My kids grew up on Gnome essentially, I can tell you Win11 is a lot more confusing to them, not just because because they grew up on Gnome, there is just so much more ... stuff. And notifications and flashy things and news and weather apps and they all want your attention. Gnome is much more iPadOS like (minus that horrible concoction called the App Store).
Sure, if you're all in on MS365 (like all schools here in the Netherlands), Windows may be somewhat more handy with its native apps and all your stuff there with a single log-in.
And someone once raised their kids speaking Klingon, that isn't a good excuse on why it's a language others should use.
For the vast majority of people MS365 is a requirement, but really the issue is that even minor fixes require the command line on Linux and that makes it unusable.
> For the vast majority of people MS365 is a requirement
No it isn't actually, not for the majority, my wife (former Sales Person and Manager) uses Google office tools and used LibreOffice Write and Calc for years successfully.
I guess it means that even when something is (arguably) objectively more simple, people still won't bdge just because they don't want change. They don't want to learn new things.
I myself am quite different. I have thoroughly had it with my current iPhone and am eyeballing /e/OS, before that I really started to find Android boring, before that Windows mobile (the nice one with the cards). I switch Gnome, KDE, some other DE (now getting ready to try Niri) every year or 2. I don't get the struggle, for me a new env is like a present (even though I normally hate presents). So much niceness to explore, so much to optimize. I love it. But I'm also one of those guys that reads the oven manual and tries all functions in week 1.
Linux is stuck because it's made and maintained by people who love linux.
Look at popular unix based OS's - Android, MacOS, iOS..
Whats the first thing they do? Take the command line out back and shoot it. Whereas for linux users, their is this l33t h4cker festishization of only using a keyboard to do everything. All these distros have an extremely robust CLI under the hood, and an afterthought quasi GUI on the surface. Just good enough for grandma to check her email and watch youtube.
Good. I'm sure this is a controversial take in our brave new world, but not everything has to be aimed at the lowest common denominator. It's refreshing to have something that isn't dumbed down for "the average user" and forces people to actually learn how to do something for a change.
I hope Linux never succumbs to the lowest common denominator and people who actually enjoy tinkering will always have somewhere to go and something to learn. If that's being stuck, I hope it stays stuck.
Why do folks act like windows isn't full of cli commands? First thing on any windows box is running debloat in powershell. Installing apps from a gui in Linux has been solved for a long time.
Having an excellent CLI doesn't preclude having an excellent GUI. No reason we can't have both.
Also I hate linux repos with a passion, because they are optimized for CLI usuage, and (like the whole OS) the GUI parts are a total unoptimized afterthought. Never mind that they are a dumping ground for whatever code anyone shits out, with virtually zero management or curation. With a CLI you don't see this, with a GUI it's a total mess.
I'm fine with app stores, but they need to be actively managed and curated. If not, I far far prefer just downloading .exe's from the source.
I have had Bazzite on my gaming PC for a while now, never have to mess with the terminal much. It has come a long, long way. Even gentoo has become more accessible than ever. While some of this holds true, you most certainly do not need to live in the command line with some of these distros. Especially if you are just trying to play some games and browse the web, etc.
I compiled my first kernel at 13 (Mandrake, to age myself). I've used all the distros you just listed and no, none of them are close to as user friendly as at least MacOS. The fact that there are "flavors" you have to list alone is way too complicated and weird for most people.
For the vast majority of people an operating system is whatever comes with the computer the kid at Best Buy told them they should buy or their IT department gave them. Asking anyone to switch is basically impossible.
>> Linux is the only hope at this point for the future of computing.
Linux is the most obvious, but there are numerous flavors of BSD as well.
> and yet... still unusable by the mass majority of people.
That info is 20+ years out of date. Distros like Suse and Ubuntu made Linux "click, click, click, it's installed" more than two decades ago. i've watched complete non-techies switch to Mint Linux long-term, the only intervention from me (their resident techie) being showing them how to boot up the USB stick installer.
This isn't really true anymore with the advent of Flatpak & Flathub. It's just an app store like any other platform. Even the majority of games work without tweaking.
I've run Linux as a daily driver recently Flatpak and Flathub still break all the time. Not to mention the last time I bumped my Nvidia drivers nothing decided to open anymore.
Any OS that requires even once going to the command line is unusable for 99% of the population (and for me I just shouldn't ever have to).
Not used does not mean not usable. Primary school aged children used MS-DOS without any documentation in 1990's. Pretty sure randomly selected people would be able to use modern Linux distro, when pre-installed just like windows are.
My kids grew up on Gnome essentially, I can tell you Win11 is a lot more confusing to them, not just because because they grew up on Gnome, there is just so much more ... stuff. And notifications and flashy things and news and weather apps and they all want your attention. Gnome is much more iPadOS like (minus that horrible concoction called the App Store).
Sure, if you're all in on MS365 (like all schools here in the Netherlands), Windows may be somewhat more handy with its native apps and all your stuff there with a single log-in.
