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42 points

Linux is a usable daily driver if you’re tech savvy enough. Some distros are even kind enough to be daily driveable by non tech savvy, at least for the normal stuff.

At this point, it’s possible, but no normie is ever going to know what distros are easy and won’t be getting through an OS installation anyways.

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47 points

Linux is a usable daily driver if you’re tech savvy enough.

A daily driver shouldn’t need you to be tech savy. There should just be an added benefit for being tech savy.

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29 points

Windows is not usable if you aren’t tech savvy. See young people who grew up on iOS/Android.

I think Linux is very good already and only improving.

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10 points

Pretty sure those users you’re talking about don’t understand desktop controls in general, and would be even worse on Linux. Because when we talk about tech savy we’re not talking about basic controls.

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1 point

Meh, I have been using linux desktop exclusively for a decade now, and I have to disagree. It… sorta works, but it has definitely many many shortcomings and edge cases where it just shits itself completely — that is, the userspace. The kernel itself is rock solid.

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10 points

Many distros are actually very easy to install and setup. The problem is that Linux is not preinstalled on most computers.

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2 points

Now try to sign a PDF

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4 points

To be fair, my husband is about as far from tech savvy as they come, and he’s been running Linux for years on his laptop. Every 2-3 years I upgrade him. Sometimes just within distros (Ubuntu 12.04 to 16.04 say. Other times, I’ve moved him distros (to fedora) or back to Ubuntu. Otherwise? I don’t touch his system. He’s been happy for years.

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20 points

I disagree while agreeing. The biggest reason people use windows is simply because its pre-installed. That’s the same reason people use Edge on Windows or Bing as their search engine. They get it preinstalled and don’t know how to change it.

If you install anyone Linux and give them a simple and easy distro preinstalled they’re usually fine with a few words about how to use it, update it and install stuff. Especially if they’re not tech savvy because in this case they wouldn’t know exactly how to use Windows either. I mean look at companies: how many employees use Windows in their daily work but still don’t know how to actually usw windows? They get teached to use their software and tools but not the OS itself and have to figure things out on the OS level if they would want to change something on Windows too.

My observation was that people that are not tech savvy find it easier to understand some beginner friendly Linux distros than Windows.

If on the other hand a person is used to use Windows and knows how to actually use Windows it’s harder for them to switch because things are just different on Linux. For me it’s hard and annoying to use Windows which I have to do at work since February. Before that I used Linux in private my whole life, I used it in school because my school never used Windows as one of the few schools in my country and my last employer also used Linux. And from that perspective I can say that Windows is hard and not intuitive. It’s just being used because it’s being used. I guess you could compare it to Whatsapp vs Signal. From an objective standpoint Signal is better but most people still use WhatsApp because others use it and because it comes preinstalled on some Android phones.

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2 points

@brayd I can confirm. I have installed Fedora Silverblue to a number of non-techies including my wife, her parents and several of her friends; I walked them through the system for a few minutes and explained basic operation. Most of them have been using it for years, never reported any sort of problem and even expressed being much more satisfied than before.

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1 point

Totally agree!

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7 points

It won’t get more normie than SteamOS, it is literally console kind of simplicity with the option to switch to a full blown DE.

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3 points
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Is it really really easy to install? Several distros are extremely smooth experiences if you don’t have completely weird hardware to support, but their installation is still an actual OS install procedure. As easy as Windows to install, but almost no one HAS to install their Windows like with Linux.

If steam OS is coming with Wine et. al. already set up (and it’d be silly if it didn’t) that definitely gives it a leg up on most distros for normies, at least.

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6 points
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You’d have to check one of the side-distros. SteamOS itself has no official installer yet, only available pre-installed on steamdeck.

There are distros that are organized to recreate it for normal installation though.

Though to be fair, that’s pretty “normie” to not have to experience the installation process at all. Most people will just use what shipped with their PC.

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6 points
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Normies don’t install any OS, they buy devices with it pre-installed and if they fuck their installation up, they search someone who does it for them. Which is (almost) impossible for them to do when the OS has it’s root partition as read-only, like the SteamOS

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3 points

It’s also really difficult to get into if you don’t already have an “in”. Yeah, some distros are pretty easy to use but others aren’t and figuring out which is which is pretty impossible for an outsider.

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2 points

This is why KDE has been focusing on hardware vendors for a while.

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3 points

Hopefully they make some in roads. KDE is what I’d recommend for Windows users for sure. XFCE is great too but it feels a little… raw? compared to KDE. Definitely an upside for efficiency, but I think normies would much more appreciate the full-featured feel of KDE.

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1 point

Linux is a usable daily driver if you’re tech savvy enough.

So it’s not…?

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2 points

It is after the right distro is installed. The only reason you have to be tech savvy at all to do the basics is because it has to be installed.

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word “Linux” in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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