I wonder if some distro couldn't give a plug-and-play experience for people who don't want the extra security of having to use root and who don't want extra customization.

Just wall off the sensitive areas and mimic the experience of Windows, but with newer, open software.

[–] Havatra@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'd say Linux Mint, ZorinOS, and Manjaro Linux are all viable options for Windows users who want an easy transition. Although I don't think any distro will ever be considered a "plug-and-play" experience. There are varying degrees of user-friendliness, but if one wants user-friendliness like not having to do root/sudo actions even once, I think one might be better off with MacOS..? Though from what I've heard, the main reason Windows users are looking towards Linux and not MacOS is exactly because of the ability to customize more than just the wallpaper (and also the entire boycott US movement).

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I went to Linux because it was free and available. I used Linux Mint 22.1 Ubuntu and I didn't find it easy.

I think it would be helpful to have a central resource with docs and forums tied in to an AI, so you could type in the problem and get an answer without having to resort to search engines - which are getting worse and worse.

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Search engines are getting worse, in large part because of AI...

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

I agree that AI is ruining search engines (although they were already very bad because they were tweaked for people who paid to be first in results), but they actually can be useful in a situation like this, restricted to a very narrow data set to learn.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think people are more likely to give up the security of not having constant admin access if they could get the same software they do now.

As I said in the wall of text above, going "oh, by the way, all your software won't work, but you will find alternatives" is a massive dealbreaker. It's one thing to bring people over to Linux, but trying to do that AND transition people to a full open source environment is a crazy overreach. A Linux distro focused on being Windows-like by offering closed software out of the box and better options for a click-and-play Windows compatibility layer would be way more appealing to many. You can work on their open source bona fides once they are inside the ecosystem.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How do you propose to do that?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago

Which part?

For closed source repositories of software that is currently available it's just a matter of having them included by default and actively prompting them on app managers as opposed to defaulting to hiding anything that isn't open source by default. Different distros come closer or further from this in the first place.

I imagine if you were going to go out of your way a bit further you'd restructure some of your splash pages and manager layouts to promote those based on popularity out of the gate.

There's an argument for a next step to be pre-packaging windows apps that can work under Wine directly in a package manager, but that's a bigger project and I genuinely don't think Wine is ready for that yet. Linux probably needs a better translation layer that works more reliably and comprehensively before that's an option. But hey, somebody should get on all of that, too.

[–] FancyLad@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Isn't this possible with an atomic distro?