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My parents (both over 80) daily use Linux Mint for a decade now. They don't know it, simply last time we bought them a PC I put it there, explained how to open

My parents (both over 80) daily use Linux Mint for a decade now. They don't know it, simply last time we bought them a PC I put it there, explained how to open the web browser, play solitaire/FreeCell/whatever other game they like, how to shut it down etc. I live in another city and I almost never had to adjust anything there in all these years, differently on what happened when they had windows (they unknowingly installed a lot of spyware and bloatware, I had to clean it up periodically). Still, for me this is one of the few experiments that went well, probably because the only "complex" need they have is a web browser. Now if a friend (not a technical one) needs a new computer advice I tell him to buy a second-hand MacBook and enjoy. No one ever complained (in fact all compliment me for the choice). The vast majority of users is not like my parents, has some specific needs, like they need Microsoft Office, or Photoshop, or they play on PC and still don't want to face the challenges you need to overcome if you want to do everything with Linux. I would never use MacOS on my PC (not because it's not good, just because I'm a FOSS maniac), but it's the perfect operating system for casual users and even for many power users. The only rule I adopt for OS advice is "avoid Windows unless you are actually forced to use it (gaming, specific legacy programs etc)".

bmitc 2y ago
> The only rule I adopt for OS advices is "avoid Windows Why?
- thriftwy 2y ago
  VFAT patent enforcement was sufficient to declare a permanent personal vendetta against MS. Needless to say MS did half dozen such things during the 00s.
  - bmitc 2y ago
    So basically irrelevant reasons in 2024.
    - the_third_wave 2y ago
      Yes, that dog there did bite your brother and sister and cousin and neighbour but that is months ago so basically irrelevant reasons in 2024. Go on, give it a hug.
      - bmitc 2y ago
        Right. Becuase Apple has never, gasp, done anything anti-competitive or shot down open standards.
        the_third_wave 2y ago
        What does Apple have to do with this? Also why not mention Google, or Samsung, or Huawei or any other supplier of something which resembles an operating environment? The article is about Linux so it's assumed the alternative to whatever Microsoft tries to push is found there, not at the Fruit Factory or the Googleplex or the CCP.
        bmitc 2y ago
        Read the original comment I replied to. It's relevant because they mentioned Windows, macOS, and Linux but swear not to use Windows. And people often blindly bash Windows and Microsoft when macOS and Apple are 10x worse, which was my most recent point.
        yownie 2y ago
        What your point here exactly? They are both shit companies who peddle shit and anyone with half a brain would be wise to steer clear.
- danmur 2y ago
  Heres a few: * The UI is slow (compared to linux/gnome and osx). * There are ads in it. * There is a lot of unnecessary telemetry. * Viruses, malware. * No good first-party packaging solution. * Real linux > WSL. * I could go on.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Newest item to add to your list: * Recall
  - Aerroon 2y ago
    * (some?) LLMs run better on Linux than Windows - some people report a 50% improvement in tokens/sec.
  - DEADMINCE 2y ago
    A lot of that is nonsense. Only the ads and telemetry are issues, recent issues at that. - The UI is emphatically not slow and is faster than the most popular DEs, - Viruses and malware have not really been an issue in a decade and Windows has significantly better security than Linux at the moment, - The Microsoft store is a first party packaging solution frequently used - Real Windows > WINE There are problems and issues to be sure, but technically it's actually very sound.
    - timw4mail 2y ago
      The Windows 11 UI is slow. The Settings app in particular is stupid slow.
- barrotes 2y ago
  I use it on my "corporate job" PC because our architecture is based on .NET and we are still forced to adopt it (at least until we'll definitely pass to .NET Core becoming a bit more agnostic). All I can say is that it's... overwhemingly slow... and it gets progressively slower while times goes on. Every time I install something new that I need it occupies more RAM and I'm forced to control it periodically opening the task manager and killing tray bar processes. People can say "well you could be more careful while installing stuff" but the point is that I am. Moreover the majority of times I need stuff I let the corporate sysadmins to install it on my machine. Options to avoid programs being invasive are hidden, you need to search everywhere to understand how to, let's say, avoid Microsoft Teams to load on