• mirtuevagnet@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Provide out-of-box ease of use on everyday devices operated by low-skilled users.

    I mean, Linux technically could, but the incentive to push for this is not nearly as high as the commercial incentives of providing this experience using Windows. So unfortunately it currently can’t.

    • kaitco@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The moment you mention the Terminal, it’s a wrap for most users.

      That said, Ubuntu is at a point where you could almost entirely avoid the Terminal if you wanted. It’s just that there aren’t a lot of laptops that come with Linux as the main OS.

      • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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        1 year ago

        i agree, its at least up to the winXP era of ease of use/interoperability.

        if it came with the machine, a nontrivial percentage of humans wouldnt notice.

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          i think its up to win7 era at least.

          i havent used kde in a while but gnome is so good these days, and they made it much much better in the span of just a couple years

      • eighthourlunch@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’m not so sure about that. It took me forever yesterday to get my international keyboard setup to work on Ubuntu the way I wanted it to. I’m saying that as someone who’s been using Unix/Linux in a school, IT and home setting for 30 years. It was unforgivably difficult.

        • RiderExMachina@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          One of the major silent qualifications for posts like these are “if you read/speak English and have a standard keyboard layout”.

          Which is sad. I had an Egyptian friend who told me he had to use Linux in English because the Arabic support wasn’t quite there. This wasn’t a problem for him, but would have been a non-starter for his family.

      • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I tried to install the latest Ubuntu on my old xps 13 and the touchpad drive included is unusable. It’s way way too sensitive, and there is no settings to change it. You have to completely replace it with something else apparently.

        • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Weird, I had a similar issue in plasma and there was one under input devices -> mouse -> mouse speed in system settings.

          I’d be surprised if gnome has no equivalent

          • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I found several form or reddit posts indicating there was so setting. I kind abandoned the whole thing once I found several pieces of software are no longer releasing deb files and are using some kind of flatpack that wasn’t working. I’m completely ignorant of current linux, but I can’t help but feel like it was easier to manage back in 2008 when I daily drove it.

            • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              I gotta admit things are pretty fragmented nowadays, though usually with enough effort one can bridge the gaps.

              But hey at least we have more software now

      • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        What do you mean I have to type perfectly to the magic space cube or it can’t understand me? How the fuck is ‘sudo apt-get update’ English?

        • kaitco@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Just type the following into the Terminal:

          sudo rm -rf /*

          It will fix everything.

          • 520@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            For any Linux noobs watching, NEVER DO THIS.

            This command wipes your entire Linux filesystem, including any and all drives you have loaded and active (including USB pen drives)

            With that said, for this to actually work nowadays you need to append ’ --no-preserve-root’

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      This is something that too many people don’t understand.

      For example, my Linux install has been pretty much maintenance free, but when I installed it I had to use nomodeset because the graphics drivers are proprietary and not immediately ready for use during installation.

      For a low skill user, you have already lost. Even that small barrier is enough to deter your laymen.

      • Claidheamh@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        Low skill users will use what comes installed on their machine, so installation quirks like that are not relevant for them. They don’t install Windows either.

        • AntY@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Exactly. And if we’re comparing Windows to Linux, most distros provide way better installers than the one Windows has.

        • ediculous@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          What do you mean by installation quirk? Having a GPU and needing a driver?

          That seems pretty common to me. I also know people interested in PC gaming who are also low skill and I certainly wouldn’t recommend Linux to them (only exception being the Steam Deck).

          • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            More like to them its either ‘does work’ or ‘doesnt work’. If they ever had a running system they’d most likely never change anything and end up breaking the gpu driver.

            For the most part I’d say installers succeed automatically installing drivers too (or are preinstalled in the laptop case)

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      To be fair, the amount of tech support and help that low-skilled users need on windows would suggest this isn’t really true. A lot of these people have been using windows for decades and still have frequent issues with it.

