Stop being elitist, spread Linux!

Linux needs to grow. Stop telling people it's 'tech-y' or acting like you're more advanced for using it, you are scaring away people. Linux Mint can be used by a senile person perfectly.

Explain shortly the benefits, 'faster, more secure, easier to use, main choices of professionals and free'. Ask questions that let you know if they need to dual boot, 'do you use Adobe, anti-cheat games, or Microsoft Office', 'how new is your computer', 'do you use a Mac'.

And most importantly, offer to help them install.

They don't understand the concept of distros, just suggest Linux Mint LTS Cinnamon unless they're curious.

That's it, spread Linux to as many people as possible. The larger the marketshare, the better support we ALL get. We can fight enshittification. Take the time to spread it but don't force it on anyone.

AND STOP SCARING PEOPLE AWAY.
Linux has no advertising money, it's up to us.

Offer family members or friends your help or copy and paste the below

how to install linux: 1) copy down your windows product key 2) backup your files to a harddrive 3) install the linux mint cinnamon iso from the linux mint website 4) use etcher (download from its website) to put the iso on a usb flash drive 5) go into bios 6) boot from the usb 7) erase the storage and install 8) press update all in the update manager 9) celebrate. it takes 15 minutes.

edit:
LET ME RE-STATE, DO NOT FORCE IT ON ANYONE.

and if someone is at the level of ignorance (not in a derogatory fashion) that they dont know what a file even is genuinely dont bother unless theyre your parents cause youll be tech support for their 'how do i install the internet' questions.

mvirts ,

Build an automatic Linux mint installer that can handle most typical configurations and migrate data and apps from windows (with wine)

Get some oldish windows exploits together.

Build a worm that replaced vulnerable windows systems with mint

???

Profit (3 free meals a day and TV for the rest of your life)

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

fucking genius

Bene7rddso ,

Install a theme that looks like the Windows version it replaced

Doof ,

Stop being elitist about Linux, the amount of times I’ve had to explain that none of my software runs great on Linux just to have to hear how with trouble shooting it will. My work depends on the use of my software, it’s collaborative. If I have to trouble shoot every time adobe or Ableton updates it’s a bad use of my time and is actively taking time away from projects. Only I use VSTs for music production, they all work perfectly in windows and MacOS. Linux? Hit or miss.

Maybe I’m convinced. Now I gotta find the right one, set it up. Get all my software working, learn a new UI, hope that it doesn’t break collaboration. All in all, not worth the little I would save.

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

vsts work great with yabridge but yeah i get what you mean :D. theres a new plugin standard called clap so hopefullt that grows

BaumGeist ,

Your time is quite valuable, but there's a reallllly good chance you're underestimating the cost of your process in windows:

The OS is cheap. Even buying a key at full price, it's like ~$100 ballpark. But the software you use costs money, and if it's business grade, it's an "As A Service" subscription plan. And any plugins (including VSTs) aren't free if you want good quality ones. And support plans cost money. And upgrades cost money. And getting new hardware because the newest version of the OS doesn't supoort anything older than 5 years costs money. And you still end up spending your valuable time on troubleshooting, whether it's you or waiting on a tech to do it, because problems and errors still occur.

Seriously, keep a spreadsheet of how much time you spend on getting your programs and hardware to work the way you want, even if it's the time you have to spend waiting for someone else to do the fixing for you. Your time is valuable, and you don't deserve someone pulling the wool over your eyes to rent you something you should own.

I'm not saying Linux is a better fit for you, nor that you're in the wrong for not wanting to hop on the hypetrain. Just that it's not as cut and dry as it seems, the cost isn't as low as you think, and the whole "Just Works" narrative in any tech is a myth.

Solemn ,

The Adobe photography plan costs me $120 a year, and honestly includes more useful updates than not. Their AI masking upgrades the last couple years are saving me hours to days of editing time per photo session.

$120 a year is worth maybe one hour of my free time. Even just migrating to Darktable would take me weeks or months of dedicated time to migrate my existing catalog.

model_tar_gz , (edited )

I’m a Linux user and fan for a lot of years now. Software engineer by profession.

It’s not ready for widespread adoption to the less tech-savvy masses.

