Lol I've never installed Linux and use windows 10.
I'll probably be installing Linux when M$ decide to charge me for security updates.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
704 points (98.5% liked)
Fediverse memes
394 readers
26 users here now
Memes about the Fediverse
- Be respectful
- Post on topic
- No bigotry or hate speech
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
"Confidently install Linux"
You mean pop in a USB pen and click install?
There's a lot more to it than that. Which ISO do you download? How do you make the USB installable. What to do if the USB doesn't boot when you restart the computer. Do you want to manually partition things? What the hell's a partition?
There's installing Linux, then there's confidently installing Linux.
ISO? USB? What kind of amateur hour is this?
I just have a BOOTP server running on my LAN that allows me to netboot any x86 machine straight into the Debian installer.
I fell asleep halfway through your comment
Most of your comment is about changing os in general and not Linux particularly. It's certainly a factor but you have to admit some of them like Mint is dead easy for anyone who can out some effort. Download Linux Mint, install a burner like Rufus, select iso and click burn, boot into it from BIOS and just clock threw most of them with default settings which is good enough for someone who is not tech savvy. The only time I had trouble installing Linux was with nixos GUI installer which had a broken setting but never had any issues with Mint, fedora or Debian.
Download Linux Mint
From where? Which download? Where should I save it? Where did I save it?
install a burner like Rufus
What's a burner? What's rufus? How am I supposed to know what any of this means?
select iso and click burn
What does iso mean? You mean the file from earlier? Where did I save that? Why do I click burn? I don't want to start a fire. I'm not burning a disc!
boot into it from bios
Now you want me to kick my computer with a boot? I don't think you know what you're talking about, that seems wrong. The fuck is a bios? How do I get there? What do I do once I'm in there?
I'm obviously exaggerating but holy shit you have to realize that even being able to begin to understand your shorthand instructions through context clues requires a level of domain knowledge far beyond the average user.
You do realise you can just look up every single one of that qn? And you proceeded to completely ignore the main point that this isn't an issue with Linux but switching OS in general. Not my problem if you completely miss the point and choose to ask question about the obviously simplified steps made to show how easy it is when you actually spend some effort.
Also there are thousands and millions of articles explaining exactly this step by step that anyone literate can follow. You don't need to understand what it is or how it works, simply following the instructions from an article with photos and that will do. You cannot fuck up an Linux Mint installation if you just use your eyes and read without messing with defaults.
Yes, I'm well aware. I didn't ignore your point just because I used your own streamlined instructions for my stupid joke about how clueless the average user is.
You're correct that the complexity of installing an OS isn't Linux specific, and that certain Linux distros are significantly easier to set up than say, Windows.
But just because the instructions are straightforward if you already have some familiarity with computers, or are driven enough to look up shit and learn, doesn't make them accessible to the average joe. That's the point I was making.
I did tech support for my school in my youth. I've tutored and led lectures for a freshman intro to programming course (two separate semesters). I have roughly 5 years of corporate internal IT under my belt, and over 4 (and counting) years of sysadmin/engineering.
In all that time, at the absolute most generous estimate, maybe half of the people/end users would have been capable of installing even a simple to install OS like Mint. Yes, including the new Computer Science majors. Less than that would be willing to put forth the effort (to learn the terminology, search and read to clarify confusion, etc).
Yeah, we really need to stop taking about it as if it is difficult.
I think most folk's apprehension comes not from the difficulty but because a certain type of person wants people to think that it is difficult.
Most teachers (the ones educating the youth on tech!) can't figure out how to play a YouTube video. Hell they can't figure out how to take a photo on a phone or send a text. Installing Linux is difficult for the average person. The average tech savvy person, it's easy. Related xkcd as always,
It is difficult for a huge portion of the population. Hell man, my neighbor came over the other day and asked me if I know how to copy stuff to a USB drive. He's about my age, so it's not like he's ancient or anything, he just doesn't know anything about computers like most people these days.
There's "difficult" in the sense of a person's reasonable ability to follow rather straightforward prompts, even if they don't know what they mean. Linux installers are rather low difficulty here.
Then there's "difficult" in the sense of how much a typical person will tolerate being rushed through a bunch of mystifying questions just to get through to the other side, particularly when an alternative option that doesn't ask them at all is available. Linux is atrocious in that regard.
Really hot take: more choice is actively bad for people who don't care. Which is far and away most of them. The kind of personality matrix that is attracted to Linux as-is tends to be the kind that wants everything configurable, and for the system to never assume anything, and let the user roll everything themselves. Most people are not like this and they don't appreciate this "courtesy". Giving them the option at all is the deterrent.
If you want to talk Linux installers that are on-par with the UX feel experience provided by macOS or Windows from a normie's perspective, show me one that doesn't ask anything of the user that doesn't also appear in one of those installers. Not a single thing. If it does, that's a speed bump that has no reason to be there. Because the person who is using it likely doesn't have the answer, and if the correct course of action in that situation is, "It doesn't matter, just use the default", then why did it even ask? It should just do it.
I'm not suggesting we need to completely rob all installers of any choice, either. We can have a two-tier system, so people who actually know the answers to those questions can select the advanced install, and people who don't care can select the streamlined install.
The dirty little secret about the mass market aversion to Linux is that people are genuinely not interested in or remotely curious about the inner workings of their computers. Those of us who like to immerse ourselves in it for fun are outliers. Any one of us who denies it has their head extremely far up their ass.