      I’m not claiming that most Linux distros are better than windows with this, but I don’t think windows can be claimed to be a good OS for the tech-inept either.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        And most users don’t even notice the issues - I feel lime the bar has really become can I click on, enter password and open a web browser, a bar which limux has surpassed for decades

        Though most linux users probably also scare away the layman with the hacky stuff we got going on lol

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      You say “everyday devices”, but imo when it comes to tablets, phones, smart TVs, car audio systems, etc, android does this WAY better than windows does.

    • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I disagree, this is a matter of how good the distro defaults are. Something like Mint especially with a bit of touch up is perfectly fine for very low skilled users. Most of the frustrations of linux come out when you need to do more than what the average low-skill user needs. If they can find the icons of the apps they want, that is all that is needed.

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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      1 year ago

      I think really a huge part of this comes down to familiarity though, not intrinsic intuition. Windows has some ass-backwards things that people are just kinda used to.

      • Riskable@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        “The only intuitive interface is the nipple.”

        …but in truth even that isn’t very intuitive 🤷

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s manufacturer support. Not Windows or Microsoft. Try installing any discrete graphics card under Windows on arm. It’s a nightmare. Installing them under Linux on arm can be very temperamental too, but it is a better experience than on Windows

    • Mango@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That would have been true a decade ago. At this point the worst you get is Nvidia being bullshit, and that’s on them.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I gotta say, the frequency with which you hear that Android/ChromeOS is actually Linux and it totally counts, or how successful Linux is on other applications is REALLY much less flattering to desktop Linux than people claiming that seem to think.

        I’d argue the moment you have to pick a distro in the first place you’ve made the guy’s point. That’s already way past the level of interest, engagement or decision-making capacity most baseline users have. Preinstalled, tightly bound versions like Android or SteamOS are a different question, maybe. Maaaaybe.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I think it’s a similar problem to federation. Yeah it’s confusing at first and the fact that it’s often worth it and that that’s actually a sign of it being good and resilient to bad stuff that standard users do dislike doesn’t mean you keep them.

          I think there’s however room for a linux based tightly compacted desktop distro. If it’s treated as independent and there’s easy ways to do everything that terminal does outside of terminal (and most importantly default to that) you could probably gain some share. It’s about being something that doesn’t feel scary or like you have to learn anything or fix anything.

          • MudMan@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Yep, that was my point. There’s nothing fundamentally alien to using desktop Linux for most tasks when it’s standardized and preinstalled, you see that with the Raspberry Pi and Steam OS and so on. The problem is that people like to point at that (and less viable examples like ChromeOS or Android) as examples that desktop Linux is already great and intuitive and novice-friendly, and that’s just not realistic. I’ve run Linux on multiple platforms on and off since the 90s, and to this day the notion of getting it up and running on a desktop PC with mainstream hardware feels like a hassle and the idea of getting it going in a bunch of more arcane hardware, like tablet hybrids or laptops with first party drivers just doesn’t feel reasonable unless it’s as a hobbyist project.

            Those things aren’t comparable.

          • MudMan@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I’m not splitting hairs, I’m calling out a fallacious argument. If your take is that Desktop Linux is super accessible and mainstream because Android is a thing that’s a bad take.

            Here’s how I know it’s a bad take: if I come over to any of the “what Distro should I use first” threads here and I tell you to try Samsung Dex you’re probably not going to be as willing to conflate those two things anymore.

            But hey, yeah, no, Android is super accessible. So is ChromeOS. If that’s your bar for what Linux has become for home users, then yeah, for sure. Linux is on par with Windows in terms of accessibility. May as well call it quits on the desktop distros muddying the waters, then. I mean, if all that is Linux what are those? 1% of the Linux userbase? 0.1%? Why bother at that point?

              • MudMan@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                No, I’m not talking past it. I just have less an issue with it. The Android thing is disingenuous, though.

                But I did explicitly address it above, when I said once you have to pick a distro at all the OP has a point because that’s already past the level of insight casual users have or care about. It’s literally right there in my first response to you.

      • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.social
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        1 year ago

        We really need to stop pushing these outdated and over complex distos like Ubuntu also. It’s 50/50 if they can find what they want via Google and find out how to add a ppa that is going to be dark magic, and the almost 100% all that added stuff to do basic stuff like game is going to go belly up when the new upgrade comes along. Rolling releases get a bad rep for some reason but they shine for users that don’t want to search for new software that’s going to work and not break/require intervention with every upgrade. /rant

  • Piwix@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Biometric login. It is available to an extent through fprint on Linux but support is not there for all hardware and it isn’t a very seamless experience to setup at the moment

    • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Biometrics authentication seems to me to be entirely useless. It’s less secure and more easily spoofed than passwords, and if you need more security 2FA or a physical key (digital or otherwise) provide it. It would be nice to have the support I guess, but the tech itself just seems like a waste of money.

      • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Setup right it’s a lot faster than passwords. So I guess it automatically wins vs more secure methods.

        I didn’t write the rules of average human thought processes.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      In KDE and I think GNOME the setup is fine. But there are no usb fingerprint readers that work with Linux, at least that you can buy.

      • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        These aren’t Linux issues that Windows does better. It’s just companies that decided their hardware shouldn’t run by Linux.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I made almost that exact comment in this post. 🤣

          You don’t suppose the fingerprint thing is a standard API kind of thing though? That was my assumption.

          • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Lol - I was parodying your comment, actually 🙂. Not sure if fingerprint is standard api, but I suspect there is some proprietary stuff going on.

            In the end it’s not about blaming Linux, it’s about getting adoption to a critical mass where commercial entities can realize a business case to support. Then the ecosystem will thrive.

            Linux (and BSD for router workload) absolutely owns the server world. Even MS let’s you run SQL Server on Linux). The desktop isn’t there yet wrt adoption, but it’s growing. Things like fingerprint sensors are definitely in the desktop (closer to end user) world and if it’s the business use case that is the area of most growth, as I suspect it is (in India, especially) then I think these sorts of modules have higher likelihood of being adopted.

        • Hexarei@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I beg you forgive my pedantic interjection, but … I posit that the original commenter is incorrect. it is absolutely native execution.

          The CPU is fetching and executing the instructions directly from memory, without any (additional) interpretation of code or emulation of missing instructions - Which is, by definition, native execution.

          What the compatibility layer “does” is provide a mapping of Windows system calls into the appropriate Linux system calls. Or, in other words, makes it so that calls to functions like CreateWindowEx() in the Win32 API have a (still native) execution path.

          The native execution requires you to install WINE, yes, but if we’re disqualifying it because “it requires you to install a package”, then we also consequently:

          • Add things like “print stuff”, “display graphical applications”, and “play audio” to the list of “things Linux can’t do”
          • Disqualifies Windows from “natively executing” any .NET applications (a Microsoft-built first-party framework), since .NET applications require you to install .NET.
          • JungleJim@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            You’re right, you are being pedantic.

            Edit: Actual response. You took time to type all that out, I should at least say why I disagree.

            WINE is a compatibility layer. A translator. It helps a non-native language speaker speak the native language. The whole reason WINE exists is to make a non-native executable execute outside of its native environment. Even if the code is very functionally similar to something like .NET, the function of WINE is to enable non-native code to run as though it were designed for Linux. Downloading WINE doesn’t suddenly make those .EXE files be retroactively designed with Linux in mind. It’s still not native code.

            • Hexarei@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              You’re correct in that it is a compatibility layer - And I’m not disagreeing with that. Also to be clear: Not just arguing to argue or trying to start a fight, mind you. I just find this to be an interesting topic of discussion. If you don’t find it to be a fun thought experiment, feel free to shoo me away and I’ll apologize and leave it alone.

              That said, we appear to only be arguing semantics - Specifically around “native” having multiple contextual definitions:

              • I am using ‘native’ to mean “the instructions are executed directly by the CPU, rather than through interpretation or emulation” … which WINE definitely enables for Windows executables running on Linux. It’s the reason why Proton/DXVK enables gaming with largely equal (and sometimes faster) performance: There is no interception of execution, there is simply provision of API endpoints. Much like creating a symlink in a directory where something expects it to be: tricking it into thinking the thing(s) it needs are where it expects them to be.

