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For casual users that only need a web browser, a mail client and an office suite, Linux is a great replacement for Windows.
You all keep saying that, and I'm not saying I can't ultimately make the move, but there's always something that doesn't quite work as easily.
Then there's always a solution to that which isn't quite what you want and involves a lot of terminal which isn't really something casual users want.
For me this time it was OneDrive which I want to be able to use, trust, and have control over without terminal commands and a half baked GUI. I get it, fuck Microsoft, but it's already paid for and we're not moving because my wife, who is doing dome contracting work, doesn't want to mess with what she is familiar with.
That does make change difficult.
Incredibly so.
There is also the issue that if you want to work together with other companies who use 365, they often want you to send them files in Office formats. Yes, you can also make Office 365 work on Linux, but at that point people already don't want to try it out anymore.
Personally I just tried Linux Mint for a short period and there is a lot to love. But I'm doing a huge personal project in which I'm reorganizing tens of thousands of photos which I want to store in OneDrive and backup on a drive. Currently I'm just more familiar with Windows and I understand how OneDrive works (instead of something like rclone on Linux). After I'm done I'm going to reinstall Mint or something similar on my secondary SSD and try to set up OneDrive in a satisfying way.
Ironically I'm biting the hand that feeds me as I work as a lowcode developer using Microsoft Dynamics/Power Platform. But still, Microsoft can eat a bag of sweaty sausages for what they've done with privacy, bloat, annoying restrictions in Windows 10/11.
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openSUSE has YaST which covers almost all complex settings... it's not perfect, but it tries
As much as I love Linux, I can't really suggest it to casual users because I would end up being tech support for every issue. I'd suggest it to slightly more advanced users who know the basics of troubleshooting.
I do tech support for a living. I once had a neighbor that is handicapped and she kept asking me why her computer was always asking her stuff and was rebooting 'by itself'.
Turns out she had a very old computer that was using a very basic version of Windows Home (she couldn't even change the background) and it was constantly choking and rebooting because of updates.
I installed Linux Mint on her computer and requests for support have dropped by 90%.
In fact, I have done this for a few unexperienced computer users and because they mainly just use a browser, it's much simpler for them.
When you think about all the notifications Windows is showing to its users about everything, from antivirus to OneDrive, and all the actions its prompting, it's easy to see how some very basic users may find that extremely confusing. For people like that, a stable Linux distribution will be bliss (and for the people helping them).
and the computer performed faster right?
I would guess so. I'm running Mint on 15yo hardware. Chunky laptop, and DDR3 desktop. Between Mint and a SSD, the devices perform as well as current hardware on Windows 11.
Yes but it was still a P4 running Windows 7 Home Starter so whatever modern OS would choke on that anyway. I eventually gave her an old Phenom with a triple core but with the condition that it was running Linux Mint instead of Windows.
I moved a few years ago but I'm still going to help her a few times a year to do the updates. It's very low maintenance compared to Windows.
I'm not sure requests for help with Linux would be that much more frequent than the ones I get now asking for help with Windows. The Windows UX is getting worse while the Linux UX has been getting better for a while now.
In my humble opinion I tend to disagree. I have installed Linux (Fedora 38) on a system of an absolute computer noob and up until now (2 months in) I haven't heard a single complaint or question. It's faster than Win 10 and surprisingly even more stable.
It just depends on the person. I wouldn't put my mom on Linux for example, but I would consider her a casual user.
Is that because nothing works on the computer anymore, and they are unable to contact you because of it? 🤔
If that would be the case he'd still have my cellphone number and a landline which i (pinky promise!) haven't touched!
Problem is that if someone is casual user, he won't be able to install Linux. And windows is preinstalled almost always. And then if someone is advanced user and gamer, Linux is still much worse for that than windows
Linux is the most used operating system in the world. You probably use Linux every day. Android is Linux.
Linux can be pre-installed and it can be as simple to install for a user as windows. It can also be used without the terminal or anything else. All this just depends on which distro you use. Thats the biggest pain point for new people. They think Linux is one thing, but there are so many ways Linux can be customized and used. Finding the right one is hard, especially if you don't want to touch it and let it handle itself.
OK which distro should we use
butting in. I have yet to encounter a distro more plug and play friendly than zorin os. comes preinstalled with a bunch of stuff including play on linux and is setup to mimic windows by default as much as possible in look and feel.
I like how you dismissed all the points that were inconvinient, and twisted one point as if I said Linux couldn't be preinstalled. I said it's rarely preinstalled on PCs and laptops. When was last time 45 year old dad you know installed Linux by himself, or installed custom android rom for that matter? It's way easier to just buy laptop with preinstalled windows.
I didn't twist anything. If you want to buy a Linux laptop it's as easy as googling for that. If you want to install Ubuntu, it's pretty much as easy as windows (maybe easier because it's not asking you to install all the bloat too).
To be fair, Windows doesn't ask to install all the bloat, it just does it lol
@Zeoic @Cethin, it's just fair, I don't ask either when I gut all this shit out.
That's something that was kinda sorta true 20 years ago, but not anymore
Nha, I ran away from Windows for desperation for all the bugs, issues and extra steps necessary you have if you do anything remotely advanced. Doing advanced user shit and gaming in Linux for 2 years.
I have a job as maintenance, in a two months 3 Windows devices had issues that could be attributed to Windows breaking on its own.