Their rough new user experience is concerning though. From what they described I suspect many of their "problems" are not actually "real", but it doesn't really matter because they still ended up in a scenario where they thought there were problems. How did they end up thinking that everything must be done with terminal while using Ubuntu? I know in the last ~10 years there's been a big focus on the new user experience, so what more can be done to prevent this? My gut says there are too many online resources that are confusing new users when they try to onboard themselves - especially resources that are old, written for other distros, or written for people who just want to find the command they can copy-paste to do something.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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How did they end up thinking that everything must be done with terminal while using Ubuntu?
Most guides on installing things or help on fixing things will offer terminal commands, so I can see how that could certainly lead to that feeling as a new user.
Also depending on the DE and stuff certain very basic obvious settings are not available in the GUI, like fractional scaling on KDE which has to be done by editing some config file first.
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How did they end up thinking that everything must be done with terminal while using Ubuntu?
When asking for help in a Linux sub/forum/community, the answer will generally use the terminal because it works across desktops and even distros. It's a lot easier to give one or two commands than it is to work out what distro, what desktop, and what settings the querier has, then describe the steps necessary in that particular GUI.
This may lead to the impression that the terminal is required for day to day use of Linux.
Maybe it needs to be more obvious that there are many ways to do things in Linux, and give new users a short "learning to learn" primer on how things operate differently in Linux-land, and where/how to look online for help. There are always first-boot popups but I imagine most people are conditioned to click out of them without even reading; forcing people to confirm a couple times that they want to skip "very helpful reading" may cut down on people that play the search engine lottery on what information they use for their first steps.
Also semi-related, I hope that mainstream Linux eventually "un-stupids" computers for regular people again. I get the distinct feeling that Microsoft and Apple have, at least somewhat intentionally, imposed 'learned helplessness' onto average computer users. "Oh computers are magic no one knows how they work. We are the only wizards that could possibly understand them and we will sell you the solution." Windows/OSX/iOS/etc are so locked down that people have rightfully learned over time that if they run into a problem, there really is no solution. I suspect that's permeating into the new user experience on Linux where people will encounter one problem and throw their hands up and say "fucking computers" instead of using basic problem solving to try another approach.
eventually “un-stupids” computers for regular people again
The problem isn't that people are dumb or don't want to learn or whatever, it's that the vast vast majority of them simply do not care.
They do not care what OS runs Chrome, because it doesn't matter. They don't care about privacy, they don't care about ads, they don't care about AI, they don't care about enshittification, they don't care that Linux or OS X might be better, it doesn't matter.
The computer is a screwdriver, and nobody gives a shit who makes your screwdriver. Hell, a lot of Windows users don't even know who MAKES Windows, because it's just "the computer".
I'd wager that Dank Pods didn't care all that much either - or, at least didn't until the point that something happened that DID make him care, and the real incentive here should be making people actually care that their screwdriver is shoving ads at them and stealing their data and that's somehow worth action from them - even though literally everything you do on a computer does that now.
How you do that I do not know, but the user has to have a solid, definable, clear reason for their change that'll get them past the transition period, or it just plain won't happen.
'I'm turning into a penguin'
Good onya mate!
Not sure who that is, but great 👍
I think the worst way to sum up his channel is that he reviews MP3 players and bad headphones. You'd really just have to see it, he's very funny.
If it works on electricity, there's a chance I'll yell at it
or something along these lines he's got as a channel title, and I think it describes the content in a very cromulent way
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Some of my fav quotes:
"Ads in an operating system that you've paid for from a company that owns ridiculous amounts of money is so offensive."
"data, it's like the new gold to people"
"I got the confidence to really jump into Linux after the Steam Deck."
[regarding the terminal] "You just see text going across the screen, they're working at lightning speeds."
"I'm kissing convenience goodbye, I just want control."
“I’m kissing convenience goodbye, I just want control."
He is in for a surprise when he realizes GNU/Linux is much more convenient than Winblows.
Arguable
I don't think it's really much different. What makes windows feel more convenient is that everyone generally learns how to use it first. I think if you took a person that is not familiar with either, they would be able to figure out both OS at around the same time.
it really just depends on what hardware you are on. For example my Dell pribter was plug and play on windows . It took me 6 hours to get it to work on Linux.
This. In my recent experience on one laptop. Arch (Endevour OS btw) installed fine.
But LMDE would not boot. I got a system disk missing error every time after install. So much playing with EUFI settings in BIOS, boot back to live disl, multiple re installs, GRUB repair, remake the ISO (ISO was fine, installed on another PC with no issues). Gave up. Just could not boot to the OS.
Install normal mint. No issues.
And past the install? Bluetooth dongle works fine on arch, but so many issues on mint.
WiFi dongle A works on arch, but not mint. WiFI dongle B dosenr work on arch but does work on mint. Took me a while to work thst one out.
Headphpnes have some weird echo back to me when mic is on. Use pipewire config from archwiki. Worked, but reduced qualoty. Tried a few other configs. Didn't work. Must have broke something coz now the original config dosnt work. So will just deal with echo.
0 of these issues on windows. And 0 likely your regular user can easily swap to Linux.
Will stay on arch tho. Fuck ~~spez~~ windows.