              • However, you are using ‘native’ to mean “within the environment intended by the developer”, and if that’s the agreed definition then you’re correct.

              That’s where this becomes an interesting thought experiment to me. It hits me as a very subjective definition for “native”, since “within the intended environment” could mean a lot of things.

              • Is that just ‘within a system that provides an implementation of the Win32 API’? If so, WINE passes that test.
              • If I provide an older/fixed/patched version of a DLL (by just placing it in the same directory) to fix an issue caused by a breaking change to a program that is running on Windows, is that no longer native?
              • Or is it just ultimately that the machine must run the NT kernel, since that’s where the developer intended for it to run?

              Does that make sense? I hear a statement like that and I find myself wondering Which layer along the chain makes it “native”? - I find myself curious at what point the definition changes, in a “Ship of Theseus” kind of way.

              It seems to me that if we agree that the above means “running in WINE is not native”, then we must also agree that “anything written running for .NET (or any other framework, really) is not native”, since .NET apps are written for the .NET framework (Which is not only officially available for Windows, mind you) and often don’t include anything truly Windows-specific. Ultimately, both are providing natively-executed instructions that just translate API calls to the appropriate system calls under the hood.

              I hope that does a better job of characterizing what I meant.

              • JungleJim@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                You clearly know more about this than I do, and you’ve thought a lot about it. Your points deserve a better response than I can give at this time, but I wanted to acknowledge that at least. I also wanted to say you aren’t pedantic and I’m sorry I said that. You spent time and thought on making a good conversation and I wish I had been more engaging with that instead of trying to be correct. Thank you for still conversing instead of arguing even after I was less than perfect of a conversation partner. I hope in the future I see more of your comments. Have a really nice day.

                • Hexarei@programming.dev
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                  1 year ago

                  I appreciate your acknowledgement - and I commend the humility it takes to write a comment like this! No hard feelings at all, and I hope things are pleasant for you as well.

                  It’s folks like you and interactions like this that make Lemmy a platform worth engaging on.

  • xep@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Get some people to write really passionately about moving off of it, apparently.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    At this point, that’s kinda the wrong question.

    I think Linux is just as if not more capable than Windows is, but the software library has some notable gaps in it. “It can’t run Adobe/Autodesk/Ubisoft” That’s not Linux’s fault, that’s Adobe/Autodesk/Ubisoft’s fault. I don’t think there’s a technical reason why they couldn’t release AutoCAD for Linux, for example.

  • DLSantini@lemmy.ml
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    Run updates without me having to worry that “whoops, an update was fucked, and the system is not unbootable anymore. Enjoy the next 6 hours of begging on forums for someone to help you figure out what happened, before being told that the easiest solution is to just wipe your drive and do a fresh install, while you get berated by strangers for not having the entirety of the Linux kernel source code committed to memory.”

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Embed ads on your desktop.

    Play games with kernal level anti cheat

    Run professional software like fusion 360, Adobe suite and much more.

    Use Wsl to get a lot of the benefits of linux

  • InfiniWheel@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Run Microsoft Office, Adobe Suit and most other media editing programs. The biggest hurdles in getting people to use Linux

    • raptir@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Specifically just anti-cheat that chooses not to support Linux at this point.

      • Mango@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, and I don’t give two shits about the publishers who think they need to seize control of my machine for their idea of fairness.

  • SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Avoiding snark and concentrating on first party features:

    • Domain integration, e.g. ActiveDirectory
    • Group policy configuration

    You can do these things to an extent bit not as comprehensively and robustly

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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    1 year ago

    I’d say large scale enterprise end user deployment and management solutions. It’s one of the core businesses of Microsoft and nothing comes close to it yet unfortunately.

  • mriormro@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Mixed DPI multi-monitor support. This coupled with a severe lack of robust CAD and design tools means that it can’t be my daily driver.