If you really want me too I can go digging for my downvoted comments from six months ago where all I was doing was politely cautioning people against thinking Linux is a cure-all, I can go find it for you. There were numerous people in that thread all claiming as much. “It’s easier than Windows now!!!” yeah, sure.
The Linux community could be studied for why people are so ignorant towards their own abilities; once they learned it many of them forget how skilled they’ve actually become and expect everyone else to also get on their level, or at least to aim for it (and those who don’t shall stay on Windows. Fuck, I despise that sentiment).
Surely it would be correct to say that many Linux distros are by now friendlier to the user than Windows (not that hard given how hostile Windows is). But for them to truly be easier they still miss at a minimum:
More PCs with it as a pre-installed option
A full pre-installed GUI config suite (incl. Bootloader, systemd, all of it)
Self-healing routines. Right now more and more ship with snapshots, but a failed update can still induce bootloops that require manual intervention
Nvidia drivers that work as reliable as AMDs for everyone (please don’t comment “but works for me”, I know some of you got lucky)
Whenever I talk to people about Linux I try to never say it’s “Easier” or “Easy” when comparing to Windows but that it is different. How you use the computer and configure stuff is different.
Things like Bazzite for gaming or other CoreOS based distros are great for having a stable ground for people who don’t want to mess with their stuff too much or tinker and I’ve heard a lot of good opinions and experiences about them as long as the CoreOS derive suit that audience to a tee in the first place.
Whenever you want to go slightly off rails for the most common person who don’t have the experience of Linux but comes from a Windows or Mac background it does indeed become hard in the sense of being “different”.
But a lot more so if you have incompatible hardware. You have to hope that you either have a laptop or computer with commonly used hardware by other Linux devs or you’re out of luck and have to dig through specialised packages to try and install.
Luckily from my experience it becomes a lot less and less that does happen with newer-ish hardware. But not unheard of sadly.
I had a coworker who always said “just use linux” when something didn’t work on a windows machine. So he implied linux alwats works (there is no war in ba sing se)
As someone who said it before, I was recommending that to technical people having technical problems because of the stupid way windows does some things.
So while I can’t speak for anyone saying that, it doesn’t mean it’ll always work, or even that you’ll have less problems, but it does usually mean that it’s easier to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it because the system is so open.
He was partly right, of course, and partly it was actually a gimmick. He’d always offer you his boot usb when you complained about your computer in any way.
do people really say “linux always works”?
Linux always works…
Until it doesn’t and then it really doesn’t
If you really want me too I can go digging for my downvoted comments from six months ago where all I was doing was politely cautioning people against thinking Linux is a cure-all, I can go find it for you. There were numerous people in that thread all claiming as much. “It’s easier than Windows now!!!” yeah, sure.
“it’s easier than windows now” is not “linux always works”
The Linux community could be studied for why people are so ignorant towards their own abilities; once they learned it many of them forget how skilled they’ve actually become and expect everyone else to also get on their level, or at least to aim for it (and those who don’t shall stay on Windows. Fuck, I despise that sentiment).
Surely it would be correct to say that many Linux distros are by now friendlier to the user than Windows (not that hard given how hostile Windows is). But for them to truly be easier they still miss at a minimum:
Whenever I talk to people about Linux I try to never say it’s “Easier” or “Easy” when comparing to Windows but that it is different. How you use the computer and configure stuff is different.
Things like Bazzite for gaming or other CoreOS based distros are great for having a stable ground for people who don’t want to mess with their stuff too much or tinker and I’ve heard a lot of good opinions and experiences about them as long as the CoreOS derive suit that audience to a tee in the first place.
Whenever you want to go slightly off rails for the most common person who don’t have the experience of Linux but comes from a Windows or Mac background it does indeed become hard in the sense of being “different”.
But a lot more so if you have incompatible hardware. You have to hope that you either have a laptop or computer with commonly used hardware by other Linux devs or you’re out of luck and have to dig through specialised packages to try and install.
Luckily from my experience it becomes a lot less and less that does happen with newer-ish hardware. But not unheard of sadly.
I like to explain it as Windows and Mac spend their time babying the users and making things easy for them, it takes away your agency.
Linux demands your agency because you are in full control no one is there to hold your hand, no one to stop you from doing something stupid.
Windows demands very little, Linux demands a lot of attention and care and consideration.
I had a coworker who always said “just use linux” when something didn’t work on a windows machine. So he implied linux alwats works (there is no war in ba sing se)
As someone who said it before, I was recommending that to technical people having technical problems because of the stupid way windows does some things.
So while I can’t speak for anyone saying that, it doesn’t mean it’ll always work, or even that you’ll have less problems, but it does usually mean that it’s easier to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it because the system is so open.
isn’t he trying to say linux fixes the specific problem you were having when he said it? sounds like you are making assumptions.
He was partly right, of course, and partly it was actually a gimmick. He’d always offer you his boot usb when you complained about your computer in any way.
ok that’s really funny i need to get more usb drives