2025 the year of Linux

[mr tribute]

@Night Wing

I kind of envy you being able to help "normies" with Linux. To be honest I'm both into Windows and Linux since I think both have merits.

My favorite Linux desktop environment is Cinnamon. I think it is the easiest to use. But I have used XFCE for 5 to 10 years so I know how it works. I just think it lacks some nice to have features and I also think Cinnamon is more polished and has less papercuts/bugs.

I would like to help people transition to Linux, but I don't know where to start. I sometimes help people on Linux forums. I like Windows but it isn't Free Open Source Software and it comes with a license fee. Also it isn't suitable to older computers.

[moonbat]

My journey to Linux as a daily driver (I was already familiar with it, having used RHEL, SUSE at work on VMs) began when I was constrained to a weak laptop with 4 GB RAM that simply couldn't handle Windows 10. I switched to Mint XFCE and was using that for the last 5 years until finally upgrading to a new laptop last year. This time I chose one that came with Linux preinstalled so that there would be no hardware hiccups; so got the Slimbook Excalibur with KDE Neon.

[Night Wing]

@ @Night Wing

I can help the "normies", as you call them with Linux because I speak their language and their language is the same as mine which is "non-technical". And I will give you an example. Just keep in mind this will pertain to the Xfce desktop environment which you are familiar with.

I am going to assume you know I have a demo desktop tower computer placed on the showroom floor at the computer shop where I volunteer at, with three SSD's in it installed with Mint, MX Linux and Debian. All distros are using the Xfce desktop environment. A previous customer (man) came in and his own computer runs Mint with Xfce.

The customer sat down and wanted to look at MX and Debian. He liked both of them, but he said there is a "lot" of things installed by default in MX. But the one thing which REALLY caught his eye was the color of the cursor in both distros which is "yellow". He asked me if the SSD running Mint had that yellow cursor. I told him it did.

He told me his Mint does not have a yellow colored cursor. I told him you have to download the tarball to get it. When he heard the word, "tarball", he immediately thought of the linux Terminal which didn't give him a confident feeling. I told him one does not have to use the Terminal to get this yellow cursor shaped like an archery broadhead. He wanted to know how when he was back using his computer.

To get the yellow cursor, I told him he had to click on the link below and the cursor is named, "Radioactive".

https://github.com/alvatip/radioactive/ ... /tag/0.2.1

Then left click on the tarball below and send it to his download folder or another place. For me, I download things to my Desktop.

Code: Select all

Radioactive.tar.gz 

Once downloaded, I told him to right click on the tarball and when the context window opens up, left click on "Extract Here". This extracts the Radioacitve folder. Then using Thunar's Menu Bar, left click on "View". This opens the context window.

I told him to left click on the "Show Hidden Files" since the box is unchecked so he would have to put a check mark in the box. This opens up a context window and shows all of the hidden files. I told him the file you are looking for is named, "icons". And there will (usually) not be a file with that name. If not there, he will have to create it.

I told him to right click on an empty space and another contex window will open up and left click on the choice, "Add Folder". Then save it. Once the folder has been created, open the folder and drag the Radioactive folder into the icons folder and then save it and exit out of the .icons folder

The go to the Mint menu and find the the Settings and left click on "Mouse and Touchpad". Then when the context window opens, left click on the "Themes" tab. I told him in there, he will find the yellow radioactive cursor.

Left click on it and his cursor "should" now be yellow colored. If not, sometimes there are two cursors, the old and the new. If that happens, just log out and then log back into Mint. The old cursor will now be gone and the new yellow cursor will stay.

Then go back to Thunars' Menu Bar, left click on "Show Hidden Files" and all the hidden files will be gone again. I told him I could guide him over the phone, when he was back home and it would take about five minutes of time from downloading the tarball to finishing.

You might ask how did I find out about the yellow colored Radioactive cursor? I found out by watching a YouTube video from a man whose channel is titled, "Linux Tips For All". This video is show casing the Manjaro distro's "tips", but the desktop environment is Xfce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g3YNUc611Y

This seems like a lot of steps and it is when one does this the very first time, but as they say, "It isn't quantum physics".

[Thad E G]

The other day, I was thinking with some nostalgia about booting my AIX (IBM Unix) machines at work, over twenty years ago. The thing is that the process happened at a speed that made the lines legible. One could follow the process. This is one of the ways that I had begun to learn about Unix in late 1980s. These days, the machines are so much more powerful, and the systems so much more verbose, that, even if one enables the terminal view for startup it is just a waterfall (upwards) of text and, if one needs to look at it in the log files, it is far more complex than it used to be and hundreds, if not thousands of lines long.