And someone once raised their kids speaking Klingon, that isn't a good excuse on why it's a language others should use.
For the vast majority of people MS365 is a requirement, but really the issue is that even minor fixes require the command line on Linux and that makes it unusable.
> For the vast majority of people MS365 is a requirement
No it isn't actually, not for the majority, my wife (former Sales Person and Manager) uses Google office tools and used LibreOffice Write and Calc for years successfully.
None of this is true
I guess it means that even when something is (arguably) objectively more simple, people still won't bdge just because they don't want change. They don't want to learn new things.
I myself am quite different. I have thoroughly had it with my current iPhone and am eyeballing /e/OS, before that I really started to find Android boring, before that Windows mobile (the nice one with the cards). I switch Gnome, KDE, some other DE (now getting ready to try Niri) every year or 2. I don't get the struggle, for me a new env is like a present (even though I normally hate presents). So much niceness to explore, so much to optimize. I love it. But I'm also one of those guys that reads the oven manual and tries all functions in week 1.
I'm not weird, all you people are weird.
2 replies →
Linux is stuck because it's made and maintained by people who love linux.
Look at popular unix based OS's - Android, MacOS, iOS..
Whats the first thing they do? Take the command line out back and shoot it. Whereas for linux users, their is this l33t h4cker festishization of only using a keyboard to do everything. All these distros have an extremely robust CLI under the hood, and an afterthought quasi GUI on the surface. Just good enough for grandma to check her email and watch youtube.
Good. I'm sure this is a controversial take in our brave new world, but not everything has to be aimed at the lowest common denominator. It's refreshing to have something that isn't dumbed down for "the average user" and forces people to actually learn how to do something for a change.
I hope Linux never succumbs to the lowest common denominator and people who actually enjoy tinkering will always have somewhere to go and something to learn. If that's being stuck, I hope it stays stuck.
Why do folks act like windows isn't full of cli commands? First thing on any windows box is running debloat in powershell. Installing apps from a gui in Linux has been solved for a long time.
Having an excellent CLI doesn't preclude having an excellent GUI. No reason we can't have both.
Also I hate linux repos with a passion, because they are optimized for CLI usuage, and (like the whole OS) the GUI parts are a total unoptimized afterthought. Never mind that they are a dumping ground for whatever code anyone shits out, with virtually zero management or curation. With a CLI you don't see this, with a GUI it's a total mess.
I'm fine with app stores, but they need to be actively managed and curated. If not, I far far prefer just downloading .exe's from the source.
2 replies →
MacOS has a good CLI if you need to use it. There are CLI equivalents for a lot of the system setting/administration stuff.
I have had Bazzite on my gaming PC for a while now, never have to mess with the terminal much. It has come a long, long way. Even gentoo has become more accessible than ever. While some of this holds true, you most certainly do not need to live in the command line with some of these distros. Especially if you are just trying to play some games and browse the web, etc.
> Whereas for linux users
My wife has used Linux for many years successfully and has never used the CLI once.
So has my grandma
>Just good enough for grandma to check her email and watch youtube.
Which is 90% of the use of a computer. And Steam is taking care of the other 10%.
This is always said by people who either never touch the Linux desktop, or exclusively use their own custom Arch setup.
You can install Fedora Linux, Linux Mint or Manjaro, and it's more user friendly than Windows 11 and macOS.
I compiled my first kernel at 13 (Mandrake, to age myself). I've used all the distros you just listed and no, none of them are close to as user friendly as at least MacOS. The fact that there are "flavors" you have to list alone is way too complicated and weird for most people.
For the vast majority of people an operating system is whatever comes with the computer the kid at Best Buy told them they should buy or their IT department gave them. Asking anyone to switch is basically impossible.
>> Linux is the only hope at this point for the future of computing.
Linux is the most obvious, but there are numerous flavors of BSD as well.
> and yet... still unusable by the mass majority of people.
That info is 20+ years out of date. Distros like Suse and Ubuntu made Linux "click, click, click, it's installed" more than two decades ago. i've watched complete non-techies switch to Mint Linux long-term, the only intervention from me (their resident techie) being showing them how to boot up the USB stick installer.
My wife (former Sales Person and Manager) has used Linux for many, many years and prefers it over Windows.
This isn't really true anymore with the advent of Flatpak & Flathub. It's just an app store like any other platform. Even the majority of games work without tweaking.
I've run Linux as a daily driver recently Flatpak and Flathub still break all the time. Not to mention the last time I bumped my Nvidia drivers nothing decided to open anymore.
Any OS that requires even once going to the command line is unusable for 99% of the population (and for me I just shouldn't ever have to).
I hit this recently - nVidia issues with a Flatpak, I spent about half an hour on it, gave up, and just decided to try the app out on another laptop.
Not used does not mean not usable. Primary school aged children used MS-DOS without any documentation in 1990's. Pretty sure randomly selected people would be able to use modern Linux distro, when pre-installed just like windows are.
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Folks like you need to just install Linux and use it.
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No I'm just telling you people are not as stupid as everyone assumes.