That’s Linux’s biggest cross to bear
Pre-installed Linux laptops is great - and is clearly the way to get someone less techy on-the-way. But, for most, if they're sick of Windows and they want to move (dual boot their machine) then god help them.
Linux is much better than it was, for sure, and I think the community is much better at answering questions than it was - it's less patronising than it used to be (like this guy [1]) - but I when I think of most people who I know who use Windows (non techy users), and whether I think they could survive in a Linux environment - I have to say no, still, which is a shame.
I have to wonder what hardware and distros you're using, as the most dominant vendors (Intel, Realtek) work out of the box on the major distros. Or are you recalling experiences from 15 years ago with ndiswrapper and older Broadcom devices still?
The difficulty of dual boot is to do with something being already there. Already Ubuntu etc. have installers that will do repartitioning for you intelligently. Windows by comparison will just pave over whats there if you let it do the happy path and if you want to set up dual boot, requires as much knowledge about resizing partitions.
amdgpu
i2c
bluetooth autosuspend
wifi connectivity issues
resume after suspend sometimes crashing
usbc-pd sometimes not charging
There are so many warnings in journalctl / dmesg, since getting the laptop one month ago, I'm nonstop searching for solutions.
The only reason I'm doing this is to learn the inner workings of the current state of how things are done in Linux.
Did it... get a lot better recently? Last time I installed Windows on a laptop I had "fun" getting it the drivers so it could use the Wi-Fi card so it could pull the rest of itself down.
The last but one Linux Mint install I did didn’t even recognise the mouse and keyboard I had plugged in, haha! (The installer recognised them, but not the OS post install!) It turned out I needed a slightly different flavour of mint, but yeah, the average user might even throw in the towel at that point.
No.
"My OS makes it easier to do X" is generally an illusion because you learned what arcane nonsense your OS requires in order to do that ten years ago and now it takes two seconds, but the other OS requires you to learn some different arcane nonsense which would also take two seconds if you already knew what it was.
Non-technical folks might be able to click their way through the installation but in the process every anti-privacy setting you can think of will be turned on by default because you have to really go out of your way and click dark-pattern-enabled links to opt into a few settings that help protect your limited privacy when using Windows.
In some cases you have to either disconnect your internet or purposely fail logging into a MS cloud account multiple times before you're allowed to login to your personal computer with a local account.
He literally tried to imply incompetence. That is a personal attack. When the entire point of this thread was to empathise with non-techy people installing and setting up a Linux distro. It's not about me, I'm able to resolve issues that come up with the myriad operating-systems I've used in the four decades of using and programming computers.
Instead this commenter got into one of those "my operating system is better than your operating system" childish positions and trying to question my competence rather than deal with the point.
Really, I was trying to state that Linux (all distros) still have some ways to go before the average human would be comfortable with it - especially once you fall off the happy path. The things that make Linux strong for the power user (myriad choices for everything, open-source, CLI driven) are not at all what normal humans want - they don't want a million options, they don't want to run scripts, they couldn't care less about the open-sourciness (other than it's free), etc. The motivations and incentives are different.
And for sure, Windows and OSX have their own problems, but mostly you stay on the happy path because they always have the drivers made for them, which means it's rare that a device or something doesn't work. And if something does go wrong then there's usually either the vendor (who sold them the device) or a single place on the internet to go to find out how to resolve.
This whole thread from my original comment down shows exactly how far away from the average user the Linux community still is. The default answer when someone has problems is "well, stop being so shit, be better - it's your fault". Or, "I've never had that issue, you're an idiot".
Of course those are sweeping generalisations, and I've made the point elsewhere that the Linux community has made great strides - but if we're ever going to have the year of the Linux desktop (I mean real Windows-denting momentum, not just the odd Linux laptop) then more needs to be done, and some of the shitty attitudes need to change.
Sent from my Linux Distro.
> Really, I was trying to state that Linux (all distros) still have some ways to go before the average human would be comfortable with it - especially once you fall off the happy path.
This is just not true. Average humans buy preinstalled. If it's preinstalled, it doesn't matter whether it's Windows or Linux.
Sent from my Librem 5.
Unless you your hardware is so new that it requires the very latest kernel then you should be golden.
So, if you buy something that works, it will work, and if you buy something that doesn't work, it won't. Wow, what insight. It really does boggle the mind why people don't just buy things that work. Am I right!?!
