Let’s say just like for example like MacOS. It’s awesome we have so many tools but at the same time lack of some kind of standardization can seem like nothing works and you get overwhelmed. I’m asking for people that want to support Linux or not so tech-savy people.
Look at the Steam Deck as an example:
- Linux is preinstalled
- Integrated hardware and software
- Immutable OS that is very hard to bork
- UI is Windows-like which is familiar to the target market
- Good value for the price
- Offered by a well-known and well-liked brand
- Marketed and advertised to the target market
We need more Linux devices like this to gain market share.
System76 is doing that these days. They put extra hardware support for their Linux distro TuxedoOS and I’ve heard good things.
Edit: System76 make PopOS and Tuxedo computers make TuxedoOS
Underlying kernel aside, I think that the Steamdeck’s SteamOS is an excellent example of how “easy to use” != “smaller feature-set”. I’ve heard countless times from apple dudes that the reason that their stuff allegedly “just works” is because of the lack of some functionally that if present would overwhelm the user. You know, as if ios and android don’t share fundamentally the same user interface principles. But they do have a point, a green user can be overwhelmed when presented with a huge feature set all at once. Yet, despite SteamOS literally having a full-blown desktop environment, the UI frankly is way less confusing than my Xbox. It just goes to show that it’s not about the number of features, it’s about how they’re presented. Power users don’t mind digging into a (well designed) settings menu to enable some advanced functionality, and keeping those advanced features and settings (with reasonable defaults) hidden around the corner behind an unlocked door helps the newbie get started with confidence.
Yeah exactly.
But what about casual usage like office? The option to choose OS preinstalled on the laptops or desktop would be beneficial.
But Microsoft holds its monopolistic grip.
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
The only way to make sure Linux works like that is to have a closed hardware environment. But it has to play nicely with other hardware and services (e.g. printers, webcams, etc + office documents, etc). It has taken a very long time for MacOS to get to this point, but people put up with Mac compromises because enough things worked smoothly.
I’ve just commented about this in another thread…but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.
Yeah. I consider myself somewhat tech savvy (I do software development for work) and I had a really bad time installing mint on my desktop. I got it to work after a day but that was far more than a casually interested person would put up with.
To make Linux more appealing to the average person, you’d have to be able to buy a Linux PC at your local computer store. Most people can’t be bothered to install a new OS.
That’s also true but also impossible. Linux isn’t a for profit company.
What are you even talking about? Anyone can sell a PC with pre-installed Linux. There are already several companies today so just that.
Let me clarify myself
*It’s impossible to get big corporate guys attention so they ship Linux by default and it’s clearly tested. For now the Valve, System76, Framework and Tuxedo are exception.
Edit: Also I was keeping in mind corporate entity behind OS.
- Apple - MacOS
- Microsoft - Windows
- ? - Linux
The big guys won’t sell Linux to consumers because of Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices. That’s the main thing that’s holding back Linux acceptance right now. But if some big player (e.g. Valve) would take the leap, things might get interesting.
Yes exactly.
Dell sells PC’s with Linux installed.
Not in retail stores though AFAIK
Correct. I was just touching on the big corporations point since they listed some online only retailers.
It would be a real leap forward, if Linux PCs were sold in big box stores. Which is why Microsoft will do anything they can to prevent that.
“It’s impossible. Let me list 4 exceptions though”
Hahaha true 😆
But the scale is too small for now. :/
Dell have at times sold laptops with Linux pre installed.
Can you buy a Dell laptop with Linux at a retail store?
I’ve seen this type of question elsewhere. Why is it an issue?
Standardisation? Corporate Linux? Just like the big boys? Big fish eat little fish.
Careful what you ask for . .
lol wtf are you talking about? You can literally take $100 off the price of a computer just because it’s not bundled with a Winderps license - the price is straight up lower because the license cost is $0. You can order some models like this straight from Dell or Lenovo or whatever.
OEMs aren’t paying $100 per license. They’re also making deals with McAfee/Norton/whatever to package a bunch of extra crap on your windows laptop to lower the price further.
I’m a very casual Linux user and in my experience, I’ve NEVER had a problem with a documented solution that didn’t require going down a rabbit hole of other references.
Something like this: “To get the trackpad to work with Ubuntu, make sure you’ve installed the hergelbergelXX package.” (No link, find it on your own!)
Visit the HergelBergelXX page. To install Hergelbergel on Ubuntu, you must install the framisPortistan Package Manager. (No link!)
On the FramisPortistan GitHub readme, we discover it requires the JUJU3 database system to be installed. “JUJU3 may cause conflicts with installed USB devices under Ubuntu” JUJU2, which shipped with Ubuntu, is no longer supported. Also we recommend Archie&Jughead Linux over other distributions.
And this essentially never stops.
All of this is comparatively a happy result—I actually DID post a question on linuxnoobs about getting my trackpad to work with Ubuntu… and have not had a single reply. I have no idea how to find out how to make it work.