Poking around in the system files of a Linux machine may not be easy but, with Windows, it is next to impossible.

Historically, Windows always obfuscated and made problems very hard to find. At least with Unix, most if not all of the configuration was text files that one could dig through. Complicated? Somewhat, yes, but a lot easier than trying to fix stuff in Windows. Unix/Linux did not grow up with the culture of "try re-installing it" or "reboot your machine and see if the problem goes away." It grew up with the culture of running reliably for days, weeks, months, even years. And it had this before Windows was even a thing. So which is the most difficult to actually live with? Bias I admit, but I would say that Windows is far harder to live with than Linux.

Here's the present-day thing, though. All that aside, in terms of what I actually do with a computer for most of every day: browsers, email, photo-processing, those packages would look and work exactly the same on Linux, Windows, and Mac, given only details and aesthetics of the desktop itself. I do like that my chosen Linux repro (Mint+MATE (plus Compiz+Emerald)) gives me lots of choice as to the look and feel of my desktop, and it does not suddenly change the whole thing (Ubuntu did, which is why I shifted to Mint) every upgrade --- but, in practical terms, for most of my life as an ordinary user, the fact that my OS is Linux, not Windows, does not make that much difference. The difficulties of Linux are overstated.

[mr tribute]

The difficulties of Linux are overstated.

Maybe, but I would say GNU/Linux is a steeper learning curve than Windows. Windows generally have nicely packaged GUI applications for everything. Also there is a common target whether that is Windows 10 or Windows 11. There are no missing dependencies to consider since applications package everything that isn't considered part of a standard Windows install. There are no permission conflicts since normal Windows home users use the Administrator account. Driver installations in Linux aren't straightforward since most drivers come as part of the Linux kernel. There are dkms modules with opaque names that can be compiled during kernel install, but there is no guarantee they will compile with different kernels. Windows is just better for random driver installations. That's why the most successful Linux based systems like Android and Chrome OS are image based instead of package based.

I found a post on Reddit that I think sums it up well.
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... beginners/

I've recently converted two Dell desktops from Windows to Linux Mint Cinnamon because they were not going to be upgradeable to Windows11 and I didn't see any reason to send them to a landfill. They are going to be used for e-mail, web surfing and occasional text editing. My conclusion. Linux is great if you're retired like I am and like to fiddle with it or have a dedicated IT department that knows how to set it up. I would not use it if I were still working, or didn't like to play with computers. If I was still working, I didn't have time to deal with the fiddly bits.

[Moonchild]

The difficulties of Linux are overstated.

I beg to differ. Over the years I've experimented with many, many flavours of Linux as a desktop O.S. and there were always difficulties at multiple points in my use that could not be solved without outside advice/help. And that's coming from someone who lives and breathes IT. Translate that to the average person and it becomes amplified (unless they don't expect to be using the computer intensely).

Poking around in the system files of a Linux machine may not be easy but, with Windows, it is next to impossible.

But there's your issue -- you shouldn't have to, ever. I don't even remember the last time I poked around in c:\Windows because there's simply no need to touch it. Let Windows do what it needs to do. This is also the reason why Microsoft by default wants to hide certain parts of the O.S. from casual user exploration -- and potential destruction.
It's a different mindset and approach if you've been used to working with mainframes where you had to poke around the system files to get anything done (by design); as such you may find the difficulties in Linux overstated, but that's discarding your mindset resulting from your background knowledge. if you are very familiar and comfortable with Linux as a daily driver with a mainframe knowledge background, then of course you have a daily working knowledge of what your O.S. needs, and that probably diminishes your impression of how "difficult" Linux can be for others.

[frostknight]

I beg to differ. Over the years I've experimented with many, many flavours of Linux as a desktop O.S. and there were always difficulties at multiple points in my use that could not be solved without outside advice/help. And that's coming from someone who lives and breathes IT. Translate that to the average person and it becomes amplified (unless they don't expect to be using the computer intensely).

Ironically, I was never an IT person and till like 2014+ I used windows and though it was a bit of a learning curve, I eventually settled on this path.

Do I think it was harder? Not by a huge amount.

dependencies and conflicts for packages on linux is a real problem, as you correctly stated elsewhere, but I think honestly the biggest problem is compatibility with proprietary applications that hinders its growth. There are many flashy GUIs on linux, so user friendliness shouldn't be the problem. As long as you choose to use XFCE4, MATE or better if there is it.

I would say, archlinux and gentoo are only for advanced linux users, unless beginners are willing to suffer greatly in order to understand their systems.

