Modern society is all about convenience. Linux can increase marketshare by being more convenient and digestible. Actually, I am in the process of moving to Debian w/ KDE Plasma as my daily driving computer, but it required extensive research on what my options were. Quite simply, there are WAY too many options all touting features that slightly differ from each other than normal end users struggle to interpret.
Formula is simple. More easy = more better. Make adoption as painless as possible, people MIGHT trickle in.
Yeah, Linux is just not that accessible tbh. I know maaayyyybe a little more than average about computers, meaning I know how to follow tutorials lol.
I installed Ubuntu onto my laptop because it was getting old and slow. Overall, I’m very satisfied with the speed. My laptop is fast as it was new. But, doing some of the simplest things is a nightmare to me. I spent an hour last night just trying to install AirVPN. Why do I have to go into terminal? Why can’t I just right click and install? Then when I finally got it installed I realized there’s no UI, so idk how to use it lol.
Given, I could learn. Nothing wrong with that. But the opportunity cost is low - I’m really not willing to give up that much for ? benefit.
Thank heavens for the Ubuntu app store
I started same way with Ubuntu on old laptops to extend life. I later bought a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu preinstalled. I like figuring stuff out, but it can get infuriating as I too am not a tech job person, just enthusiastic. I keep a “how to Linux” text file with notes. The forums & to tutorials help a lot. I did manage to get a pihole up & running recently (days of fiddling with router). It’s a hard learning curve, but when I get on my spouse’s window 11 laptop I feel vindicated. Would I switch distros? Eh. My needs are met & it’s working. IDK what it entails to get back to the settings / setup I’ve got now.
My biggest problem is that battery life on my laptop was awful. I tried a few distros and they were all drawing 17-20W from battery doing absolutely nothing. Which means 4-5 hour battery life on an 90Wh battery. In Windows it gets ~10 hours.
I screwed around with it several nights in a row, but nothing really worked.
I’ll run Linux on servers, workstations, and containers; but never again on a laptop unless it’s been tuned by someone else.
I guess that’s kind of what’s going on with the Steam Deck, as in, it’s already set up and configured for Linux so you don’t need to make any choices or do anything especially, you just turn it on and away you go.
(Of course, you can install other distros and stuff on it, but I’d assume the vast majority of people don’t)
they need to collectively tap one distro to be the one and drive to make that as easy to use as possible