OS boot. Someone should explain to me how it's possible that my forklift notebook is a T450 with a 9 years old 15W TDP i5 CPU with Arch Linux installed, and Firefox opens in 2 seconds, and my corporate PC is a fucking stove with a 45W i7 recent CPU and Firefox needs at least 10 seconds to open. And if I, a self-considered kind-of-technical dude, have issues in keeping a work computer clean (so without any game or "casual" program installed), imagine what happens to my less-skilled friend who likes games and needs cracked Photoshop: he will inexorably seek for help from me after things go progressively bad. It happened few months ago with a friend. I took his old T450 (another one) I made him buy to have a PC (now it's my second debian server). Now he has a second-hand MacBook and he's never been so happy. Can't be sure that MacOS actually works better because I avoid it too, but at least people are happy and (I assume) tries to solve their eventual problems alone.
  - neonsunset 2y ago
    Why can’t you use Rider? Are you on .NET Framework?
    - barrotes 2y ago
      Yes our platform is developed on .NET Framework, adopts Microsoft SQL-server and it's deployed on IIS servers. These are old company choices related to legacy support for some customers that we (the "new" generation developers) are slowly pushing away with the help of system administrators. But till then I need to have a copy of the architecture on my laptop for debug/test. Of course things could be improved i.e. with a Windows Server VM into a linux PC, but with colleagues we try to keep stuff on our machines as much similar as possible to avoid conflicts.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  Windows is a lot slower than linux, and poses significant hardware requirements. Many people will have to / already have replaced their system in order to be able to run Windows 11. (Windows 11 doesn't even support first gen Ryzen CPUs.) Linux usually supports hardware for a very long time. Since (for whatever reason) Microsoft hasn't figured out how to make its store actually useable, Windows users have to download (most of) their apps via the browser. That's not just a lot of effort, it also vastly increases the amount of adware/malware non-technical people download and install. On linux, installing apps is a breeze; the stores are actually good. Disk encryption hasn't been an option on (non-pro) Windows until very recently. This means someone who steals your laptop has access to all the data stored on the device. Linux supported disk encryption since forever. I could go on. Windows is lacking in various ways. The only benefit Windows enjoys is being the most used operating system. It is therefore more likely that you're already familiar with Windows and that that specific app you want to use or your employer wants you to use runs only on Windows. (Most notably: Adobe Software, MS Office Software, Video Games.) The core benefit of using Windows is not even a part of Windows.
- kstenerud 2y ago
  Oh god, Windows is a maintenance nightmare! Every time I'd speak to some relative, the conversation would invariably turn to "Can you do something about my computer? It's so slow!" And then I'd go take a look and find it riddled with spyware and bloatware and a thousand million processes running in the background that actively try to undermine uninstalling this garbage. I mean, why the hell does a MOUSE DRIVER require 2GB of space??? And the virus scanners - these are the worst offenders of all! Linux is a smaller market with fewer threat actors. It's not being pushed into an advertising platform. It runs everything that 90% of computer users want. I can trust most distributions to keep things light and snappy. It's just no contest when it comes to non-tech-savvy people. Linux makes it all so much better once you get it going. I wouldn't install it on someone's laptop, though (unless the laptop was specifically designed for it). If they want a laptop, macbook.
monsieurbanana 2y ago
Agree on all points, except regarding games. Via Steam and Proton, gaming on Linux is now better than Mac.
- barrotes 2y ago
  I'm not up on gaming on Linux because I'm not a gamer (in last 12 months I played no more than 10 hours for that Stellantis game I found on Steam because it's natively compatible with Linux, and never tried emulation/whatever in last decade), so I guess you're right. But usually the need for advanced games is one of the (few) reasons that I consider enough to "allow" a friend to install Windows instead of going for MacOS. Anyway I'll try to catch up a bit about the state of the art of Linux gaming, just to give an alternative to anyone that seeks for any kind of help in that.
- gryn 2y ago
  The gaming part is still windows. With all these kernel level access rootkit anti-cheat games, online games are a pain
  - scheeseman486 2y ago