I had similar stories getting Wireless Networking to work on some devices before. Good thing is, there are drivers for most, if not all, default hardware interfaces directly in the kernel nowadays and if a device has any sort of popularity it will be supported before long if it isn’t out of the box.
I’m not talking about a long-ago problem. I’m talking about a current install of Ubuntu.
Yes, presumably on hardware that’s just a bit too old or rare. Might be unlucky as Linux compatibility isn’t high up on OEMs lists
Simple, start teaching it in elementary school all the way up through high school. Apple did it long ago and got apple users out of those kids. Microsoft does it now, and now you have Windows users. Just need the computer education to be Linux centric from the start. It’s not that it’s different, it’s that it’s not what they grew up with and were taught.
Atomic OSes should be evangelized more aggressively to laypersons. IMO, they’re great for 3 specific use cases:
- gaming (bazzite) - personally, I want my gaming box to “just work”
- thin clients/low-powered laptops used as an entry point to your homelab or other remote systems - again, I like having at least one fairly bulletproof and super stable system to use as a human:homelab gateway/admin machine
- non-techies. If the update fails, just roll back. Can’t remember if that’s generally an automated recovery process or not, but that sort of idiot-proofing is precisely what the general public needs in the context of Linux. Because there are a lot of idiots out there.
I installed Bluefin on my mother’s laptop and it’s like a Chromebook for her. She just wants to surf and consume media, and the OS stays solid and out of they way.
Atomic distros are the biggest advance for Linux in recent years.
you can’t because it’s explicitly against the whole point of having endless choices. when everyone works on something different, the quality spreads out to where it’s mostly just mediocre stuff across the board.
hardware compatibility is also a huge problem. for everyone that says “it works fine for me” there are a thousand others for whom it does not.
I feel like there’s also the point that on Mac OS a lot of stuff “just works” because everything else just doesn’t work at all. I have a number of things that just aren’t going to work at all on Mac. Linux is obviously much more permissive, which leads to a lot more kinda working stuff that just wouldn’t work at all on Mac.
when everyone works on something different, the quality spreads out to where it’s mostly just mediocre stuff across the board.
I wouldn’t say that’s the only problem. We have pretty high quality stuff on Linux. The other problem is that choice always means differences between options which makes perfect integration hard or even impossible.
I get downvoted to oblivion when I point out “just works” isn’t true.
You make a great point about endless choices.
No single UI, no single set of tools, those are massive barriers. And it’s why Windows became the de facto standard: single UI, consistent toolset.
And it’s why Windows became the de facto standard: single UI, consistent toolset.
No so true after win 7, there’s a bunch of legacy menu.
It’s at least the same inconsistent toolset as everyone else. Windows 10? Ok go through this multi step process. 11? Ok this other slightly different process.
VS Linux you have 700 consistent toolsets, and 70000000 inconsistent toolsets.
Yeah but you can have default choices that are guarantee to work.
And yeah preinstalled checked hardware would be ideal.
Need hardware with it pre installed with a reason to buy other than because it has Linux
Maybe use the lack of a requirement for a Windows license to bring the price to performance ratio down
If they’re really performant machines also helps break the idea Linux is only for old and slow machines, I only ever used to put it on laptops as they were reaching the end of their usefulness, the moment I put it on my pc and a new laptop it changed my perception on it entirely
I also think the majority of technical users still use windows, maybe we should concentrate on getting them first and maybe we’ll see more support
Needs to be pre installed, most people don’t know how to reset their PC, let alone install a new OS.
More GUI front ends for stuff. This takes away the need to understand command line tools and syntax, and makes the out-of-the-box experience feel more like it just works.
SUSE / OpenSUSE has this. You can open Yast2 GUI utilities and access all the GUI utils like Windows old Command Center. Hardware, package and driver installs, add hardware and configure, network, enable services and tweak parameter, printer tools, mess with boot options or kernel parameters, etc. The average user would never need to touch CLI
Most people have had great answers coming from the company side of things. I’ll take it from the standpoint of individuals like us helping someone linux curious see the light, while still having the “just works” experience.
Do not give them any choices. None. Put them on your stable distro of choice for a new user, call whatever that is “Linux”, and be on your way.
But why? Isn’t that antithetical to everything we value? Yes and no. We value choice almost above anything else, but that doesn’t “just work” for most people. Which of those do you value more?
It’s current year, I should never have to touch the terminal for anything. I don’t care that it’s powerful, my brain is already full of windows knowledge and I don’t want to have to google what command I need to perform basic functions. Everything needs guis. If there’s a gui, I can figure it out and also discover tools I didn’t know about along the way, which allows me to solve future problems without going insane.
That’s popular sentiment though, so how about one that I don’t see often: Add options to allow windows like behavior. For example, middle click paste is the bane of my existence. I should be able to change it to middle click scroll os wide, not just in firefox. I know that there’s a hacky workaround to kinda make it work, but it sucks.
