memes

I would disagree on the basis that Linux upgrades don't require hardware upgrades (unless you have a very low end hardware that's hanging by a thread already)

For example, I don't remember seeing all this fuss about upgrading when people were moving from 8.1 to 10 (but it could just be me on my bubble)

If these businesses wouldn't switch to a newer version of windows, what makes you think they'll switch to arch or any linux distro?

If you want Arch just use EndeavourOS. Its got an easy installer and a slightly less break-neck update schedule and you get the Arch User Repository for all the cool stuff.

Absolutely not, even if we could all work together that would be a horrible idea. Linux is not a Windows replacement and the Linux community doesn't need to be overwhelmed with Windows users asking why a specific feature doesnt work exactly the same.

There's a bunch of beginner friendly distros, it's just that when you want to make things work as well as they did on Windows then you hit a wall.

I'm using Mint (which is as beginner friendly as it gets)... Because my display signal dropped whenever there was load on the GPU on Bazzite (Fedora based) which is also supposed to be beginner friendly...

No easy way to disable the audio outputs I don't actually use. On Windows? Couple of clicks, all done through GUI.

Wifi antenna didn't work, had to install unofficial drivers from GitHub.

I've got a multi display setup and sometimes I want to switch where things are displayed. On Windows I downloaded Monitor profile switcher and it does everything for me, just had to save the setup to a profile and assign a keyboard shortcut (which isn't essential as there's a shortcut to switch it on the taskbar), it's all done inside the program. On Mint I had to create a script to choose what to display with what resolution and create a new keyboard shortcut in a separate program because the alternative was to have to open the file explorer to open the folder where the script it saved to execute it.

Playing games is easier than ever! Except that games that have both a Linux and Windows version fuck up when it comes to cloud saving on Steam because the save game folder isn't necessarily the same (and the Deck installs the Windows version by default so fuck compatibility between that Linux running machine and Linux PCs!) so you still have to force install the windows version even though there's a perfectly playable Linux version!

Don't want to use the terminal? "Everything can be done without it but using it makes things easier..." When people say that they mean that you can browse the web and write stuff on LibreOffice but as soon as you deviate from stuff that you can accomplish with a simple Android tablet you're fucked because you'll have issues you couldn't imagine. If you don't want to use the terminal at that point you need to write scripts outside the terminal and then execute them so technically you didn't do what you needed to do in the terminal but the end result is the same!

Exactly. Us Linux users, as a collective, tend to shoot ourselves in the foot here because we can't decide on the "best" distro for beginners. If we all just said one thing, with confidence and without arguments, and without saying "it depends...", more would probably make the switch.

No major outlets that the average user would frequent are likely to sell laptops with any Linux distro pre installed. Many non-technical users wouldn't even reinstall Windows by themselves, let alone Linux.

Any of the usual starter distros would be a good choice because once they are in the ecosystem they can find their own path. When a non technical person asks how to get Linux, there is no worse answer than a barrage of information followed by more questions. Just pick one, say it confidently, and assist them to make it happen.

It's actually pretty easy with the guided installer currently shipping with arch, and there are actually numerous guides on how to install Arch.

Choosing not to is perfectly reasonable, but it's not for lack of effort from the Linux community trying to make things easier and more accessible.