It misses some functionality that is really hard to get right but is absolutely expected to get right. For example: graceful suspend and wakeups. It happens so often even to me that I close my Linux laptop for the day, next morning open it up to a bunch of warnings and error messages about Bluetooth adapters or whatever the device of the day that wants to malfunction is that prevents a sound S2 S3 sleep.

I don’t get freaked out about it. But grandma sure would. And yet my 10 year old MacBook Pro gets it right every single fucking time; completely flawlessly. This is the bar of usability that Linux has to achieve for widespread adoption as a true, polished, personal computing experience.

edit: meant S3 sleep.

funkless_eck ,

It also doesn't help that doing anything in Linux requires weird little guys like "mv" or "mkdir" or "chmod 777"

eugenia ,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

People can make their own choices. I have 6-7 Linux machines, and asked my brother to install it too. He hated the experience. He bought a Mac at the end, and he's very happy with it. Some people just don't want Linux. They don't care about its philosophy, or that it's free. They want an ecosystem, and a status symbol.

jaykay ,
@jaykay@lemmy.zip avatar

As much as I like the premise, the average Joe doesn’t care.

It is techy, as long as it’s not seamless to transition, average person won’t bother.

What a person knows already > all of the other benefits. That’s why people use Photoshop and not GIMP.

If they need to dual boot, forget it. “Can’t I just use windows instead if I have to switch anyway?”

If they can’t install it themselves, they won’t bother learning the system. Say what you want but I think Windows still shits itself less than Linux. And when it does there is a lot more people who can help without typing in cryptic commands into the terminal.

For Linux to become more popular, more open standards would need to be mainstream. Leave Adobe, MS Office and other proprietary software that everyone uses. It’s like asking people to stop using PDFs because YOU a techy person think MD is better or whatever.

ScreaminOctopus ,

I disagree with your photoshop vs gimp point. People don't use gimp because the ui is complete shit. Tons of people switched to Krita for drawing when that came out because it actually had thought put into the user experience. People don't use GIMP because no matter how much anyone begs for the devs to make the ui not suck, nothing ever changes.

jaykay ,
@jaykay@lemmy.zip avatar

Yeah, “ease of use” wasn’t the best argument, the rest still stands though. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I myself hate the UI a lot. Don’t care what they add, change the UI

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

I say it all the time, people care about apps and browsing websites, they don't care about the how, just the what. Too many techy folks cannot see it as a business and human problem.

Plopp ,

The UI of Gimp is pretty damn bad, but if you've used Photoshop you probably will be able to handle the Gimp UI. However, if you use Photoshop for anything more advanced than the most rudimentary MS Paint shit, Gimp is out of the question due to it using destructive editing.

guywithoutaname ,

But please don't give unsolicited advice about Linux. No one wants that.

Diplomjodler ,

Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?

hendrik , (edited )

and RMS. And we need a third person to get to the holy trinity. Greg Kroah-Hartman? Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie? Bjarne Stroustrup? We could choose Lennart Poettering, that'd certainly annoy a few people. Maybe we need some more apostles and additional people since all of that is based on the work of so many different people.

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

thats where the 'dont force it on anyone' comes from

bloodfart ,

Stop doing this. Just be normal.

dylanTheDeveloper ,
@dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

No, Linux (especially arch Linux) is the far superior operating system where the only limit is skill and knowledge.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/30fbd006-73c9-4349-a11d-0f31f9a9cd77.jpeg

LibreFish ,

Sorry, but it is tech-y. Not out of reach by anybody who is interested in learning, but ask the average person to self sign their drivers (required for any Nvidea card if you want to game and don't turn on legacy bios). Or maybe you want the latest version of Spotify on Mint and therefore need to add flathub using the terminal. With help or research, sure, not hard concepts to grasp. Without help though, it'd probably be a dealbrealer.

And once you'ce done both of those I'd consider you 'tech-y'

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

Isn't flathub configured out of the box in Mint nowadays?

I also don't think you need to manually sign drivers? Or at least, I've never seen anyone mentioning needing to do it. If you do though, I imagine turning off Secure Boot is probably easier.

Delta_44 ,

Dkms takes care of this

drwankingstein ,

I generally disagree with trying to get people to use linux now. Im seeing a lot of people leaving linux and getting turned off by the idea of it.