    That's the only major roadblock left, rip out the anti-cheat stuff and the games generally work. I'm not sure how Valve could address this without people getting angry. They could eventually leverage their immutable rootfs setup to enable attestation of the system stack and run the games in security hardened containers?
    - gryn 2y ago
      my problem with them is that they open room to a lot of risk when the dev fuckup and they don't even work. plenty of motivated cheaters bypass them you can even find tutorial on youtube for that. that mean they only make the experience worse for linux user. They shouldn't exist, yet here we are.
    - Arch-TK 2y ago
      If linux gaming requires you use a blessed immutable OS where everything you run is either unprivileged or signed by a central entity, it's not much better than just using Windows at that point. Kernel level anti cheat is a failure. You need to control the hardware to do it properly. The only hope is to wait for less locally intrusive and more robust anti cheat solutions. Basically the only possible solutions at this point lie in the AI space.
graemep 2y ago
Linux is more of a nuisance to set up, although that can be mitigated by buying hardware with Linux pre-installed. I just did (although I ended up reinstalling because I changed my mind about what distro I wanted). Once installed it is a lot less troublesome. I think there are a lot of users like your parents than you think. I think you are right about artists using Photoshop, and gamers wanting the full range of games, but I know Windows small business users who use LibreOffice. A lot of my clients use MS Office, Teams and other MS stuff and I have no problems working with them.
- barrotes 2y ago
  I think that for the "casual user" distros (like Mint) the set up problem is not an issue if you can choose the PC before. For eventual friends that want Linux I always tell them to find a second-hand T-series ThinkPad. They have a fairly large second-hand market where you can buy one for even 200/300€, they are solid laptops (at least the old generations...), they fully support Linux. Sometimes someone arrives with an old entry level laptop that "doesn't work anymore" (translated: it suffers with Windows) and in those case it might happen that you need to to some tricks to make everything work, but these are usually just post-installation procedures, nothing to worry about after everything is set up.
- Mo3 2y ago
  I mean... nuisance... maybe 10 years ago or if you try to install Arch from source, but nowadays the big distros all have very nice and beginner friendly installers. Totally on par with Windows, if not even more user friendly because you don't have to deal with forced logins and navigating dark patterns.
  - ozzcer 2y ago
    Yea Linux distros are beating out windows now. I trying popOS at the moment and the install process was a couple of clicks. No assistant screaming up me, no internet connection required. Beautiful.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    At first glance "10 years ago" seemed right, but then I did the math and it's more like 20 years ago. 10 years ago there was Steam, Plasma 5, Dell sold Linux laptops and Unity has been the default in Ubuntu for a few years already. Time flies.
lynguist 2y ago
Same, same. My sister uses the same Ubuntu LTS laptop with Google Chrome since 2013. Has only issues with Word documents and printing, and she also found she can’t backup her iPhone to the computer. Besides that nothing. She still uses it, does the dist upgrade and never changed anything or broke anything for the past 11 years. And I also disagree with the article. I bought a new laptop in 2011, installed Windows 8 on it and used it semi-regularly until 2019, I also never upgraded from Windows 8. I also had no issues at all. I only have computer issues if for example corporate manages my laptop.
DEADMINCE 2y ago
I think it's weird/lucky that you had such luck recommending macs - most of my non-technical friends just find them confusing and unintuitive, and it's not because they were only used to windows or something. As for Linux just working untouched...doesn't mean it doesn't have problems or is secure. I've seen plenty of older people use their browser fine after not running updates for years.
cykros 2y ago
Been on Slackware for over a decade, other linuxen for decades since 2000. Did end up getting a Windows laptop for power usage of Excel, which it's the only thing that'll run, but otherwise don't know why anyone puts up with all the BS that comes with it as a primary system. I'm far too lazy for all that.
rldjbpin 2y ago
I had similar luck with another flavor of the distro. but things get complicated with handling files, like opening word files. I had to switch out due to display drivers, anti-cheat and specific professional applications. we need more work on desktop use in linux just like there is attention to detail on linux for servers and windows/macos for desktop use.

