It's the same way Mastodon and the Fediverse is so damn frustrating to many people. They don't want to have to think and just want shit to work.
This is oft repeated but is short sighted, it is NOT that people do not want to think, it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.
Remember that Android is Linux-based -- so keeping that in mind, a massive amount of normal users use Linux on a daily basis.
I think the key is, operating systems are meant to exist in the background. If it's working well, you don't think about it at all.
This exactly. Services should always be background. The OS is a service, not a goal.
Remember that Android is Linux-based
People keep saying this without understanding that Android was forked with several billion dollars in funding and aimed squarely at "normal" users, and had a decade of development since then.
Most "Linux" OSes really don't bother with this. How many times has someone sent you into the Android terminal to fix a problem? Literally never. It doesn't even exist without connecting a PC. Because you don't need it.
I'm a devops engineer, so I understand Linux well. I actually used exclusively Linux all throughout university.
Linux works just as good as windows for 98% of my uses cases. And for the 2% that it doesnt, I can probably figure out how to get it to work or an alternative.
But honestly, I usually just don't want to anymore. After working 8 hours, I'm very seldom in the mood to do more debugging, so I switch to Windows more and more frequently.
If this is my experience as someone who understands it, most normies will just fuck off the moment the first program they want to run doesn't.
Linux user here, also once upon a time a Windows admin. I think the most difficult thing for most users is not that Linux is difficult, but that it is different.
Take Pop_OS for example. For the average "I check email and surf the web" user, it works wonderfully. But most people grew on Windows or Mac so its just not what they're used to. Linux is kind of the stick shift to Windows and Mac's automatic transmission... its not hard to learn, but most folk don't choose to make the effort because they don't need to.
This is always a hilarious conversation because the diehard Linux users will lie up and down about how Linux has no problems and it's just you that's too dumb to understand how to use it.
The following sums up my experience with Linux thus far: "It's never been easier for the newb to jump right in, but heavens help them if they ever stray from the straight path".
There's been a lot of effort to make things easier for a newb (used to Windows and all that shit) to do what they need to do in most cases. There's been all sorts of GUI-based stuff that means for the 'average' user, there's really no need for them to interact with the command line. That's all well and good until you need to do something that wasn't accounted for by the devs or contributors.
All of a sudden, you'd have not only to use the command line, you may also have to consult one of the following:
And that's already assuming you've got a good idea of what the problem was, or what it is that you are to do. Trouble-shooting is another thing entirely. While it's true that Linux has tons of ways to make troubleshooting a lot easier, such as logs, reading through them is a skill a lot of us don't have, and can't be expected of some newb coming from Windows.
To be fair to Linux though, 90% of the time, things are well and good. 9% of the time, there's a problem here and there, but you're able to resolve it with a little bit of (online) help, despite how aggravating some of that "help" might be. 1% of the time, however, Linux will really test your patience, tolerance, and overall character.
Unfortunately, it's that 10% that gives Linux its "hard to use" reputation, and the 1% gives enough scary stories for people to share.
We desktop Linux users are partly to blame for this. In ~1998 there was massive hype and media attention towards Linux being this viable alternative to Windows on the desktop. A lot of magazines and websites claimed that. Well, in 1998 I can safely say that Linux could be seen as an alternative, but not a mainstream compatible one. 25 years later, it's much easier to argue that it is, because it truly is easy to use nowadays, but back then, it certainly wasn't yet. The sad thing is, that we Linux users kind of caused a lot of people to think negatively about desktop Linux, just because we tried pushing them towards it too early on. A common problem in tech I think, where tech which isn't quite ready yet is being hyped as ready. Which leads to the second point:
People see low adoption rates, hear about "problems" or think it's a "toy for nerds", or still have an outdated view on desktop Linux. These things stick, and probably also cause people to think "oh yeah I've heard about that, it's probably nothing for me"
MS has a huge advantage here, and a lot of the like really casual ordinary users out there will just use whatever comes preinstalled on their devices, which is in almost 100% of all cases Windows.
