let 'er rip

I'd go a step further. Desktop computing as a whole is overkill for most users.

As much as I'm loathe to admit it, my cheap Asus Chromebook is likely more than what 90 percent of humanity requires. And most of them could easily just get away with using a phone or tablet instead.

I'm an old school guy. I love a good tower with a pair of monitors and stuff to do my editing and 3D design. But even those intensive tasks are getting better on smaller form factors.

It's just not my world anymore. I've aged out of it.
- I feel all of that. Currently driving an Intel NUC i5, and that's all I need. Hardly anyone on my block owns a PC, and if they do, it's ancient and won't be replaced.
- This. You only need more than a Chromebook if you're doing programming, game dev, doing 3D modelling, professional photo or video editing, AI/ML work or music production.
I wanna disagree with this so bad but I'm willing to bet 90% of the business done on desktops could be done in a web browser without much problem. Though I imagine a lot of proprietary software that keeps businesses going benefits from having a desktop. Not that it couldn't be retooled.

Why would you say something so brave, yet so controversial?

I could argue the same thing about Windows 11.

Can you imagine an average person going into best buy and buying a laptop, maybe in S mode, forced to make a Microsoft account and wait 5-8 minutes updating their machine before they can use it, just for Microsoft edge to pop up asking them to change their accent color. Or downloading a program online and a big old popup comes up saying "Available in the Microsoft Store!"

I personally argue Linux Mint is awesome and what's best for most people. my grandma (81) didnt want to switch to 10 or 11 after Windows 7 was going to be EOL, she tried mint and she absolutely loved it.

For me it's com to a point that drivers are better on Linux. Linux is still missing drivers for a lot of devices but the ones we do have work seamlessly compared to windows
- I still have issues with fingerprint readers, but other than that, my experience with drivers is waaaaaaaay worse on Windows.
  
  I don't have too much experience with fingerprint readers but the one on my Thinkpad worked. The one on my cousins computer doesn't because it doesn't have any drivers

I’m a fairly savvy computer user and its always looked like a hassle to me. Maybe I’m just lazy and dont want to put the effort into learning it, but MS practices with windows lately are really pushing me into finally doing it.

The hassle is the price of having more control over what's happening inside your computer. Some people don't want to care about that, and for those people, Absolutely it's too much of a hassle.

I think the controversial opinion isn't whether or not Linux is more hassle than Windows or Mac (it is...of course it is), but whether or not that hassle is worth it. Does the extra control over your computer outweigh the few extra things you need to do to keep it running right.

For me, the answer is yes. I don't find having to be a little extra careful about some precautions before hitting the update button a huge inconvenience, or working through the occasional glitch when an AUR package upgrades past its dependencies.

But would that be too much hassle for someone like my mother, for example, who literally just wants to play games on Facebook? Of course. And there's nothing wrong with thinking that.
- The "hassle" depends a lot on what kind of distro/de you've been given and how willing you're to start hassling around.
  When I first decided to try Linux, I was hopping distros and going through every possible way to customize the UX and it was purely TO tinker.
  
  Now it's just a fire and forget with Debian stable and GNOME. Just works and doesn't have too many unnecessary bells and whistles
- Makes sense. Thats about where I’m at. The hassle is worth not having AI sifting through all my personal files and logging every fucking thing I do
Maybe one day you just buy another SSD and give it a try on there... Thats how I did it 2 years ago and I couldnt have guessed how much it would eventually, over time, become worth it to me.

I initially installed PopOS but it worked so well that after 2 weeks I though to myself, "well this is boring, I installed it and now what?" and proceeded to try Arch (unsuccesfully at the time).

You use linux because you think it's objectively better. I use linux because I like doing nifty shit. We are not the same.

To add to this. Most complaints about windows from linux users are just people who don't know how to use windows, which is kinda embarrassing considering its the most used OS by a really big margin.

Do you have any examples? I dont think I have seen complaints about Windows that are invalid if you knew how to use it.
- I have another example from a few months ago where a guy was complaining that he couldn't uninstall Edge without doing a bunch of registry tweaks and unofficial things to remove it, and that was why he switched to Linux. When the Chrome version of Edge came out though, there's literally a setup.exe that you can run with an uninstall arg and it will uninstall it no questions asked.
  
  The uninstall button. The game is great and all that, but god it is hard to fully remove all the junk it leaves behind on your system. /s
- https://lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/6845923
  
  A few posts down from yours. It's literally the same on windows if installing the windows store/xbox version.
Linux based OSes are by far most popular globally. Windows is only super popular on desktops and laptops.
- I'm willing to bet that 95% of the users using a 'Linux based OS' would have absolutely no clue, and if you put them in front of a desktop with Linux on it they'd be as lost as anyone else.
  
  I'm willing to bet 95% wouldn't care, they have their web browser there and that's all that's needed.
  
  I'd even go so far as to say most people would find a stable Linux distro with GNOME easier than Windows. The user experience for most part is closer to that of your Android phone.
  
  That's kinda my point, Android is a Linux based OS. But go to any random guy with a Samsung and ask him to install Minecraft on a Linux desktop and he'll have a panic attack.
  
  I wish more distros had flatpak installed by default, so I could just say "same way as on your phone, from 'app store' "
  
  I mean, even if the distro doesn't have Flathub enabled by default, a program as popular as Minecraft will almost certainly be in the repos anyway.
  
  Potentially. I only checked Debian repos and flathub
  
  open app store > search 'Minecraft' > press install
  
  It's literally harder to install on Windows
  
  I mean, you just download the jar installer from the website.. I do get your point, but things have changed seemingly over the past few decades, as I've only been maining popOS for about 3 years. But I was honestly shocked I could still run so much with near negligible hassle: couple steam games liked an earlier version of proton more, web work I would argue has been easier for the most part
- Isn’t that mostly due to Linux being widespread on servers, and by extension Android? (And if we’re talking Unix, then MacOS, too)
  
  Yeah, Linux has some high 90s percent "market share" in server space. Android is a "cherry on the top" with vast majority of mobile phone markwt
  
  Practically all servers, Android, and ~11% of the PC market.

As an avid arch linux user.... Yeah, but I still love it

Android and ios is easier to use compared to both Linux and windows

I don't understand iOS. It's super unintuitive. Maybe it's coming from the fact that I grew up in the DOS generation and had to fumble around with everything to get it done, that I am just fundamentally incompatible with a hardened and uncustomizable OS? I keep looking for "obvious" functions that simply don't exist, and am continuously flabbergasted when someone hands me an iPhone to do something.

Linux, Windows, Android? I'll figure it out in seconds.
- I also have this problem with apple products, but I hear people tell me it's more intuitive. Maybe I just havent spend enough time in the whole ecosystem to learn the hieroglyphs.
  
  If you need to spend time to familiarize, it's by default not intuitive.

Ah, yes - the typical "I don't like it/it's too much of a hassle for me therefore it is useless for everybody."

Same thinking pattern that prevents the USA from adopting the metric system: I like the old system (because I grew up with it and don't want to learn something new) therefore the new system is bad.

These people should really try to be a bit less egocentric. Is it so hard to recognize that the world doesn't revolve around you?

Dude one of my guys got a ticket yesterday where someone couldn't figure out how to turn on their monitor and they're in their 30s.