bmitc 2y ago

> The only rule I adopt for OS advices is "avoid Windows Why?

thriftwy 2y ago
VFAT patent enforcement was sufficient to declare a permanent personal vendetta against MS. Needless to say MS did half dozen such things during the 00s.
- bmitc 2y ago
  So basically irrelevant reasons in 2024.
  - the_third_wave 2y ago
    Yes, that dog there did bite your brother and sister and cousin and neighbour but that is months ago so basically irrelevant reasons in 2024. Go on, give it a hug.
    - bmitc 2y ago
      Right. Becuase Apple has never, gasp, done anything anti-competitive or shot down open standards.
      - the_third_wave 2y ago
        What does Apple have to do with this? Also why not mention Google, or Samsung, or Huawei or any other supplier of something which resembles an operating environment? The article is about Linux so it's assumed the alternative to whatever Microsoft tries to push is found there, not at the Fruit Factory or the Googleplex or the CCP.
        bmitc 2y ago
        Read the original comment I replied to. It's relevant because they mentioned Windows, macOS, and Linux but swear not to use Windows. And people often blindly bash Windows and Microsoft when macOS and Apple are 10x worse, which was my most recent point.
      - yownie 2y ago
        What your point here exactly? They are both shit companies who peddle shit and anyone with half a brain would be wise to steer clear.
danmur 2y ago
Heres a few: * The UI is slow (compared to linux/gnome and osx). * There are ads in it. * There is a lot of unnecessary telemetry. * Viruses, malware. * No good first-party packaging solution. * Real linux > WSL. * I could go on.
- rob74 2y ago
  Newest item to add to your list: * Recall
- Aerroon 2y ago
  * (some?) LLMs run better on Linux than Windows - some people report a 50% improvement in tokens/sec.
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
  A lot of that is nonsense. Only the ads and telemetry are issues, recent issues at that. - The UI is emphatically not slow and is faster than the most popular DEs, - Viruses and malware have not really been an issue in a decade and Windows has significantly better security than Linux at the moment, - The Microsoft store is a first party packaging solution frequently used - Real Windows > WINE There are problems and issues to be sure, but technically it's actually very sound.
  - timw4mail 2y ago
    The Windows 11 UI is slow. The Settings app in particular is stupid slow.
barrotes 2y ago
I use it on my "corporate job" PC because our architecture is based on .NET and we are still forced to adopt it (at least until we'll definitely pass to .NET Core becoming a bit more agnostic). All I can say is that it's... overwhemingly slow... and it gets progressively slower while times goes on. Every time I install something new that I need it occupies more RAM and I'm forced to control it periodically opening the task manager and killing tray bar processes. People can say "well you could be more careful while installing stuff" but the point is that I am. Moreover the majority of times I need stuff I let the corporate sysadmins to install it on my machine. Options to avoid programs being invasive are hidden, you need to search everywhere to understand how to, let's say, avoid Microsoft Teams to load on OS boot. Someone should explain to me how it's possible that my forklift notebook is a T450 with a 9 years old 15W TDP i5 CPU with Arch Linux installed, and Firefox opens in 2 seconds, and my corporate PC is a fucking stove with a 45W i7 recent CPU and Firefox needs at least 10 seconds to open. And if I, a self-considered kind-of-technical dude, have issues in keeping a work computer clean (so without any game or "casual" program installed), imagine what happens to my less-skilled friend who likes games and needs cracked Photoshop: he will inexorably seek for help from me after things go progressively bad. It happened few months ago with a friend. I took his old T450 (another one) I made him buy to have a PC (now it's my second debian server). Now he has a second-hand MacBook and he's never been so happy. Can't be sure that MacOS actually works better because I avoid it too, but at least people are happy and (I assume) tries to solve their eventual problems alone.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  Why can’t you use Rider? Are you on .NET Framework?
  - barrotes 2y ago
    Yes our platform is developed on .NET Framework, adopts Microsoft SQL-server and it's deployed on IIS servers. These are old company choices related to legacy support for some customers that we (the "new" generation developers) are slowly pushing away with the help of system administrators. But till then I need to have a copy of the architecture on my laptop for debug/test. Of course things could be improved i.e. with a Windows Server VM into a linux PC, but with colleagues we try to keep stuff on our machines as much similar as possible to avoid conflicts.
aniviacat 2y ago
Windows is a lot slower than linux, and poses significant hardware requirements. Many people will have to / already have replaced their system in order to be able to run Windows 11. (Windows 11 doesn't even support first gen Ryzen CPUs.) Linux usually supports hardware for a very long time. Since (for whatever reason) Microsoft hasn't figured out how to make its store actually useable, Windows users have to download (most of) their apps via the browser. That's not just a lot of effort, it also vastly increases the amount of adware/malware non-technical people download and install. On linux, installing apps is a breeze; the stores are actually good. Disk encryption hasn't been an option on (non-pro) Windows until very recently. This means someone who steals your laptop has access to all the data stored on the device. Linux supported disk encryption since forever. I could go on. Windows is lacking in various ways. The only benefit Windows enjoys is being the most used operating system. It is therefore more likely that you're already familiar with Windows and that that specific app you want to use or your employer wants you to use runs only on Windows. (Most notably: Adobe Software, MS Office Software, Video Games.) The core benefit of using Windows is not even a part of Windows.
kstenerud 2y ago
Oh god, Windows is a maintenance nightmare! Every time I'd speak to some relative, the conversation would invariably turn to "Can you do something about my computer? It's so slow!" And then I'd go take a look and find it riddled with spyware and bloatware and a thousand million processes running in the background that actively try to undermine uninstalling this garbage. I mean, why the hell does a MOUSE DRIVER require 2GB of space??? And the virus scanners - these are the worst offenders of all! Linux is a smaller market with fewer threat actors. It's not being pushed into an advertising platform. It runs everything that 90% of computer users want. I can trust most distributions to keep things light and snappy. It's just no contest when it comes to non-tech-savvy people. Linux makes it all so much better once you get it going. I wouldn't install it on someone's laptop, though (unless the laptop was specifically designed for it). If they want a laptop, macbook.