They still sometimes or even often(?) teach MS product usage, to "better prepare the students for their later work life where they almost certainly use 'industry standard' software like MS Office". This gets them used to the combo MS Windows+Office at an early age. A massive problem, and a huge failure of the education system to not be neutral in that regard.
So you still need to be a bit careful about what you use (hardware & software) on Linux, while for Windows it's pretty much "turn your brain off, pick anything, it'll work". Just a problem of adoption rate though, as Linux grew, its compatibility grew as well, so this problem decreased by a lot already, but of course until everything will also automatically work on Linux, and until most devs will port their stuff to Linux as well as Windows and OS X, it will still need even more market share for desktop Linux. Since this is a known chicken-egg-effect (Linux has low adoption because software isn't available, but for software to become available, Linux marketshare needs to grow), we need to do it anyway, just to get out of that "dilemma". Just like Valve did when they said one day "ok f*ck this, we might have problems for our main business model when Microsoft becomes a direct competitor to Steam, so we must push towards neutral technologies, which is Linux". And then they did, and it worked out well for them, and the Linux community as a whole benefited from this due to having more choice now on which platforms their stuff can run. Even if we're talking about a proprietary application here, it's still a big milestone when you can run so many more applications/games suddenly on Linux, than before, and it drives adoption rates higher as well. So there you have a company who just did it, despite market share dictating that they shouldn't have done that. More companies need to follow, because that will also automatically increase desktop Linux marketshare, and this is all inter-connected. More marketshare, more devs, more compatibility, more apps available, and so on. Just start doing it, goddamnit. Staying on Windows means supporting the status quo and not helping to make any positive progress.
This is still not the case yet, but it's gotten better. Generally speaking: If you're afraid of the CLI, Linux is not something for you probably. But you shouldn't be afraid of it. You also aren't afraid of chat prompts. Most commands are easy to understand.
So people think they either have to research each option (extra effort required), or are likely to "choose wrong", and then don't choose at all. This is just an education issue though. People need to realize that this choice isn't bad, but actually good, and a consequence of an open environment where multiple projects "compete" for the same spot. Often, there are only a few viable options anyway. So it's not like you have to check out a lot. But we have to make sure that potential new users know which options are a great starting point for them, and not have them get lost in researching some niche distros/projects which they shouldn't start out with generally.
Which means a lot of people, even smart ones, will not care about any negatives as long as the stuff they're using works without any perceived user-relevant issues. Which means: they'll continue to use Windows even after it comes bundled with spyware, because they value the stuff "working" more than things like user control/agency, privacy, security and other more abstract things. This is problematic, because they position themselves in an absolute dependency where they can't get out of anymore and where all sorts of data about their work, private life, behavior, and so on is being leaked to external 3rd parties. This also presents a high barrier of convincing them to start becoming more technically independent: why should they make an effort to switch away from something that works in their eyes? This is a huge problem. It's the same with Twitter/X or Reddit, not enough people switch away from those, even though it's easy to do nowadays. Even after so much negative press lately most still stick around. It's so hard to get the general population moving to something better once they've kind of stuck with one thing already. But thankfully, at least on Windows, the process of "enshittification" (forced spyware, bloatware, adware, cloud integrations, MS accounts) continues at a fast pace, which means many users won't need to be convinced to use Linux, but rather they will at some point be annoyed by Windows/Microsoft itself. Linux becoming easier to use and Windows becoming more annoying and user-hostile at the same time will thankfully accelerate the "organic" Linux growth process, but it'll still take a couple of years.
As a desktop Linux user, chances are high that you're an "outsider" among your peers who probably use Windows. Not everyone can feel comfortable in such a role over a longer period of time. Just a matter of market share, again, but still can pose a psychological issue maybe in some cases. Or it can lead to peer pressure, like when some Windows game or something isn't working fully for the Linux guy, that there will be peer pressure to move to Windows just to get that one working. As one example.
