this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Omg it really feels like that sometimes.
The youtubers who paint Linux as extremely unstable/not appropriate for gaming almost come across as sponsored by Microsoft. (Not to mention the overemphasis of the ubiquity of adobe suite users i.e. confirmation bias)
Mostly first Linux users will download Ubuntu, latest release, and I've not used a more bug ridden OS in my life. Everyday there was a new bug that made me have to hard reset my computer (mind you this is 24.0.4 noble). Display was grey after login, didn't want to login, laptop screen doesn't wake up, Wayland crashes and doesn't start backup. And that is the bugs that forced me to hard reset my laptop, then we have a whole slew of other bugs.
I mean some new getting recommend Ubuntu will have a horrible experience, and most of them do
It almost seems like Linux Mint is the default recommend now which is better. I had a kind of buggy time with Pop OS, due to the amount of unsupported extensions you need to run to have some customisability.
OpenSUSE TW with KDE has been the best experience for me in the end.
I don't think Linux caters to the casual crowd, maybe in the distant future, because it takes a lot of effort to create a good user experience, those resources are not available to distro makers.
In the PC world you have some different setups of devices, apple has it a bit easier they explicitly choose the hardware that they want to Support.
Also casual people have a hard time connecting a printer to their computer or fixing the wireless wifi.
I can't imagine them fixing anything via the terminal. My SOs runs Manjaro and she is like that, but I usually fix her laptop when she has issued.
I love Linux for what it is, this toy for a developer that can automate and customize stuff relatively simple, with a large opinionated community.
I would instead rather focus on those thing, than seeing Linux trying to compete with windows/Mac.
I never experienced any of those problems with Linux Mint (except hardware incompatibility with Mint debian, which they explicit state it's experimental and for enthusiasts). The user experience was sweet from the start, lots of preinstalled useful stuff, an AppStore that already is miles better than Microsoft Store, and my printer was recognized by the pc and printer program better than on my smartphone. Everything has a useful GUI knob to push or click, and i never use the terminal unless i want.
Agree with Manjaro being unstable, that's why no one recommends it as beginner distro, and Pop OS is the distro of System 76 computers, so they also mainly aim for hard and soft wares integration inside they ecosystem (the apple of linux) and people should stop recommending it to beginners.
Linux Mint is the Magnum Opus of desktop linux for me, and we should recommend ONLY it for the time being, as default choice.
Oh for sure, I'm not a "This is the year of the Linux desktop" kind of person. The average person probably doesn't care about privacy/software freedom enough, but I don't think think it is at all insurmountable for a normal person to transition to the simpler distros if they begin to care about those things.