Technology

It's just a little different nowadays. Like the other user said, they just don't know they have a choice or what to choose and follow whatever they know...

And what was one of the early bolsheviks' regime strongest points? They created schools and made people literate en masse, and did it with their own curriculum. People became less suspective to ex elites and religious propaganda, and became their target audience.

Adobe, Google, MS give discounts and special programs for education because this way people get used to their products. Many local organizations that touch these casual users don't have a real IT department and just flow with what's given, they don't make an informed choice like corporations. And that's probably the place where this switch may even start to begin. A class of students who started with e.g. KDE Plasma would be used to it more than they used to Windows, same with other software. They can already do their homework and play most games. What else do they need?

The sharp corner is to find money to fund select schools to show others it's not scary and makes it even cheaper for them in the long run, maybe some special troubleshooting team to teach them the ropes. I've heard from some users there and on reddit that their computer classes with a geeky teacher who installed Linux is how they've rolled in without a problem.

I’d say it’s really easy. The only requirement is making a choice to use something else, which most unfortunately is already asking too much for the vast majority of users.

I've heard this a few times lately. It makes me curious how recent the impenetrable experience was.

I'm shocked at the idea that an average Windows user who tried this year's version of Debian Stable would find it even mildly confusing, much less impenetrable.

I switch between Windows 10 and Debian 12 Stable, daily.

I find that, on Debian, all the expected features are in the same spots, acting the same ways.

Disclaimer: I don't have an Nvidia graphics card to cause me headaches.

And I do understand that depending on hardware, installation can be tough. That's true with Windows, too, of course. At least installation doesn't have to be an issue for new purchases, since enough PCs can now ship with either pre-installed.

2002 called, they want their Linux attitude back

The only real limiting factor is that most computers that you just walk into a store and buy (and are not made by Apple) come with Windows, and people just use whatever comes with their computers.

People rarely switch even default settings, let alone the entire OS.

I'm sure if computers came with Linux, there wouldn't be that many complaints from casual users after they got used to it.

The hardest people to switch over are the Windows power users in my experience.

I don't think a casual user would in many cases even be able to tell the difference. I mean you have a desktop with some icons which most of people only use to start the browser which is absolutely identical in both systems.

You have a start menu with other programs and you have a task bar which shows the open programs and some status icons and a clock.

It is really not that different. Most people just start a browser and go on Facebook or eBay or whatever, use a simple word processor for the daily needs. I don't think they would be able to tell the difference.

It isn't impenetrable. ChromeOS and Android are Linux based after all. If you don't want to be prayed upon by Google you can use things like UBlue (inc. Aurora, Bazzite), PopOS, or Mint.

The advantage of PopOS and UBlue being you can download an image with Nvidia drives pre installed.

PopOS is a very mac like interface so you might not like it. Otherwise it's pretty much install and go, has good community support, and even comes pre installed on some high end machines.

In the case of UBlue they include images for specific manufacturers of laptops like ASUS, Framework, and Microsoft surface. You also get fully automatic atomic upgrades with rollback in case of failure, similar to Chrome OS. This means even if you do something very stupid like reboot in the middle of an OS update, it won't matter. It's engineered to be almost unbreakable even for new Linux users thanks to being partly immutable. You get a choice as well between varieties for normal users called Aurora, one of gamers called Bazzite, a development one called Bluefin, and a server version too. Being based on Fedora it's also reasonably up to date as well, but without sacrificing stability like Arch does.

Linux Mint is the classic easy to use Linux that runs on most computers made in the last 10 years and often older. It does sometimes struggle on newer machines with drivers though as it's not using an up to date kernel. What it's good for is that it pretty much just works when you have it installed and set up. It's popular so you should get plenty of community support. It's a quite similar interface to Windows while arguably looking better and definitely using less resources.

It's gotten a lot better over the years

When I first tried it (back in 2010) it was pretty rough all around but after trying it again recently due to the whole TPM requirement for Windows 11 I've found it to be really straight forward

Linux Mint is really user friendly and is what I've even put on my grandma's pc