It's similar to car mechanics. The vast majority of drivers don't know or care how the machine works, they just want it to get them where they want to go. If it breaks, take it to the nerd who gives a shit. The more fiberglass cowls and covers you slap on top to hide the inner workings of the thing and automatic features you implement to abstract it all away from the user, the better, from their perspective. The damn car should just go. How it goes is not of any concern.
Linux needs to offer a similar experience if it wants mass market appeal any time soon. The alternative, trying to actually spark that curiosity in people to enjoy understanding how the machine works, is far too slow of a process to make any measurable movement of the needle of user adoption over time. Low barrier to entry isn't good enough when zero barrier to entry exists and is already the standard.
It's not just that they may not care. They may not know what they're being asked or know what the consequences are for choosing either option. Then they sit there for 30 minutes searching the internet for what the question means.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Yes but also if I told my wife to try "install Linux", she'd be lost before finding out where to start. Not that she's dumb, but because she has no practical knowledge (or any interest to learn) to do anything outside her browser or few apps there that she needs or wants. If there's something that needs to be done on the computer, she asks me because it's my area of expertise.
But on the other hand, I'm not thinking for a shit about medical questions. As a medical doctor she can answer my stupid questions on that topic.
For some tinkerer yeah sure it's easy as pie
Whoosh.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
Step zero is "be the type of person who wants to install Linux", which is probably the key part of our demographic.
Yeah, so you're in that group then
Correct. Installing Linux isn't the issue. Getting any hardware you have to actually function properly and fully, along with learning new software for your needs that can at times have less functionality and user friendliness, is the difficulty with Linux.
The lack of consumer software is the real big issue yet to be solved. We're getting gaming sorted, finally, but that's required the biggest game distributor in the world (valve) to basically take the project over completely to get there. We just haven't gotten to the point that enterprise environments will start switching desktops over to linux, because the network management and production tools just aren't there yet. Hopefully we will be there soon, the pace of adoption is really picking up especially with win10 EOL, but until then there's some real hard work to be done before the "linux best" memes stop being wishful thinking.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I think this counts as confident.
Still too scawy for some! :-P
load more comments
(3 replies)
I thought people on Lemmy would understand the pun of my nickname, but instead people assume I'm an asshole just based on my name being "go fuck yourself" to them.
I even tried adding $ to help make it more obvious it's not "fuck" but "fsck". Clearly, if you've never heard of fsck you're going to assume it's just some intentional misspelling of "fuck".
I regret my username now.
It’s a good pun and you shouldn’t regret it! People who don’t get the joke are unobservant and can either realize and learn from their ignorance, or remain in the dark.
I've long assumed the authors of fsck were having some childish fun in choosing the name. Personally, I'd be fine with people routinely making asses of themselves by jumping to conclusions, and acting upon them. I'd even give them a chance to save themselves from embarrassment by putting an explanation in my profile "for those unaware."
I only new fish, the shell, many people might be in the same situation
fsck is a command for "file system check" to check for drive errors.
Today I learned!
load more comments
(1 replies)
I went from not owning a proper computer for nearly a decade (just my phone and Xbox, literally nothing else) to buying a used Thinkpad off of eBay, upgrading some parts, and installing Linux mint onto it in under a year. Now I'm looking at building a Linux gaming PC. Y'all indoctrinated me
Linux PCs are... for lack of a better word, Swiss army knives for computing.
Need a media center? We got you.
Need server software? Bro. Who are you even asking?
Need a desktop? We got you.
Need to open that hard drive? The app is in the repository for absolutely free, just works and the hard drive opens.
Corrupted?
No prob, fam, here's a suite of recovery tools. We'll get those photos of gran-gran back no prob.
Need to burn that disk? The app is in the repository for absolutely free, just works and you're burning a disk for the family.
It just never ends. With Windows I always felt like I had to play "dodge the scam" with literally everything, even shit as mundane as ninite has that sense of "well, are they spying? Is everyone?"
Installing Linux isn't hard if you use a beginner friendly distro. It's way easier than installing Windows even. However, most people haven't installed any OS themselves and use just whatever their system came with, including all the bloat and spyware included by the manufacturer
I was about to turn a new SSD into a clone of my old HDD until it turns out the Windows 10 fast start won't accept keyboard input on boot for some dumbass reason so I can't get into the BIOS.
No problem, I'll turn off the Windows fast start, easy... Oh, no, turns out keyboard input is also turned off in the restart menu for turning off fast start
Anyways, I'm sure there's a way around this nonsense, but that SSD is running Mint and Proton now.
Can I install Linux? Yes. Can I do it confidently? Nope.
I can do it in an alarmingly gung-ho manner.
I'm led to believe there may also be porn lurking somewhere.
Honestly, for me, the fediverse's weakest point is sports which is a bummer because that's where the majority of my social media engagement is. Sports weren't even mentioned in that meme 😅.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Fedora makes me feel more confident with Linux than where I know my skill level is at.
The secret is that anybody can install Linux even if they can't do it confidently.
Maybe it was just bad luck or owning a piece of non standard hardware, but in 2006 when I as a Linux newbie installed Ubuntu 6.06 the OS wouldn't boot afterwards no matter what. Until by chance I chose LILO as a bootloader instead of grub. Not exactly a beginner friendly experience, but very enlightening one.
Jokes on you, I can't confidentially do anything!
Linux is easy to install. Getting to run just the way you want it to is hard. But once you get it to run the way you want it to, using it is easy.
And furries.
view more: next ›