A lot of users probably prefer something like MS Office with its massive feature set and "industry standard" label over the libre/free office suites. Because something that has less features could be interpreted as being worse. But here it's important to educate such users that it really only matters whether all features they NEED are present. And if so, it wouldn't matter for them which they use. MS Office for example has a multi-year lead in development (it was already dominating the office suite market world-wide when Linux was still being born so to say) so of course it has more features accumulated over this long time, but most users actually don't need them. Sure, everyone uses a different subset of features, but it's at least likely that the libre office suites contain everything most users need. So it's just about getting used to them. Which is also hard, to make a switch, to change your workflows, etc., so it would be better if MS Office could work on Linux so that people could at least be able to continue to use that even though it's not recommended to do so (proprietary, spyware, MS cloud integrations). But since I'm all for having more options, it would at least be better in general for it to be available as well. But until that happens, we need to tell potential new users that they probably can also live with the alternatives just fine.
People hate Linux because shows they aren’t computer experts, they’re just Windows power users.
Yeah, but you can't expect every person using a computer to be a computer expert. In fact, you should expect most of us not to be.
Man 100%. If anyone wants to be a computer expert and is struggling, just stick with it and keep learning. You have to learn through experimentation and effort!
It's just an attitude thing that some people's egos are hurt when Linux confuses them.
I'll challenge your point with an analogous question:
Why can't everybody speak French?
Because you have to know a bunch of extra letters to make basic sounds.
For many it is simply frustrating because it is not Windows. Just think about how many people have a hard time already to get the most simple things done on Windows. Can you imagine those people to switch to another platform? Those people who cannot find their banking app anymore when something moved the icon on the desktop to another position?
I have the opposite problem, I find windows or other OSes to be so full of stuff, (feature ritch) but lack low-level "i just wanna poke at this briefly" capability, the (possable) reason why most Raspberry Pis run Linux is because its so easy to address linking this thing to that one. Ive used linux so long that ive become used to
its tree mounting scheme /foo/mountpointFolder on /dev/disk/by-label/C drive where symlink resolves to /dev/sdc rather than a linear one C:/ on *internal concept* rather than a
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in Linux's model, the mount system defines the source to be any file with the specified filesystem data in it. The Mountpoint (target) can be any (usually empty for safety) folder.
symlinks on windows are discouraged so heavily. I looked it up and still don't know how to make them. on Linux, its easy,
it makes a thing that acts almost just like the thing its referencing. in a GUI file manager, you can navigate into a symlink where reference is how to
do ln -s filePath pathToNewLink or in a GUI file manager, right click find "new" submenu click item with a link as the icon and a name likw "link",
. and not get anywhere to great confusion. on windows this odd support for but insistence on not using a "basic feature" is mind boggling.
linux with things like Fuse (Filesystem in userspace) allows literally anything and everything to be a filesystem, more non real folders to make a new user's head spin.
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virtual filesystems that have files and folders that are actually this OS construct that's stored in RAM or a view of folders not representational of how their literally on disk. (Fuse filesystem reading and proxying your multimedia organizing it into folders by artists)
all of these things are about having flexible references and easy access to computer resources, On windows I find myself wondering why I cant open this text based file real quick without needing to go online and get some software that will specifically handle it.
there are very few APIs you can touch in an ELF program (think EXE for Linux) that you cant with a Bash script and relevant programs. I get on windows and all the EXEs have have even more cryptic names than linux and no help menu or offical e-book and are at the mercy of the internee's answer (whats lsass.exe). it all makes me go, screw it! if I want to access the Raw C drive to do a non off the shelf task, I need to make it myself which means learning their programming framework.
You are preaching to the choir here. I use Linux since Kernel 0.97.something.
I'm a lifelong windows power user, and above average even in my industry for knowledge on technical expertise.
Nothing I know translates to Linux. Not the file structures, the commands, the permissions, the file systems.
