1y ago

Why don't more people use desktop Linux? I have a theory you might not like

www.zdnet.com Why don't more people use desktop Linux? I have a theory you might not like

There might be a very simple explanation for why the masses have yet to adopt Linux as their desktop operating system and it's one the open-source community won't like.

I'm curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.

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I think the reason is that 1. Linux is still too hard for the average person and 2. The average person just doesn't care
Yes, you don't have to write bash scripts or compile the kernel yourself, but still, Linux is different in many ways from Windows. This is on top of the fact that most people don't know much about tech in general and often have problems with (imo) very basic stuff. I honestly can't imagine them downloading an ISO file, flashing it onto an USB stick and then booting from it. Most people probably don't even know that Windows != PC
Then there's also the fact that the average person just doesn't care. They just want to get things done
(sidenote: I might sound elitist but I'm not. I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in tech, just like it's not reasonable to, for example, expect everyone to be interested in cars. It just so happens that the tech industry is tightly connected to freedom, privacy, etc. while the car industry is not)
- Linux is different in many ways from Windows
  I kinda want to softly disagree with this point (and i'm sure others will disagree with my disagreement), because the average user pretty much does everything they do in a web browser. A few of them might have to use thunderbird for email, instead of their web browser, and thats about it.
  And to be perfectly honest, Theres no significant functional difference, for those average users, between linux and windows. Just got to put the browser and email icons somewhere on the desktop where its visible and thats basically that.
  I speak of personal experience (so take it with a grain of salt and skepticism), because I have pretty much my entire family on linux, though to be fair I got them on linux by basically saying "Listen, your computers old, and the OS is no longer supported. Either you can pay me a lot of money to get you a new computer and new version of windows, or I can install linux on what you have for free and you can keep going without any investment". Being cheap, they always chose linux.
  in my experience, almost all the terror that rises from the deep with regards to linux, comes the second you try to do anything more intensive than web browsing/email.. Cause they you are running into installing things, tweaking things, problem finding, etc etc.
  
  Yeah, but when I tried to get my mom to use Linux, she kept asking me how to do some things like moving a file, printing a PDF, saving a document in Libreoffice (even though she had no trouble doing it on Windows also with Libreoffice) etc. I've set up everything to be as seamless and close to Windows as possible but she still always had trouble doing something so I gave up, and reinstalled Windows. Ig my mom is just less tech savy than your family ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  
  it takes literally no tech savy to open a browser.
  
  Yeah, my mom didn't have issues with that, but she did have issues with other almost as basic stuff

189 comments