So either you just like to complain about unfixable things or you are unaware that once you discover your hardware is not supported you should stop wasting time on forums and go back to your working Windows environment
It's never "this doesn't work on Linux".
It's "This SMBus driver is only supported by version 10.1 of arcane library. It will work but first you have to swap out this shim for another one and configure dpkg to never upgrade it. However, this requires that your kernel needs to be compiled with flags foo, bar, and baz. Oh btw, your CPU doesn't support those instructions lol."
I'm being hyperbolic, but it's usually that after some banging your head against the wall you find that, yeah, it could work, but I'm not compiling custom shit to get my function key light working.
Threads are written not spoken, if you don't want to read them press PgDn.
The use of "hear" is metaphorical, not literal. You can learn grown up words now.
[0] Yes, that's exactly the word I meant.
"Oh, you just used the wrong Linux. You really should use X with Y blah blah..."
There is no "wrong Windows".
Ubuntu desktop might be the closest to just works, but I'm getting more and more averse to its quirks and will likely find myself back on Debian soon.
That's just part of Linux's charm I guess.
For example Server versions are rarely what you want, or business versions, or IoT versions
“Why do I require an online account” (pro? business? enterprise?), “why does this game not work (windows media player being unavailable means certain videos in game engines like Unreal can never play ;))”, “why cant I keep using Windows 7? the new one has a weird taskbar and hid stuff again!”
I get that theres fewer choice and its made for you, but if it hadn't been made for you its actually much more difficult to get it right as a non-tech
I've installed Windows 7-11 on entire fleets. I've run multiple corporate-wide Windows upgrade projects for multiple companies and environments. I've built gold images and templates for Citrix and VDI environments. There really is no hardware configuration needed at all.
I've never had any problems running games or any software in Windows due to drivers or configuration issues. In fact, I run all my creative software specifically in Windows because there's nothing to think about at all.
The only time I've had any kind of hardware or driver issues is with external hardware like testing apparatuses or machinery. I haven't had to mess with drivers in Windows in probably 10 years or more.
I have also run windows and linux for a long time, server contexts and otherwise (hence why I am aware of that Windows Media bug btw).
My personal experience with Linux has been plug and play ever since NDISwrapper wasnt needed for wifi anymore, and aside from some extra repos needed in Fedora for Nvidia.
Windows on the other hand had no official public ISO image and we resorted to sharing it around inside Ubisoft because it was annoying to get a new copy of, we had a blessed version which had the issue of not coming with directX, so we had to copy it from someones desktop windows to get our gameservers running.
Glad you had a good experience, but mine was better in a professional setting with Linux than windows: and I knew more about what I was doing than most.
However: we are mostly talking about desktops, and i was mainly pointing out that most windows users don't have to go to MSDN and get an ISO for their machine or drivers: so safe choices are already made. That doesn’t mean it would be easier given the same non-installed circumstances for the common user.
Was running 2012R2 on the server, there were copies available online of the evaluation edition if you submitted your details, but they wouldn't join a KMS server unless you manually intervened to change the “edition” from evaluation - Joining the domain didnt fix it.
2014-2018 for that directx + download anecdote
Has there been significant progress in this area in a decade? last time I installed a windows (11 pro) it was significantly worse than Ubuntu. Both in downloading it and installing it.
That being said, those environments are generally going to EoL Windows 10 as there's just no reason to move to 11 if things are working. I have 0 experience with Windows 11 yet for that reason.
As far as a consumer goes, if you're starting from a Windows 10 machine, creating the installation media is as easy as downloading the Windows installation media creation tool, point it to your USB, and off you go. Licensing is generally tied to the hardware at this point, so if your device is newish, there's no activation or license keys.
Install takes maybe 15 minutes and is hands off other than username, time zone, pick your wifi SSID etc. Unless you have special hardware, you shouldn't need to install any other drivers. It just goes.
I seriously doubt you've ever even seen a large scale Windows deployment and spend all your time on your "creative software". Is that Powerpoint by any chance?
Creative software being Audacity, Fruityloops, ProTools, Logic, Reaper, various tracker, etc for sound engineering/recording and the Adobe suite for photography and graphics. Ie, my hobbies. I've never had to fiddle with drivers with any of these, just software settings, which is to be expected.
My point is that installing Windows applications, even at scale, generally does not require poking or reconfiguring the OS itself.
Not sure why you're being rude.