Aside from outliers like Android and Chrome OS, I do not think Linux is in a suitable state for non-techy people to use unfortunately. I'm really hoping PopOS will be able to change things in the future, however as it stands I really don't think it is ready for prime time.

Users expect things that kind of just work and Linux Mint has not been that experience for me. I found the app store to be kind of annoying to use and complicated. The settings app were not very well laid out and miscellaneous stuff like that, which kind of ruins the experience.

Meanwhile, there are just general Linux issues to accessibility becoming worse and worse instead of better. You have issues like we still don't have a distro with good wine integration so people can use the apps they actually need to use. The apps that we do have natively, are oftentimes relatively... janky. If you're comparing Libreoffice to Microsoft Office, the experience is just not the same, even if the technical capability is.

EDIT: I want Linux to succeed just as much as anybody else. In fact, I think I might want it to succeed more because I absolutely detest maintaining Windows installs. However, lying about the state of Linux and being dishonest about it is not the way to go about this. We should be honest with all of its issues, so to speak. So that way we can strive to make them better instead of ignoring them and sweeping them under the rug for the people we tell to trial and to find instead.

hendrik ,

If I might ask: Who is leaving and what for? Mac? I've seen some developers buy the newer M2/M3 Macbooks. I think they're nice. But not nice enough to pay the price for one with a decent amount of RAM and storage myself.

ares35 ,

i have a client in need of a new laptop to replace an aging windows one with multiple issues. a $280 sale of a 12th gen 1215u with 8gb and 250gb ssd staring at him, and way more than they 'need'. but his wife, a k12 teacher, will insist upon a macbook when she retires and has to give hers back to the district. so they're looking at about $1000 instead, minimum.

hendrik , (edited )

Mmh, everyone is allowed to make stupid choices. I've told multiple people that drawers in the kitchen and in your wardrobe are awesome. That you don't need the Adobe suite to cut your 1.5 travel videos a year, let alone a $1200 phone... Stop using software when we have way better alternatives that are also easier to use. Many people don't listen. And they're entitled not to listen to me, it's their money, life and choices.

pete ,

Third best enterprise OS.

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Well, it’s better than Windows, so besides Linux what is better than macOS?

pete ,

Not in an enterprise setting, so patato potato

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Depends on the enterprise.

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Is $1900 too much for a blazing fast laptop with 1TB/24GB that will have support for 10 years?

hendrik ,

I'm sorry, I really don't get all the innuendo here. Are we talking about a Macbook or another laptop here that gets support for 10 years? I like to pay about 1200€ for a laptop and it usually lasts me like 6-8 years. But 1 TB SSD is a bit short of what I'm comfortable with. If I configure a M3 Macbook with 24GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD it comes down to 3149€. That is about $3.400 after taxes. Another laptop I really like is the frame.work laptop. The AMD Ryzen 7 should be plenty fast. The price including 32GB of memory and 2 TB of storage is 1918€ or about $2.070 after taxes. And in the years to come you can fix it and upgrade it however you like. So your $1900 sounds about right if it's blazing fast and lasts you 10 years. I just wonder which laptop you're talking about.

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

It’s a 15” MacBook Air M2. The closest frame.work laptop I could configure was $5 off from what you said, so I think we are going for the same specs.

I love the framework system. If I was going PC that’s absolutely who I’d go with. All those swappable ports?! I’m drooling.

All of my Apple laptops last a long time. I’m still using my 13” 2013 MacBook Air when I go on vacation. It’s so light and small. I’ve had to replace the battery on it, but I think that’s to be expected.

hendrik , (edited )

Fair enough. Yeah, the framework is a gem. And I learned about the M2 and M3 Macbooks because some people do AI / machine learning stuff on them and they seem to perform exceptionally well. I don't think I'm a Mac guy, I'd probably need Linux to achieve happiness. I haven't kept up but last time I checked M2 support was coming along.