monsieurbanana 2y ago

Agree on all points, except regarding games. Via Steam and Proton, gaming on Linux is now better than Mac.

barrotes 2y ago
I'm not up on gaming on Linux because I'm not a gamer (in last 12 months I played no more than 10 hours for that Stellantis game I found on Steam because it's natively compatible with Linux, and never tried emulation/whatever in last decade), so I guess you're right. But usually the need for advanced games is one of the (few) reasons that I consider enough to "allow" a friend to install Windows instead of going for MacOS. Anyway I'll try to catch up a bit about the state of the art of Linux gaming, just to give an alternative to anyone that seeks for any kind of help in that.
gryn 2y ago
The gaming part is still windows. With all these kernel level access rootkit anti-cheat games, online games are a pain
- scheeseman486 2y ago
  That's the only major roadblock left, rip out the anti-cheat stuff and the games generally work. I'm not sure how Valve could address this without people getting angry. They could eventually leverage their immutable rootfs setup to enable attestation of the system stack and run the games in security hardened containers?
  - gryn 2y ago
    my problem with them is that they open room to a lot of risk when the dev fuckup and they don't even work. plenty of motivated cheaters bypass them you can even find tutorial on youtube for that. that mean they only make the experience worse for linux user. They shouldn't exist, yet here we are.
  - Arch-TK 2y ago
    If linux gaming requires you use a blessed immutable OS where everything you run is either unprivileged or signed by a central entity, it's not much better than just using Windows at that point. Kernel level anti cheat is a failure. You need to control the hardware to do it properly. The only hope is to wait for less locally intrusive and more robust anti cheat solutions. Basically the only possible solutions at this point lie in the AI space.

