues that will force you to switch instantly, and no one of the small things will make you switch because it’s easier to just deal with it and move in in that moment.
I can’t even remember what it was that made me switch about two years ago. It was Windows ignoring a setting I changed before when it updated. It just got really frustrating how little they care about what I want my system to do/look like. They only care about what they want, but it’s my machine! It all eventually pushed me over the edge, but most users aren’t tracking that.
I’m pretty convinced that most users would have a better time with Linux now though. In particular, the package manager makes not dealing with individual application updates and running random executable you find online such a better experience. As long as people are using a distro that suits their requirements, and not one that requires a lot of manual effort, it functions better than Windows. It isn’t Windows though, so they get annoyed that it doesn’t function identically to that shitty system they’re used to.
My biggest hurdle to making the switch is that it takes effort.
Thats pretty understandable honestly. If my old netbook wasn’t so bogged down from Windows, there’s a chance I wouldn’t have switched to Linux. In a way, I’m glad for it, but it woulda been easier if it just came with Linux preinstalled <3
The biggest thing I remember was driver support being awful. I guess it’s a lot better now?
In my experience drivers have been pretty solid… except for NVIDIA. People seem to either have 0 issues or tons. Fingers crossed the upcoming Nova+NVK driver combo brings a more consistent and stable experience for all :)
I just made this same basic point in response to another comment, but this is exactly right. It takes effort to learn anything new, and that effort isn’t always worth it to people. But that alone doesn’t make using Linux “hard.”
Exactly, my wife struugles with tech. She hated windows and how it did unexpected things that made no sense. I put Linux on her computer, she doesn’t bug me with complaints now since it operates the same every day.
Similar : my spouse was complaining about how slow her laptop was and that she’d probably have to buy a new one. I popped a bootable Mint USB in and she was impressed that it was “like new”.
I left her on the bootable for a week as a trial then installed it to the HD. 99% of what she does is browser based anyway.
Yeah same kind of experience, on Windows 10 her laptop would barely run, it lagged so badly because it is a 2 core Celeron. On Linux it is actually peppy and she can run her zoom meetings and excel stuff, plus browsing. It is comparable speed to my new work laptop with 20 core processor running W11…that’s how bad WindowsOS has become
@clif @BCsven are you implying that Linux is not compatible with most things on winlol? I’ve yet to find anything that I need and is winlol only, everything either has a version on Linux or has a Linux-able alternative
There are many winlol-only things but none I need
For gaming, Linux
For office use, Linux
For media, definitely Linux…
I did the same thing for my wife. She lives almost exclusively in the browser. I put her on the same atomic OS I’m using, and for her the experience is pretty similar to her previous Chromebook.
And that’s all most people want from a computer, yet Windows always throws a curve ball at some point.
My home computers and servers are all Linux since 2017, even my work Laptop was because the CAD/CAM software had a Linux version. I have been running W11 for work lately and it is such a terrible user experience. I will be mid productivity mode and the Office Ai.exe kicks and and reduces my brand new machine down to a crawl speed. It happened way too many times and it does nothing to improve what I’m working on. I tried deleting the ai.exe and aimgr.exe, but those get reinstalled after an update, so now I have made two empty text files and renamed them to match the two files, this (so far ) has tricked MS into not reinstalling those files.
But there are so many other janky bullshit things that W11 does that I can’t believe a company the size of MS can release this stuff
Astounding. This is why I got away from sysadmin work. Dealing with Microsoft products kills my enjoyment of computing.
Tbh I just care about privacy and do not want surveillance on my system. If you don’t care about that (which I can understand because life is hard and energy is limited), then Windows or Mac is maybe perfectly fine for you. All I am saying is, if Linux would be pre-installed, people wouldn’t care to make a switch to Windows, they would just live with a perfectly fine OS and go on with their lives.
totally this!!! Most users just need a browser and an email client at best. They couldn’t care less about the OS that’s sitting on top of. If they could go to a store and see a $1000 laptop with Windows and $800 laptop with Linux being sold side by side, majority would pick the cheaper one if they could still get online with it.
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.
Counterpoint: most people don’t use Linux because the people that evangelize Linux talk about it like this.
I don’t want to “level up,” I want to accomplish my tasks. I’m trying to get shit done, not train for a fucking tournament.
I think people that talk like this overstate the difficulty of Linux. There are easy distros that won’t trouble the average user.
I’m the laziest man on earth and I use Mint, way less hassle than windows for example. So if you have never used either, you can safely go with Mint IMO.
If you gave spent 20 years on windows, then it’s another story.
I’ve spent 30 years on Windows and I let it go almost 2 years ago for Mint.
The only real pain point I’ve found is on a hard power-off (loss of power, OS hangs) I often have to do some CLI drive maintenance using a bunch of commands I can’t fucking remember to save my life. ChatGPT always helps me out (so nice to just take a pictures of logs and error messages on my screen and have ChatGPT tell me what if anything is relevant), but I’m a power user of both computers and ChatGPT so I’m able to push back on ChatGPT when it’s wrong about something, getting side-tracked, or tells me to use tools that non-standard for my distribution. I’m not sure casual users would find AI as helpful, which means they have to call a professional (or relative) for help which can cost money.
Printing isn’t quite the same. Certain PDFs have to be printed to TIFF files before they will print. Some applications don’t offer my printer as an option, so for example I have to download a PDF that is open in Firefox and then print it from whatever the default PDF application is. I haven’t even attempted to set up the scanning functionality of my printer on this computer.