Anyhow, my last two laptops were Thinkpads. They were both good machines, suffered quite some abuse and are still running. The old one is pretty damaged though, display hinges broken and some obvious damage, fan does everything but what it's supposed to do. But it served me well for god knows how long. I think I went through 3 or 4 batteries until I finally replaced that one. The one after that also refuses to die. But it's getting old and slow and I'm not willing to spend the money to upgrade the RAM and also buy a new battery. It didn't last me as long as the one before. I'm just not in love with their current lineup. Next laptop isn't going to be another Thinkpad. Maybe I'll go for a Framework.

drwankingstein ,

I have had multiple friends I've gotten to try linux for a prolonged period of time leave back to windows or mac, (In one case ChromeOS). There are a variety of issues, needing to constantly wrangle to get games working even with lutris and steam, Various accessibility issues, Microsoft office as I mentioned etc.

the general consensus was "it often did most of what they needed it to do, but not all, and often times not well enough"

hendrik , (edited )

Uuh. Yeah I believe you. I can't really empathize with that because on friday I booted the Windows on my laptop and it took like one and a half hours with the fan on maximum and two restarts until it had done the updates of the last three months since I've last used it. And then the Steam main window started flickering like crazy and I had to reboot it once or twice more, fix the boot order since it also messed with that and the graphics issues luckily went away on their own. I like to do development and dabble in electronics projects and that's also so clumsy on windows. You need like 20 different tools to get a task done and windows doesn't come with a single one of them. No git, no proper editor, nothing to mess with firmware files or flash them onto the microcontroller Not even the driver for some really standard USB/Serial chips. You can't read some of the filesystems, it can only extract one or two types of archives and always something gets in your way and messes up your workflow... And speaking of workflows... I really like the unix philosophy, it's soo convenient to use computers with a proper cli. In windows there is no equivalent to that, you're supposed to use a plethora of UI tools, or nowadays use the WSL and just install Linux. And that's just one aspect of what I do on my laptop. Guess it's different for everyone of us. I mean I don't judge. It's just, I've tried both and I just can't imagine how I'd enjoy using Windows. But everyone should make that decision for themselves. (Sorry for rambling on and on. I was really a bit pissed before the weekend. And turns out I still am. The "things have fewer issues on windows" somehow never works out for me.)

drwankingstein ,

oh I absolute hate windows too, personally I can never stop running into issues with it. I have this really bloody stupid issue where every now and then my screen will flicker purple for no reason, AMD driver updates will constantly kick me out of my games with the stupid console open but blank. and so many other idiotic issues. It's weird, it's a;most as if the second you become technologically inclined windows intentionally breaks itself xD

hendrik ,

Hmmh. Something is going on here.

flashgnash ,

This, don't get why people are so set on convincing the world to switch.

Userbase is big enough that support is pretty good, we've all got what we want out of it, why try to push it on people who don't care about technology

BaldProphet ,

People making OS their religion and following one of the Penguin Creeds:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, installing Linux in the name of Torvalds, Stallman, and the Holy Kernel: Teaching them to use only FOSS software. Amen.

flashgnash ,

See the whole point of Linux to me seems to be to allow user choice.

Windows and Mac are just as valid choices depending on a user's needs

drwankingstein ,

Personally, I want everyone to switch. I help my family all the time with their computing needs. I myself would greatly prefer them running linux all the time, but needs are needs.

kittenzrulz123 ,

Not only should we not recommend Linux we should be more "elitist". If a user wants to use Linux we should provide help but we should not convince. Linux is a fundamentally technical system due to its high skill celling. It will also never be able to do everything Windows does, I may be ok with that (and most Linux users are) but the average person may not. Also why do we need to advertise? More users doesn't mean anything. The only thing that matters is more programmers who are willing to contribute and maintain along with corporate sponsors.

TLDR; there is nothing wrong with telling someone to not use Linux if they aren't already

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

Also why do we need to advertise? More users doesn't mean anything

this is why we dont have adobe, or so much else. proper nvidia support? drivers?

just_another_person ,

Headline: "Person new to and overly excited about Thing, starts telling other more experienced people about how to approach and think about Thing"

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

:(

Quazatron ,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

This is the attitude the OP is talking about.

Being snobbish helps noone, we've all been noobs at some point.

just_another_person ,

Linux is the most widely deployed OS on the planet. I'm not sure OP is actually talking about aside from desktop usage. It's in your headphones, home appliances, routers, competing OS's, datacenters that run the world...what do you imagine is missed?

WeirdGoesPro ,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

But you’re forgetting the most important thing—people don’t want to change. They want a big corporation to tie themselves to because brand loyalty is a replacement for the need to learn.

