2mo ago

It's not just Linux

Toot

72 comments

"Confidently install Linux"
You mean pop in a USB pen and click install?
- There's a lot more to it than that. Which ISO do you download? How do you make the USB installable. What to do if the USB doesn't boot when you restart the computer. Do you want to manually partition things? What the hell's a partition?
  There's installing Linux, then there's confidently installing Linux.
  
  ISO? USB? What kind of amateur hour is this?
  I just have a BOOTP server running on my LAN that allows me to netboot any x86 machine straight into the Debian installer.
  
  Yeah, we really need to stop taking about it as if it is difficult.
  I think most folk's apprehension comes not from the difficulty but because a certain type of person wants people to think that it is difficult.
  
  Most of your comment is about changing os in general and not Linux particularly. It's certainly a factor but you have to admit some of them like Mint is dead easy for anyone who can out some effort. Download Linux Mint, install a burner like Rufus, select iso and click burn, boot into it from BIOS and just clock threw most of them with default settings which is good enough for someone who is not tech savvy. The only time I had trouble installing Linux was with nixos GUI installer which had a broken setting but never had any issues with Mint, fedora or Debian.
  
  There's a lot more to it than that.
  well, duh. you gotta pick a download that's under about 4.3 gb, burn that iso image to disc, boot to that... then click 'install'.
  
  I mean correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like getting an ISO on a flash drive is pretty basic computer skills, something that even if you've never heard of before would be easy to do as long as you aren't too computer illiterate. And at least for my distro of choice (i use fedora btw) they have a media writer tool thats just an easy exe file that will automatically download and install the ISO to your selected flash drive.
  Also when I was a windows user I still would get the windows ISO and flash it to a thumbstick and use that to install windows. Is that not fairly common on Windows too? I've installed Windows on a few PCs for friends and family over the years, and I've also always used an ISO on a flash drive.
  After writing this I read your last sentence again and realized that your point is pretty much agreeing with me, most people could install Linux but they probably wouldn't be confident the first time around. I dunno I'm really high and just sort of rambling, have a good day.
- Step zero is "be the type of person who wants to install Linux", which is probably the key part of our demographic.
- Correct. Installing Linux isn't the issue. Getting any hardware you have to actually function properly and fully, along with learning new software for your needs that can at times have less functionality and user friendliness, is the difficulty with Linux.
  
  The lack of consumer software is the real big issue yet to be solved. We're getting gaming sorted, finally, but that's required the biggest game distributor in the world (valve) to basically take the project over completely to get there. We just haven't gotten to the point that enterprise environments will start switching desktops over to linux, because the network management and production tools just aren't there yet. Hopefully we will be there soon, the pace of adoption is really picking up especially with win10 EOL, but until then there's some real hard work to be done before the "linux best" memes stop being wishful thinking.
- Yeah, so you're in that group then
- Still too scawy for some! :-P
- I think this counts as confident.
- It's not about difficulty, it's about confidence! These are users who have conquered their fears. A fearless community of news, politics, and memes!
- That is not the proper way to install Arch, BTW.
- Yes, but you might have to turn it around a couple times, and possibly make sure you didn't plug it in the Ethernet port. So it does take some skill.
- I fucked up a windows install do you think I can't do the same with Linux?

I thought people on Lemmy would understand the pun of my nickname, but instead people assume I'm an asshole just based on my name being "go fuck yourself" to them.
I even tried adding $ to help make it more obvious it's not "fuck" but "fsck". Clearly, if you've never heard of fsck you're going to assume it's just some intentional misspelling of "fuck".
I regret my username now.
- It’s a good pun and you shouldn’t regret it! People who don’t get the joke are unobservant and can either realize and learn from their ignorance, or remain in the dark.
- I've long assumed the authors of fsck were having some childish fun in choosing the name. Personally, I'd be fine with people routinely making asses of themselves by jumping to conclusions, and acting upon them. I'd even give them a chance to save themselves from embarrassment by putting an explanation in my profile "for those unaware."
- I only new fish, the shell, many people might be in the same situation
  
  fsck is a command for "file system check" to check for drive errors.