You truly have to commit to learning an entirely parallel form of computing environment to become comfortable in Linux. And being frank, it is the most customizable and unique user experience out there, but it is also infinitely less user friendly. And for every time a 2 line terminal command fixes a problem and saves time compared with windows, there are dozens of instances where time is wasted for hours learning that command, its exact syntax and usage, and if it is the one you need for your circumstance.
Another user here recently said that it was when they were going through and compiling their own drivers to make their Webcam work and having to follow guides to make system specific tweaks that they just quit and went back to Windows for ease of use.
Linux is the OS of power users. Not even power users like me, but extreme power users who either have the time or training to learn that parallel system. All of which is easy if this is your job, but in many ways you are learning a second language of sorts.
My first experience with linux was Ubuntu. Sue me, it was listed under most "most user friendly distro" listicles when I wasn't smart enough to realize those were mostly marketing.
It worked fine for my purposes, though it took getting used to, but it would wake itself up from sleep after a few minutes. I would have to shut it off at night so that I wouldn't wake up in a panic as an eerie light emanated through the room from my closed laptop. I did my best searching for the problem, but could never find a solution that worked; in retrospect, I probably just didn't have the language to adequately describe the problem.
Nothing about the GUI was well-documented to the degree that CLI apps were. If I needed to make any changes, there would be like one grainy video on youtube that showed what apps to open and buttons to click and failed to solve my problem, but a dozen Stack Exchange articles telling me exactly what to do via the terminal.
I remember going off on some friends online when they tried to convince me Linux and the terminal were superior. I ranted about how this stupid sleep issue was indicative of larger, more annoying problems that drove potential users away. I raged about how hostile to users this esoteric nerds-only UX is. I cried about Windows could be better for everyone if the most computer-adept people would stop jumping ship for mediocre OSes.
I met another friend who used Arch (btw) within a year from that hissy fit, and she fixed my laptop within minutes. Using a CLI app nonetheless. I grumbled angrily to myself.
A few years later and everyone's home all the time for some reason, and I get the wild idea that I'm going to be a(n ethical) hacker for whatever reason. I then proceeded to install Kali on a VM and the rest is history.
The point being that some people labor under the misguided belief that technology should conform to the users, and because we were mostly raised on Windows or Mac, we develop the misconception that those interfaces are "intuitive" (solely because we learned them during the best time in our life to pick up new skills). Then you try to move to linux for whatever reason and everything works differently and the process is jarring and noticeably requires the user conforming to the technology--i.e. changing bad habits learned from other OSes to fit the new one. The lucky few of us go on to learn many other OSes and start to see beyond the specifics to the abstract ideas similar to all of them, then it doesn't matter if you have to work with iOS or TempleOS, you understand the basics of how it all fits together.
TL;DR Category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive
Can you explain how category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive? 😅
Category Theory is an attempt to understand all of math (including conputer science) as simply different instances of abstract conceprs, called categories. The way I've managed to understand OSes as abstract systems rather than entirely unique beasts is how I imagine category theorists must see all of computer science
It's a freeing paradigm shift once you realize that your understanding is broad enough that you can transfer your knowledge from one OS to another, therefore the joke is that since Category Theorists have the broadest knowledge, they must deal with the least amount of frustrations learning a new system
You don't choose Linux. Linux choose you. That being said
It's not that hard actually but you need a lot of free time and motivation to keep learning. When I was a student I was deep on Archlinux + DWM / AwesomeWM + lots of console applications now that I am a functional working men I just stick to a stable distro (Currently Debian Testing) I think the secret is have good hardware compatibility and if you want to try some weird configuration just use a VM first or just use a immutable distro.
Lots of things don't have a GUI, if we expect users to eat up the CLI, the year of the Linux desktop will never come.
Using it since I was 12
People have been using X since that age so anything different is going to be jarring. Just the smallest roadblocks can put people off of stuff. Why bother learning something new when the old thing works?
I've been exclusively using Linux for almost a decade now. I started in high school when the computer we had at home was painfully slow with Windows. At start, it did seem a bit hard to wrap my head around. I was a kid, and there was no one who used Linux to teach me. I guess the installation etc. are much simpler nowadays. And the online spaces are much less toxic.
