Cmon, this might have been true 15 years ago, but my grandma has been using Mint for 5 years + and TRUST ME she don’t know shit about Bash.
Big distros work OOTB today, as soon as you stick to regular use you’ll never see a shell in your life.
I revived an old computer using Mint, and it works great, but that’s for my brother who just browses and does spreadsheet and writing. I’m a bit more involved with how I use a computer and it is difficult enough to setup a wireless Xbox controller that I am considering automating it for future use and make that public. Note that I know fuck all about how to even begin, and I might give up halfway through, but the point stands that the motivation was triggered by a lack of user friendliness.
I know people who use linux mint (or other distros that aim at user friendliness) who literally never have to touch the command line. This claim that you need to use the command line was true 5 years ago, but today it is largely false.
I am in a Linux User Group and I am literally the only person who uses a tiling window manager (I use hyprland) instead of DEs like kde, gnome, cinnamon, etc.
I feel like it depends on which distro and hardware you choose. I remember having some weird pcie errors on xubuntu on an HP pc, and I couldn’t find a fix online. Windows is pretty hassle free on almost all hardware, probably owing to the fact that all the hardware is made to work with windows (or owing to windows excellent compatibility, maybe both?)
Using regular Ubuntu on a laptop now it’s pretty seamless though. I haven’t had to do any command line stuff for setup as of yet, so it’s getting better.
Tried out Pop OS for my laptop which is generally seen as a simpler distro. I had to hit up terminal to attempt fprintd. Getting a fingerprint registered was a pain in the ass. Then when I did get it registered, I could not log back in through the UI. I’ll still likely switch to it sometime soom and send the logs to fprintd to eventually fix but it was still frustrating as hell since fingerprint scanners are a pretty basic feature nowadays.
The only issues I’ve really had with my Linux Mint VM is upgrade issues and my smb mount occasionally failing. Both of those basically required terminal.
Don’t get me wrong, Linux is a fuck ton easier than it was 15 years ago when I started testing it out. But there still is a ways to go.
“Seriously, why is it such a confusing prospect to Linux users that Linux is difficult?”
Because honestly? It really isn’t. A couple of years ago, maybe it was hard, but now, Linux is easy to pickup and learn; so easy even someone like me who has zero programming/coding skills (not my profession) and still kinda thinks typing stuff into the terminal is basically black magic was able to pick it up and adopt it with very little hiccups and set it up for my ma on a seperate computer with no problems on her end. Unlearning Windows? That’s the hard bit, especially if you go into Linux (or even Mac, as was the case with me a long time ago) thinking it’s Windows with another skin instead of different beast althogether that has it’s own quirks one needs to get used to, just like with anything new (and just how the majority are used to Windows’s own quirks). That’s where you’ll start having a bad time.
Most people don’t want to have to use a cmd line to use their PC.
Cmon, this might have been true 15 years ago, but my grandma has been using Mint for 5 years + and TRUST ME she don’t know shit about Bash. Big distros work OOTB today, as soon as you stick to regular use you’ll never see a shell in your life.
I revived an old computer using Mint, and it works great, but that’s for my brother who just browses and does spreadsheet and writing. I’m a bit more involved with how I use a computer and it is difficult enough to setup a wireless Xbox controller that I am considering automating it for future use and make that public. Note that I know fuck all about how to even begin, and I might give up halfway through, but the point stands that the motivation was triggered by a lack of user friendliness.
@kmkz_ninja @OrnateLuna
I know people who use linux mint (or other distros that aim at user friendliness) who literally never have to touch the command line. This claim that you need to use the command line was true 5 years ago, but today it is largely false.
I am in a Linux User Group and I am literally the only person who uses a tiling window manager (I use hyprland) instead of DEs like kde, gnome, cinnamon, etc.
I feel like it depends on which distro and hardware you choose. I remember having some weird pcie errors on xubuntu on an HP pc, and I couldn’t find a fix online. Windows is pretty hassle free on almost all hardware, probably owing to the fact that all the hardware is made to work with windows (or owing to windows excellent compatibility, maybe both?)
Using regular Ubuntu on a laptop now it’s pretty seamless though. I haven’t had to do any command line stuff for setup as of yet, so it’s getting better.
Tried out Pop OS for my laptop which is generally seen as a simpler distro. I had to hit up terminal to attempt fprintd. Getting a fingerprint registered was a pain in the ass. Then when I did get it registered, I could not log back in through the UI. I’ll still likely switch to it sometime soom and send the logs to fprintd to eventually fix but it was still frustrating as hell since fingerprint scanners are a pretty basic feature nowadays.
The only issues I’ve really had with my Linux Mint VM is upgrade issues and my smb mount occasionally failing. Both of those basically required terminal.
Don’t get me wrong, Linux is a fuck ton easier than it was 15 years ago when I started testing it out. But there still is a ways to go.
“Seriously, why is it such a confusing prospect to Linux users that Linux is difficult?”
Because honestly? It really isn’t. A couple of years ago, maybe it was hard, but now, Linux is easy to pickup and learn; so easy even someone like me who has zero programming/coding skills (not my profession) and still kinda thinks typing stuff into the terminal is basically black magic was able to pick it up and adopt it with very little hiccups and set it up for my ma on a seperate computer with no problems on her end. Unlearning Windows? That’s the hard bit, especially if you go into Linux (or even Mac, as was the case with me a long time ago) thinking it’s Windows with another skin instead of different beast althogether that has it’s own quirks one needs to get used to, just like with anything new (and just how the majority are used to Windows’s own quirks). That’s where you’ll start having a bad time.
“I don’t want know that car needs oil changes, I just want turn key and go”
“Uh oh, car no start.”
/throws car in trash and buys a new one