“Do not let has been burden what could be.” /s
I agree though, other common UX replication options would help user meet the OS where they are more. I also agree that most common system administration and user UX should be doable in a full GUI, they are just so nice for when you don’t know what you are wanting but will once you see it.
I also think VUI (voice user interfaces) would bridge the gap for a lot people and NLP would cover most of the worlds population.
Honestly people keep working on and it ebs and flows in progress. Its just a lot fing work to do it well. One day we will get to doing most functions with multimodal interface support (GUI/CLI/API/VUI/NLP/BCI?).
Thank you thank you thank you for posing this question.
This is the biggest issue by far with open source stuff in general, and as a non-programmer who wants to use more and more of it, user unfriendliness hamstrings so much.
I don’t know the answers but I can tell you for a fact that if open source in general is serious about broader adoption, this needs to be occupying 50% of everybody’s open source discussion time, at least.
What I know is the standard “fuck you read my 19 pages of 1s and 0s” is the wrong answer.
Maybe good design is just really hard. I don’t know, I’ve never tried to do it. Seems like the sort of thing that might take three thousands iterations.
Whether any OS could ever just work isn’t even going to solve the issue.
Getting OEMs to sell laptops and desktops in Best Buy (or the like) that have Linux installed and is properly supported — that is what will help solve the issue.
having it just work is a necessary step to gett there
When there exists an operating system that can satisfy that qualification, I’ll concede the point. Until then, OEM and retail support is what matters.
Maybe we are too used to Linux working on anything but with some imperfection.
And yet it again leads to oficial supported hardware.
The way to get Linux more appealing is to get proprietary software makers, like Adobe, Microsoft (Office), you know the actual things people need to do their job, to make software for Linux. Steam Deck is a good example of this, it works because Steam ported the games to Linux…
In some ways this is true. However, I feel like in the case of Adobe, someone needs to take another shot at a good FOSS image editor. Adobe is really starting to mess itself with generative AI; knowing many artists, they hate generative AI image tech as a threat to their job, so I find it weird that Adobe is alienating one of their largest user bases. I find it weird how Inkscape is really good and has evolved (I actually switched to it from Adobe Illustrator and don´t regret it), while GIMP has barely changed in 10 years.
I get that some parts of an image editor are complex, but at some point, it’s just a chain of mathematical operations. Maybe I’m wrong, but when I get the time, it’s almost tempting to take a stab at the issue.
While I don’t disagree with you about the potential of those alternatives they won’t cut it for the average graphic designer… usually not due to the lack of features but most likely because of the network effects / dominant position that Adobe holds over their field. People who need to collaborate with others and are pressured to get stuff done can’t afford the slightest compatibility issue.
True. Industry entrenchment would be a big issue. I can think of two ways to try to fight it. The less viable option would be trying for PSD support, which would be a lot of work. The other option would be to write a Photoshop plugin to allow working with the new file format in Photoshop. This might be annoying to end users having to deal with the format, but also easier developer-wise because you could make sure Photoshop handles rendering right; you’d just need a way to warn about operations in Photoshop that can’t be converted to the new FOSS program’s native format.
Software, 1,000%. I love linux and daily drive it. But when I have videos to edit, photos to rework, or collateral to design I have a windows laptop with professional grade tools to do the job.
I’m sorry, gimp is hot garbage. There isn’t a pro-grade, open source video editing tool or anything close. Inkscape is useable in a pinch. Scribus is useless.
Not everyone is a multimedia creative professional, but most software on linux never quite have the features you need, are no longer maintained, or will be useful in ten years.
That said, I’d still rather break out the laptop when doing client work than daily drive MacOS or Windows 11. Either way the barrier for most users is that linux almost works.
At least we have Bitwig for music production now (if you can work out how to use it… I still haven’t had the time :-/ )
Gimp works really well, just that it is destructive editting.
As for the software not having features or not being useful, part of that comes down to: if a company offers a linux version make sure you use it. For a proprietary MCAD and PLM system from Siemens, we had a unix version, then windows, then when Linux was viable with support on SUSE and RHEL we had the exact software OEM aerospace and Automotive engineers used for design and management. Trouble is not enough companies used it to make supporting it a worthwhile effort, so they ditched the GUI desktop support. You can still run the few years old version. Maybe it will come back with Linux rising from 1-2% to 4.5% ; if that trend continues
There isn’t a pro-grade, open source video editing tool or anything close
Do you use open source professional grade video editing tools on Windows? Almost certainly not, so why would it be a requirement for Linux?
What we need is companies producing Linux builds of professional grade closed source software. And if the trend of Microsoft making terrible decisions and Linux use increasing, it might actually happen.
This kind of opens up its own point: people need to accept that non-free software isn’t the devil. It actually can be really good for a community to have large entities investing real, actual USD dollars into it, and creating products and services that people want to pay for. It absolutely shouldn’t be the only option, FOSS is a beautiful thing and I love that the Unix community puts a huge emphasis on it. But, without some heavy hitters putting some money on the table, Linux/BSD will always be niche. They won’t go away, but they won’t blow up either.