- I didn't think I was in this meme until I thought about it.
  Yes, I confidently installed linux on an old laptop to rescue it from windows oblivion when we needed more laptops during lockdown.
  I also thought it shouldn't be on Facebook, but then I don't think anything should be on Facebook, so there's that.

I went from not owning a proper computer for nearly a decade (just my phone and Xbox, literally nothing else) to buying a used Thinkpad off of eBay, upgrading some parts, and installing Linux mint onto it in under a year. Now I'm looking at building a Linux gaming PC. Y'all indoctrinated me
- Linux PCs are... for lack of a better word, Swiss army knives for computing.
  Need a media center? We got you.
  Need server software? Bro. Who are you even asking?
  Need a desktop? We got you.
  Need to open that hard drive? The app is in the repository for absolutely free, just works and the hard drive opens.
  Corrupted?
  No prob, fam, here's a suite of recovery tools. We'll get those photos of gran-gran back no prob.
  Need to burn that disk? The app is in the repository for absolutely free, just works and you're burning a disk for the family.
  It just never ends. With Windows I always felt like I had to play "dodge the scam" with literally everything, even shit as mundane as ninite has that sense of "well, are they spying? Is everyone?"

Can I install Linux? Yes. Can I do it confidently? Nope.
- I can do it in an alarmingly gung-ho manner.

Installing Linux isn't hard if you use a beginner friendly distro. It's way easier than installing Windows even. However, most people haven't installed any OS themselves and use just whatever their system came with, including all the bloat and spyware included by the manufacturer
- I was about to turn a new SSD into a clone of my old HDD until it turns out the Windows 10 fast start won't accept keyboard input on boot for some dumbass reason so I can't get into the BIOS.
  No problem, I'll turn off the Windows fast start, easy... Oh, no, turns out keyboard input is also turned off in the restart menu for turning off fast start
  Anyways, I'm sure there's a way around this nonsense, but that SSD is running Mint and Proton now.

I'm led to believe there may also be porn lurking somewhere.

Honestly, for me, the fediverse's weakest point is sports which is a bummer because that's where the majority of my social media engagement is. Sports weren't even mentioned in that meme 😅.
- I'm glad, community blocking is super underpowered due to the fragmentation (I was endlessly blocking sports stuff back on Kbin). I don't want to do that again (though instance blocking may be more effective here, assuming it isn't just for hosted media like Kbin's instance blocking).
  EDIT: Also to be clear, the big issue before was each sports team being a community
  
  Well Lemmy is one thing, but even on mastodon there's hardly any sports talk besides bots which just repost stuff from Twitter feeds. If I want to participate in a "game discussion thread", I pretty much have to go to shitter or reddit.
  And this is true for most sports leagues except for NFL at times and maybeeeee F1.
  Don't get me wrong I love the fediverse and all it's people who know how to install Linux. But there just ain't that many people who know how to install Linux AND sports stuffs

Linux is easy to install. Getting to run just the way you want it to is hard. But once you get it to run the way you want it to, using it is easy.

Jokes on you, I can't confidentially do anything!

Fedora makes me feel more confident with Linux than where I know my skill level is at.

And furries.

The secret is that anybody can install Linux even if they can't do it confidently.
- Maybe it was just bad luck or owning a piece of non standard hardware, but in 2006 when I as a Linux newbie installed Ubuntu 6.06 the OS wouldn't boot afterwards no matter what. Until by chance I chose LILO as a bootloader instead of grub. Not exactly a beginner friendly experience, but very enlightening one.

Then, there is my content.

Lol I've never installed Linux and use windows 10.
I'll probably be installing Linux when M$ decide to charge me for security updates.

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