Games for the most part just work. I tend to buy everything off of Steam and I haven’t really had to mess with anything to get them to work on my computer. I did buy one game that isn’t on Steam and it took an hour or two of effort to get Wine working with it
90+% of what low-tech computer users use a computer for is just a browser. I spend probably 1% or less of my time in CLI, maybe 10-20% of my time in specific apps (VSCode, IntelliJ, Joplin, LibreOffice, Discord, Steam games) and almost everything else I do is in a browser.
Moral of my story, I suppose, is if Mint would auto-heal on hard power-off and you can browser and print just as easily as on Windows, I could recommend it to my non-technical folks.
I wonder what the print issue is caused by…
I normally hear that Linux is normally better for printing.
Alas, printers suck
I was really rushed when I set it up. Maybe I missed something. It’s a Brother network laser printer. I think it’s the network printer that needs more handling but I really don’t know. I’ll put some more time in later. At any rate it was more CLI fiddling.
Maybe I just needed to go out and find Brother Linux drivers and install that way.
For your journey, I found this Linux mint thread that looks to be helpful. I’ve not touched cups in a while bc the only printers I have access to only allow printing through some crappy proprietary app that doesn’t have a Linux version, so I can’t attest to its correctness.
Things have also gotten easier since I started 15 years ago
Things have gotten harder for me! But that’s because the things I want to do with it get more interesting and complicated as my knowledge grows.
Waaaay easier on a longer timeline too! I first used Linux in the late 90s when the things the author of this piece talks about were true. You really did need to understand more than an average computer user just to get Linux installed.
That hasn’t been the case in a long, long time now, at least not with the easier distros.
What articles like this often fail to discuss is that Windows took effort for everyone to learn at some point too. Same with macOS. Same with your smart phone.
Learning anything requires effort, and not everyone wants to invest that effort - which is totally okay if they already get what they need from whatever they’re already using. But I wish that people would stop exaggerating how hard Linux is to learn simply because it will require effort.
Exactly this.
I’m a software dev and also a Linux user, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend my precious time messing around with the OS trying to solve problems.
I see the operating system as a tool I use to accomplish the things I actually want to do, which is writing my code for my projects, just the same as I see a car as a tool to get me from point A to point B.
If Linux was complicated to set up, or always broken, or requiring constant work then I wouldn’t use it, no more than I’d tolerate a car which is broken down and in the shop every other week. But fortunately, Linux is none of those things.
Modern Linux mostly “just works”, and it’s really counterproductive to talk about Linux like it’s hard or you need to be a deeply invested techie to use it.
I used Arch Linux full time from about 15 years ago to 8 years ago. I stopped when I went back to school to get a degree. I was tired of fixing things all the time and I didn’t want to have to deal with that when I had assignment deadlines looming, so I bought a MacBook for school.
I’ve since graduated but I really haven’t looked back. I’ll probably start using Linux again for some hobby projects and maybe to build a SteamOS computer for gaming, but I doubt I’ll switch back to Linux for my main computer (a MacBook M1), especially since the public blowup of Marcan over Rust for Linux and the uncertainty that brings to the Asahi project.
I also own a macbook in addition to my desktop.
It’s currently running macos, but I very much hope Asahi development continues, because that’s very much my desire for the final destination of the machine.
For a long time I was happy with Apple’s commitment to being a mainstream OS that was privacy-centric but recent shenanigans have me starting to doubt.
See, you have people like you all over saying “Linux just works” and then you have other users here saying “I have to spend an hour fixing my computer running one of the most user friendly distros every single time the power goes out”. I don’t know who to believe but both cannot be true simultaneously so which is it?
It’s both. Linux mostly just works, but when it breaks, it breaks in a way which is sometimes difficult for the average person to recover from.
I’ve had a couple of times in the past where something has gone horribly, outrageously wrong, and I decided to just reinstall and start again from fresh, because that was way less time investment than fixing what broke.
Nowadays I’m using Timeshift backups, and I think that’s a positive move.
Timeshift is great. I’ve recovered from an rm -rf /* with it, just to see if I could. Turns out: yes.
Different people have different experiences for lots of reasons. Like I used to have constant problems with Windows that took days to fix, and some people never had any problems. It depends on your hardware, software, settings, what you’re doing with it…with every OS.
Well, they can be simultaneously true if one person has a terrible experience because of Nvidia and another person with an all amd build who happens to have a Linux friendly touchpad (is that still a problem these days?) might have a perfect experience out of the box.
I think that’s a major weakness, that windows will be good or bad in various ways but it’s very consistent - the things that suck usually suck for everyone. With Linux everything depends, not only on hardware but with your use case, the distro you pick, the tools you use, etc.
If you just want to get shit done, allow me to introduce you to Debian…
Because windows and Mac just works, without touching terminal for a single second! There is your .
That’s such a weird take, I’m not sure it’s not an attempt at rage baiting.
I’ve used Linux Mint for about ten years. I’ve used terminal once - only because that specific laptop had some trackpad or WiFi (can’t remember which) issue. I just typed in a few lines and that was it.
Why don’t people use Linux? Fair question. It’s because people who don’t use Linux are stupid and lazy.
Wow, galaxy brain stuff.
It’s really the egos and superiority complexes of the Linux elitists that are preventing mass adoption.
And a distro that actually lets you use a UI for everything.
Nah. Most people who use computers would never interact with those folks.
It’s not installed by default and when things go wrong you need to fix it yourself.
People just want to use computers to do STUFF. They don’t want to think about the computers themselves.