Linux isn’t going to replace your phone with AppleCare. Linux doesn’t have a support line to bitch to or a geek squad to call. In fact, most of the places your typical user would think to go for support will likely balk at a Linux system because they aren’t power users either—just employees trained for a specific service.

I love Linux. I flirt with going 100% FOSS all the time. But I wouldn’t recommend it for my mom. All the free security in the world couldn’t replace the value of being able to tell her “take it to Apple and let them fix it for you”.

So yes, I’m with you, but I also think we need to acknowledge that all tools serve a purpose, and some people prefer the kids meal over the big boy buffet—and that’s ok.

Octorine ,

There are companies working on providing that experience for Linux. System76 is one. You can buy a laptop with their is pre installed. Everything works, including suspend. If something breaks, you call the support number or email and they either talk you through fixing it or sending it in for repair or replacement. It's not that different from having a Dell or HP.

grue ,

Irony: being elitist about the most egalitarian operating system

fin ,

Stop being elitist

That takes away most teenagers' motivation to use Linux xD

toastal ,

Things are about to get worse for onboarding those from other platforms. There’s been this massive push the last year to get every window manager to switch to Wayland & drop X11 support… meanwhile Wayland doesn’t support color profiles or color management (just sRGB). How are you going to convince someone with an awesome screen to drop down to sRGB? How will you convince someone with a poor screen that has been color calibrated to make it usable to go back to off colors? How do you expect content creators to migrate & still create content if they can’t have access to all the color tools they use in their workflow to come to Linux when Wayland won’t support them? A lot of Linux folk act like this doesn’t matter, but to a lot of people, a computer is a magic box that they interact with via a screen + keyboard + mouse, & if non-niche peripherals aren’t supported (which DCI-P3 is becoming the norm & saving a screen from a landfill can often be fixed to ‘good enough’ thru calibration), users will think it’s trash & unfinished.

noddy ,

The vast majority of people don't know what sRGB or DCI-P3 or color profiles are, or care about it. I understand that you may be frustrated about bad support, but it is just not that big of a deal for most people. That said, color management and HDR support for wayland is being actively worked on, and I wouldn't be suprised if it works better on wayland than X11 in a year or two. Also the distro suggested here (linux mint cinnamon) uses X11, not wayland. I agree with OP that we shouldn't scare people away from linux. Forcing people to have an opinion on X11 vs Wayland or color profiles, definately could scare them away.

yianiris ,
@yianiris@kafeneio.social avatar

I have used labwc (a really close equivalent to openbox) with great excitement with the exception of one thing.

Running a graphic application as a different user within a user's session is impossible. Even if a different seatd session is active for the 2nd user, wlroots refuses to draw anything as a different user than the one initiating the session.

It is a form of containerization for me that just requires x11

@noddy @toastal

toastal ,

I’m not anti-Wayland… I’m anti-saying-it-good-enough-when-the-featureset-doesn’t match. I know it’s being worked on & I’ve followed the work pretty closely for over 4 years fingers-crossed there would be less bike-shedding & having things come out in easy-to-digest phases instead of holding back the monolith that they are building.

Knowing sRGB vs. DCI-P3 vs. AdobeRGB might not be immediately known as marketing teams like to hide the names behind marketing terms, but users very much understand ‘this displays a more vibrant range of color’. The whole ASUS laptop line is basically banking on having these great, color-calibrated 100% P3 OLED panels up all the price ranges because when a casual buyer walks in a shop, that those dominates the showroom & will sell better because it’s easy to compare even at a distance without looking at the spec sheet or touching the device; users are also used to it because smart phones have followed Apple’s P3 lead & expect better from laptops & monitors where the market can actually cater to this crowd (which is great since for years it seemed it was only dominated by how many frames you could get for the gamer crowd). Folk are getting QD OLED & other such monitors / TVs which have support. Imagine you buy that monitor, looks great, then move to Linux & now it doesn’t--which will become even more obvious when HDR is more mainstream, as you definitely noted. You don’t need to know the names of every technology or how they work to have a validated ‘bad feeling‘ about something not working as intended.

jackpot OP ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

x11 is still supporred by mint and realisrically will be for years???

AlijahTheMediocre ,

The Mint team recently made experimental Wayland support available. Still very alpha but I don't think it will be years.

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