Not anymore. Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered, which is something one can experience with a Linux distro on pretty much any machine.

I agree that it's not as much as a polished experience, but that's the point as indicated - trading off polish for ownership.

I'm excluding from the discussion professional documents editing - compatibility with Libreoffice is mediocre (at best) in my experience, but having very good compatibility is not a consumer requirement IMO.

> Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered

But it's also just as likely that you're using a browser made by Google, and using other services made by one of the big companies that don't care about your privacy. Where's the difference?

Google's not in control of the CPU, OS, or Desktop. It's not fingerprinting every binary you run, nor locking you into any of the google tools. You could easily use a different email service, different photo service, etc.

Sure since but this subthread argues that users actually don’t need binaries other than the browser that’s moot.

There's some confusion in the thread, in the fact that there's a mixup between operating systems and programs (or classes of programs), however the parent was referring to operating systems:

> The alternatives are still completely unusable by most people.

Otherwise the statement wouldn't make sense.

> Not anymore. Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered, which is something one can experience with a Linux distro on pretty much any machine.

Or their smartphone, which is a hell of a lot smoother experience. So why does Linux Desktop continue to pride itself on being "good enough" for an "average user" [0] that doesn't even use a desktop?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25047042

This is completely conceding the point. Nothing but the browser is up to par, and even that is not as ‘polished’.

If all people need is a browser, they should buy ChromeOS or an iPad.

"Not as polished" doesn't imply "not up to par".

Ironically, one of your two suggestions is a Linux distribution.

Android is a Linux distribution and MacOS is a FreeBSD distribution.

There is nothing ironic about that. Users don’t know and don’t care.

Are you equating the presence of the Linux kernel with some notion of software freedom or independence from corporate control?

If all people want to use is a browser, Linux is irrelevant.

> Not anymore. Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered, which is something one can experience with a Linux distro on pretty much any machine.

Browser apps need connection. Most of the services are also subscription based.

Ok, suppose I can find an alternative to Adobe & co. on linux. Which laptop features a multi finger touchpad as nice and feature rich as the MacBooks?

Well the alternative can't rely on unpaid workforce while Apple/Microsoft and co spend billions on their software, GUI and user experience. It is simple economics. Open source needs financing, not just free Github repositories that MS/Apple and co can then exploit for free because the code is licensed as MIT.

I think this is something we need to fix with education. We spent so long meeting the user that it developed an expectation. For any piece of technology its peak function is always reached when the human meets it half way and makes a concerted effort.

Whenever someone says “I don’t get computers” or gets angry at their smartphone they’re just leveraging that expectation and conning themselves out of a gain they could make. Same problem - laziness and expectation. At the end of that path is a life of a sharecropper and a cow to milk.

I disagree. It's a matter if taking a couple of minutes to educate people. You don't have to be a CS major to be able to use a modern Linux OS. "Most people" don't do anyhting on their Windows or Mac computer that they couldn't do on Linux. IMO it's a combination of fear of the unknown, and a lack of general availability.

Macs are shiny and their marketing department is fantastic. Windows has a monopoly with OEM preinstalls. Those are the main reasons why macos and Windows are so popular.

I've tried using Windows, it's "completely unusable" to me. I couldn't even figure out how to install it without creating a Microsoft account nor could I figure out how to turn off "telemetry".

> It's a matter if taking a couple of minutes to educate people.

While it sounds nice in theory, is just unrealistic.

We'd also need to educate people why they cannot use random proprietary rental application on their mobile device that's not google or apple, or connect to a university vpn that doesn't support linux properly. Many workplaces use zoom for meetings, or google suite, etc etc

Exclusively switching to open/ethical software starts to resemble living like a hermit in the woods, and in reality makes ones life more difficult, reducing the impact the person can do on others.

Android handles this reasonably well. I can use F-Droid reproducible builds where possible and fall back to Play Store (or Amazon App Store) apps for apps I don't care that Google (or Amazon) knows I'm running. I get to choose where I want to make the trade-off between privacy and convenience. If I want convenience, it lets me go further than any Apple product, and if I want privacy, it also lets me go further than any Apple product in that direction also.

I’ve considered making the switch back to Androids to play with F-Droid, do you have a device recommendation?

For phones, anything that gets updates directly from Google (Pixel and Android One) will update quickly and will have community support for LineageOS for many years after official support ends. Unfortunately, Google makes absolutely terrible hardware decisions, but nothing comes close in terms of software value, which is far more important in my experience.

Keep in mind that some of the user friendliest machines today are chromebooks. Simple, not many knobs to turn, relatively secure, and of course browser centric. ChromeOS is of course running the linux kernel and the chrome web browser. The experience is very similar to installing ubuntu, google chrome, and dragging the other icons off the launcher.

But chrome os is is just another of the locked down, centrally controlled, telemetry driven products that people are complaining about.

The fact it happens to use the Linux kernel is like saying MacOS is based on FreeBSD.

Bollocks. I've installed Linux for non-technical people any number of times and, provided I make sure everything (network, printers) is working for them, generally never hear from them again. At least not for computer help.

Most people are using their (personal) computers for browsing, maybe an email client if they're not using one of those web-email abominations, the odd bit of word-processing and watching movies/listening to music. Linux works just fine out of the box and the install is substantially simpler than anything I've ever seen over in the MS world.

Right, they just need an expert to install things for them to get started... that's not simple enough for people who don't have an expert they can call.

Why could anyone's auntie do it when they needed MS-DOS or Windows installed in the 90s, and they could not do it any more today? The 'expert' being a neighbour, the little nephew himself, or whichever friend of the family.

The world outside of Linux has moved on from people needing experts to set up computers.

Today we just tell auntie to buy an iPad.

or, trust.