Even after all that, the main reason, I believe, is that it's different. If someone is using a stable distro like Debian, and just wants to do what 90% of people do (i.e. browsing, looking at documents media etc.), Linux isn't really a hassle. The installation process might be daunting to some people. But after that, they don't need to open a terminal ever if they don't want to. My sister is basically tech illiterate, and she's been running Mint for a few years now. Never heard any complaints. Only issue she had was when she deleted her .config folder. But I had set up a script that backed up dotfiles to her external drive, so it was easily fixable.
People get frustrated because whenever something happens on Linux, and they go online, they see all these walls of text that they need to read, and commands they need to run. But they forget that on Windows and Macs, that isn't even an option. Most of the time, you need to reset your system. Or, in the case of Macs, get it replaced. The frustration that people experience is caused by conditioning. They accept the inconveniences of Windows and Macs because they grew up with it. But since Linux is new to them, the shortcomings stick out much more.
TL;DR: For the average user, the OS doesn't matter (they should probably still use Linux for increased privacy). For the power user, unless some specific applications they need are missing, Linux is always the best choice. The frustration is mostly due to conditioning.
Nearly everyone forgets how hard windows was to learn initially.
I spent the better part of a child hood and the first 10 years of an IT career learning it. Does that sound like a simple or easy system? Conversely I've spent slightly less time but an equal 10 years of an IT career learning and supporting Linux. I've only recently in the last 3 or so years started to feel like I truly grasp Linux and started using it as a daily driver on personal machines.
I now find Windows absolutely horrible to work with. All the nonsense MS foists on it's users. The inflexibility. The weird choices. The licensing nonsense.
The bottom line is not that Linux is harder. It's that Linux is different and different is scary and uncomfortable. Different is hard, not linux. People are lazy and creatures of habit. We like familiar. Few of us actually enjoy the work of learning something new that isn't easy. If we did more of us would probably be pilots or engineers or whatever hard thing to learn you want to choose.
If you're into computers and you still find it hard or constraining keep at it. The Ah, ha! moment is coming. There's a paradigm shift in thinking you'll hit and suddenly you'll get it. When you do you'll find it's magnificent and powerful and freeing.
For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.
Even the friendliest of Linux distro don't check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn't receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.
Most people could learn to use Linux; it's not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it's not worth it. For most people it's not the journey, it's the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.
There's a lot of little things to you need to learn, that you don't learn until actually messing around with in Linux which absolutely make or break your experience with Linux, and that Linux users will mock you for asking about.
For a lot of people windows just works how they want it, so when they're convinced to switch by a friend/family member/youtuber they now have to relearn what was incredibly easy for them, which absolutely will cause frustrations regardless.
And a lot of Linux dudes get really defensive and elitist when you ask them to explain or help, like screaming that you're afraid of the command line when you've just never needed to use it before. So the initial learning curve is rough, to het more or less what you had before(For an avg user)
Like. I'm sorry, but having an issue keeping you from using your pc, and only getting advice to read the documentation of the distro, when you could have just kept windows, is going to frustrate people
It's like so many other things, it's simple when you know it well but when you don't have a lot of experience it's very daunting. A lot depends on understanding the file system, like what is the difference between /run and /media and / and /root? So much is command line with some pretty arcane commands and parameters. And not knowing what tools there are to help, and not knowing how to fix things when they break.
Reading comments, it's soo strange that I never borked my system once during nearly 7 years of linux usage. Playing games were frustrating, but it was improved a lot by now. My ubuntu never failed to boot, the only audio problem I had was with the mic. Even better, KDE Connect introduced new workflow to me. I wonder why my computer always boots well even when it gets borked during shutdown..
Nowadays, I use my own hand-rolled DE. It still refuses to break on me. Guess I am really lucky or something.
Same here. My issues atm are that NixOS is just too darn complicated sometimes… But that doesn't mean stuff gets borked.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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