Maybe it's just me, I always had issues with Ubuntu and Debian based distros that I didn't have with Arch based distros. Why do people say Arch is harder? That was never my experience. I've been using endeavorOS and it's been pretty great.
It really comes down to if you are trying to use newer hardware or not. Debian based systems usually run fine out of the box on older systems.
For newer hardware your going to want new drivers and kernel versions which you get with a rolling release distro.
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onya m8
I love that he finally talked about it. He shortly mentioned the switch to Linux a while ago, in a gaming video, and Im excited to see if this makes Desktop Linux a bit more popular.
Onya, Wade, bring more people to Linux.
Funny how he praises immutable Arch + KDE and then uses Ubuntu (Snaps, broken packages, themed GNOME, not immutable)
I hope he finds his way to Bazzite, Aurora or plain Kinoite, as this would suit him way better
It's all discovery takes a while to realise what you want from a distro. Fully agree the the ublue projects sounded exactly what they wanted
I hopped a ton. Mint, Manjaro, MX Linux, Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Fedora KDE, Fedora Kinoite. Happy landing, and hopping was not fun, it simply was broken all the time.
He wasn't praising immutable systems, arch, or KDE. He was praising a Linux OS maintained by Valve. Many people simply want to use a distro made by Valve regardless of the technical details.
What? No. He
- Wanted to configure stuff in a GUI (i.e. KDE, OpenSUSE with YaST does also a ton but often duplicated and distro-specific) and avoid needing the terminal for everything. GNOME is extreme here, as the settings are so restricted.
- Wanted to be restricted in the ability to break his system. This is extreme on SteamOS, but just as stable on other systems like Fedoras Atomic Desktops
Those were pretty much literally the things he said
Good point about immutability and his comment about not wanting to break his system, i forgot about that when writing. But I disagree about Arch, snaps, those are technical details. Not sure which broken packages you're talking about or why him using modified Gnome matters.
The Universal Blue distros are cool though, though I've only briefly used their lightly modified main image.
GNOME has very little settings.
I actually gave Fedora Silverblue a try, documented here. This was not beginner friendly at all and still lacked many features in the end.
So this is the issue when GNOME doesnt allow basic things, like editing desktop files in a guided way, showing package names etc.
Ubuntu has had broken packages for a lot of 3rd party software (when I last used it, a few years ago), for example SciDAVis which I used, and Libreoffice and more. Flatpak works without issues here. Beginners will not add Flatpak and have issues here.
I didnt say anything about Arch I think. He also doesnt care about that. Using Arch as base really just makes sense for Valve, as it is neutral, not legally restricted etc.
uBlue deals with the constant sync (and coordination) issues between Fedora and rpmfusion. When using Arch, this is not needed.
I'm thinking he might be happier with Noridian, ZephyrOS, Sylvanix, or AetherForge.
I myself have been trying neoNova, specTRAos, and VortexLinux and they're all pretty good.
...
All of these are made up, I think, I just can't cope with everybody and their dog still rolling their own distros (and alternatives to GNOME 3, thank goodness for KDE), even after 25 years of observing it happen over and over again.
Zephyr is an actual operating system, but it's not Linux
Those are so legit sounding I didn’t even realise until the second part of your comment those weren’t real.
Granted, I just slap kubuntu on everything because I’m used to managing ubuntu servers and like kde, so my distro knowledge is limited, but still
Poorly, Kubuntu uses the broken Plasma 5.27 for a while until the next release afaik.
Really that was kind of the plasma guys fault, but Plasma 6.0.2 or so was really stable. Perfect LTS candidate. Then the new features came in, now it is stable again (on Fedora).
I used Kubuntu and the outdated Plasma and many packages were annoying. Nowadays snaps, and removed base packages.
I looked into distros using plasma 6 for a bit, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. It’s also a not trivial boot setup (dual boot with w11 and bitlocker + LUKS + secureboot) and the (k)ubuntu installer just handled it flawlessly (meaning not having to enter my bitlocker key on every boot)
Works fine for me (except some weird locale issue, but I knew that in advance)
CentOS Stream 10 will likely use Plasma 6. That will be great.
They always add features and in Fedora it is a bit breaky breaky again. After a few minor updates its fine again, and just getting better.
Just the icons are missing I think, then it would be a great LTS.
Kubuntu uses Calamares, which is a nice installer. But I managed to wipe a drive once! Because by default it loses the destination drive selection, I went back to check if everything was fine and it selected my main drive again, I continued without noticing. woops!
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Those are not individual random 3rd party distros.
Please read up on that stuff first. I understand how oldschool users find this odd.
- Fedora is the base distro. Legally restricted, not being able to preinstall crucial components. They also do a bunch of annoying opinionated decisions, like Fedora Flatpaks or Toolbx instead of Distrobox.
- Fedora Kinoite: the immutable image of Fedora + KDE Plasma. Very barebones, not really user friendly out of the box, but a great distro. As an advanced user I use it daily.
- uBlue Bazzite and Aurora: take Fedora Atomic desktops, make them compatible with NVIDIA, ASUS, Surface and more. Add a ton of packages, many call that bloat, but it makes stuff work out of the box.
(Btw. great Distro names :D)
I'm saving your comment to name the next seven distros I make
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No idea who this is but actually a great video.
'ol mate wade! he works on cars too on his channel 'garbage time'