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adorablesergal
@adorablesergal

There was a time when you could walk into an office supply store and buy a box of Linux like it was normal.


adorablesergal
@adorablesergal

Seeing a lot of "switch to Linux!" posts floating around, not just here but on other social media sites, and they're almost always overly complicated.

I guarantee you that the people who need to hear this shit the most just want to walk into a store and walk out with a box of "Linux". They don't give a shit about the separation between kernel and userland. They don't care about the GPL or copyleft philosophy. They just want to stop dealing with Microsoft in the most pain-free way possible.

It's already bad enough that there's like ten decent starter distros out there. Choice is paralysis, and it's one of the greatest obstacles the neophyte faces. I'm telling you, even the act of burning a LiveCD or making a LiveUSB of a distro is A LOT TO ASK of almost EVERYONE.

At the very least, we need to be uplifting shops that will create and sell installation media. I know the idea of paying for Linux frequently feels heretical, but people really do need that just-works peace-of-mind reliability of sticking a pre-made DVD or a USB stick in their PC.

Unfortunately, since I'm the kind of person who does put up with the hassle of creating her own installation media, I cannot verify the trustworthiness of any Linux reseller. A cursory search turns up shops like Linux DVD Center or Shop Linux Online. Are they reputable? I have no idea.

But if you know someone who is tired of Microsoft or Apple being dicks, don't send them a ten-page guide. Send them a stick with Linux on it already. Pick out a distro for them. After all, if you know your friend, you should be able to understand what their needs are, right? All that matters is getting them through the door; they can change the rest as they gain more experience.


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in reply to @adorablesergal's post:

I feel like the biggest hurdle comes with support. If everything Just Works then all is good, but these are computers we're talking about. Someone's gonna try and share their screen on discord or teams and open the linux portal to hell.

In terms of resellers, the closest I can think of that isn't like RedHat is System76, which is still a hardware company with it's own linux flavor. I think the installation itself is going to be a major pain point for most users since, especially on laptops, it often involves dealing with bios settings and STILL manually acquiring network drivers.

That's the one thing that makes me wince. As someone who has been using Linux since the '90s, holy heck, Linux has come a long way in usability, and most everything I throw it on, It Just Works, but you're right, computers are sometimes gonna computer, and who do people turn to then?

Because it's not like MacOS or Windows never break either, but when that shit happens, people can lug their box to the local Microsoft or Apple store to get it checked out. Linux has nothing like that. Linux will never have anything like that, and unless you're paying out the ass for RHEL or something, your only hopes are sites like Stack Overflow where 80% of the time pleas for support fall on deaf ears or are resolved mysteriously.

Which means if we help people get into Linux, we have to be prepared to help them when Linux breaks, and that's a thankless job I feel a lot of us aren't cut out for. I still feel we need to try; it's important to try and get away from the things mainstream corps are doing. All I'm saying is that it's going to be a bumpy ride no matter what; we don't need to be adding more speed bumps to the obstacle course.