Any time I tried to install parabola linux, slackware, or some obscure distro is when I had massive headaches with linux, including Hyperbola until 0.2 came out and some things got ironed out.

[Moonchild]

Of course you're correct. It's the same reason people on Linux would find it hard to switch to BSD, for the simple reason it's not just the inherent O.S.'s change, but also that in such a move, people have to give up their applications for BSD ones at the same time. It compounds. For Windows users taking a step to a much more hands-on management of the o.s. combined with having to switch their software library to often considered less capable or less compatible Linux options makes it a much harder switch to make.

For me, personally, an o.s. should not get in my way. It's why I'm on Windows, and have not moved to Windows 11. It's my interface. A tool, not a philosophy. A way to run applications I need. If necessary I can switch. But as long as it's not necessary, I won't.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

[It's a different mindset and approach if you've been used to working with mainframes ... as such you may find the difficulties in Linux overstated, but that's discarding your mindset resulting from your background knowledge. if you are very familiar and comfortable with Linux as a daily driver with a mainframe knowledge background, then of course you have a daily working knowledge of what your O.S. needs, and that probably diminishes your impression of how "difficult" Linux can be for others.

Ah yes, I could be the mainframe type (also departmental mini ... PDP, HP-RTE, VAX VMS) ... I learned Unix reading SunOS manuals (printed in hardcopy) and for me most useful configuration stuff and command line commands in all the Unixes and the two Linux flavours I used look more or less the same. What I may find annoying are the little "dialectal variations" ... like for a language, it would be easier for a non-native speaker to learn written English than all different regional pronounciations. There would be another thing which I could find annoying, but I avoid (and that is a strength of Linux) ... since some time I frequent a "layman" Linux forum (in Italian) and I am constantly amazed how those people "confuse" a Linux flavour with its default desktop environment ... for me what matters choosing a distro is the richness of the software repositories. On each machine I junk the default DE (I mean, simply I don't use it) and install my preferred window manager (fvwm). So I get the same look and feel everywhere. There may be subtle (tiny) differences at OS upgrade, but I have a checklist and in a time from one day to one week I get all back working as I like.
I guess on proprietary systems (Windows but perhaps also Mac) once you move, say fro W7 to W10 or from W10 to W11, you are forced to take what comes with the new version. That will be quite confusing for a non-computer-savvy user.

[frostknight]

Of course you're correct. It's the same reason people on Linux would find it hard to switch to BSD, for the simple reason it's not just the inherent O.S.'s change, but also that in such a move, people have to give up their applications for BSD ones at the same time. It's why I'm on Windows, and have not moved to Windows 11. It's my interface. A tool, not a philosophy. A way to run applications I need. If necessary I can switch. But as long as it's not necessary, I won't.

Windows 11 has potential security risks in the future if their copilot project is forced on people. And by security risks, I mean financial as well. I hope not one person with sense ever does online shopping on wndows 11 if copilot is forcibly enabled.

The risks would be immense if everything is snapshoted.

Linux is easier to switch to then BSD I would say. But BSD is probably even less error prone than Linux.

Windows definitely has more compatibility, with many programs needed for more users lives, though windows is also slower and more bloated.

But yeah, there is always a trade off with any of these systems. BSD however is definitely more RTFM though I hear.

[Thad E G]

I didn't grow up with mainframes, wasn't educated in IT: I sidestepped into it at work, and found myself sitting in front of a Unix computer [terminal]. But I somehow got on with it from the start. Of course, it is as deep as the ocean, but I just kept reading man pages, and learned fairly easily. I liked and got on with the mentality of the system and its authors.

This is where the bias was born. I took a look at an MSDOS PC... and was frustrated and bored in minutes.

But those were different days. These days, I don't often look much deeper than the Mint/MATE desktop. And, at this level, I don't think
that the lighter Linuxes are much harder than Windows. But sure, maybe that's me and people like me.

I could run all my foss apps on Windows. I did, out of inertia, use it for a few years. But I wouldn't want to go back.

Unix/Linux can be harder than Windows. The opportunity is there. But it is not compulsory. The proprietary lock-in is powerful. In fact, for many, it is inescapable.

I used to say that Windows spoilt my life but made my career. The reason was that, when we put PCs on every desk, the problems and the support rocketed. Our department grew from two to five and I got myself a management title. But it was not as much fun. Although I still had my Unix servers, and set the dogs on anyone who came trying to sell us anything else.

Speaking of which. Microsoft did not have to sell us Windows. My boss always thought it was his decision, but it wasn't: it was a grass roots thing. People wanted PCs and Windows: people got PCs and Windows, warts and all.