graemep 2y ago

Linux is more of a nuisance to set up, although that can be mitigated by buying hardware with Linux pre-installed. I just did (although I ended up reinstalling because I changed my mind about what distro I wanted). Once installed it is a lot less troublesome. I think there are a lot of users like your parents than you think. I think you are right about artists using Photoshop, and gamers wanting the full range of games, but I know Windows small business users who use LibreOffice. A lot of my clients use MS Office, Teams and other MS stuff and I have no problems working with them.

barrotes 2y ago
I think that for the "casual user" distros (like Mint) the set up problem is not an issue if you can choose the PC before. For eventual friends that want Linux I always tell them to find a second-hand T-series ThinkPad. They have a fairly large second-hand market where you can buy one for even 200/300€, they are solid laptops (at least the old generations...), they fully support Linux. Sometimes someone arrives with an old entry level laptop that "doesn't work anymore" (translated: it suffers with Windows) and in those case it might happen that you need to to some tricks to make everything work, but these are usually just post-installation procedures, nothing to worry about after everything is set up.
Mo3 2y ago
I mean... nuisance... maybe 10 years ago or if you try to install Arch from source, but nowadays the big distros all have very nice and beginner friendly installers. Totally on par with Windows, if not even more user friendly because you don't have to deal with forced logins and navigating dark patterns.
- ozzcer 2y ago
  Yea Linux distros are beating out windows now. I trying popOS at the moment and the install process was a couple of clicks. No assistant screaming up me, no internet connection required. Beautiful.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  At first glance "10 years ago" seemed right, but then I did the math and it's more like 20 years ago. 10 years ago there was Steam, Plasma 5, Dell sold Linux laptops and Unity has been the default in Ubuntu for a few years already. Time flies.

lynguist 2y ago

Same, same. My sister uses the same Ubuntu LTS laptop with Google Chrome since 2013. Has only issues with Word documents and printing, and she also found she can’t backup her iPhone to the computer. Besides that nothing. She still uses it, does the dist upgrade and never changed anything or broke anything for the past 11 years. And I also disagree with the article. I bought a new laptop in 2011, installed Windows 8 on it and used it semi-regularly until 2019, I also never upgraded from Windows 8. I also had no issues at all. I only have computer issues if for example corporate manages my laptop.

DEADMINCE 2y ago

I think it's weird/lucky that you had such luck recommending macs - most of my non-technical friends just find them confusing and unintuitive, and it's not because they were only used to windows or something. As for Linux just working untouched...doesn't mean it doesn't have problems or is secure. I've seen plenty of older people use their browser fine after not running updates for years.

cykros 2y ago

Been on Slackware for over a decade, other linuxen for decades since 2000. Did end up getting a Windows laptop for power usage of Excel, which it's the only thing that'll run, but otherwise don't know why anyone puts up with all the BS that comes with it as a primary system. I'm far too lazy for all that.

rldjbpin 2y ago

I had similar luck with another flavor of the distro. but things get complicated with handling files, like opening word files. I had to switch out due to display drivers, anti-cheat and specific professional applications. we need more work on desktop use in linux just like there is attention to detail on linux for servers and windows/macos for desktop use.