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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by Mikeb85 on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @02:30PM (#15230058)
Check out the newest Fedora (Gnome Shell). IMO best desktop experience ever. Of course, for the masses the lack of MS Office and a few other commercial programs is a problem, but as far as the OS itself, the desktop, how everything functions, easily the best desktop I've ever used.
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by jetti on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @02:34PM (#15230113)
I installed Fedora 26 as the only OS on my laptop and I am very impressed. I don't miss Windows at all. I have played with Ubuntu in the past but Fedora blows that out of the water.
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by jhoechtl on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:32AM (#15235803)
Absolutely not dissing fedora at all but you might be pleased to hear that Ubuntu 17.10 will over a mostly plain gnome shell 3.26 experience
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by jetti on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @03:58AM (#15236344)
If that is the case, what benefits do you see in switching? I'm genuinely curious.
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by jhoechtl on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:14PM (#15242155)
The main benefit I see is that you will get mostly vanilla Gnome yet with a more stable (yet not as current) system underneath
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by Kadin on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @03:16PM (#15230870)
Insofar as an OS is really a visible middleware layer that lets you run application software and manage files, I don't know if the lack of applications can be hand-waved away; that's a very tough nut to crack.

Though, for developers, it's definitely a viable option since most modern development tools (at least for the web and Android, not so much for Windows, Mac, or iOS) are cross-platform. But it's a much harder sell to someone doing, say, financial analysis or data modeling, where they absolutely must use Excel or SPSS.

I've seen lots of modern companies where developers have a mix of platforms, but it tends to become a monoculture of either Win or Mac when you get into front (biz dev, marketing, etc.) or back office (AP, AR, finance, HR, etc.) functions.

Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by Mikeb85 on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @03:37PM (#15231292)
> Insofar as an OS is really a visible middleware layer that lets you run application software and manage files, I don't know if the lack of applications can be hand-waved away; that's a very tough nut to crack.

Yes and no. For most people, Linux is more than ready to be their only OS. There's no lack of functional software. I went through University only using Linux on my computer.

Edit - For example, most of the profs use LibreOffice, for sharing everyone uses Google docs, statistics and economics homework was done with R (Excel and Stata were the other options), all CS homework could be done on Linux. The only place I had to use Windows at all was a single course (Finance) where Excel was taught. I still just used LibreOffice then transferred the files to a school computer to make sure the output was correct. ----------------------------------

The only problem is that certain software still has the public's mind-share.

> But it's a much harder sell to someone doing, say, financial analysis or data modeling, where they absolutely must use Excel or SPSS.

Excel sucks and SPSS does run on Linux.

Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by FrobozzElectric on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @02:50PM (#15230372)
I find Cinnamon to be quite a nice desktop experience too.
Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by safisher on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:32AM (#15239229)
It's legitimately my favorite interface of the major OSs or the many choices of desktops on Linux. It has everything I want. And since they stopped having "hot corner" nonsense on by default, nothing I don't want gets in the way.