I’m visiting my parents for the holidays and convinced them to let me switch them to Linux.

They use their computer for the typical basic stuff; email, YouTube, Word, Facebook, and occasionally printing/scanning.

I promised my mom that everything would look the same and work the same. I used Linux Mint and customized the theme to look like Windows 10. I even replaced the Mint “Start” button with the Windows logo.

So far they like it and everything runs great. Plus it’s snappier now that Windows isn’t hogging all the system resources.

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14 points

Not worth it. You will end up playing the h support when something goes wrong.

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34 points

My parents would ask me for tech support anyway no matter the OS. I have them update software and update Firefox and Chromium and their Netflixing will keep working, been very low stress generally.

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33 points

As if I’m not already doing that. Why do you think I was home working on my parent’s computer in the first place?

Plus with how shitty Windows is getting, I’ll likely be doing less tech support going forward.

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23 points

I set up Mint on my parent’s PC a couple of years ago, and the amount of support I have had to provide has dropped to basically zero.

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13 points

Probably doing that anyway

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12 points

I don’t know, maybe?

I play support now, and have for decades. Sometimes windows can be a bear.

Maybe, for basic usage like this, Linux can make sense if it’s well thought out?

I have an older (80’s) family friend who recently switched from a laptop to an iPad, and seems OK with it (surprisingly).

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6 points

Typically all of us who switched our relatives to Linux were doing support anyway — but it’s much easier than Windows.

Windows needs constant handholding like a needy pet (and not the cute kind). With Linux I spend extended periods of time without having to do anything. I get like one major issue a year, and it’s usually hardware related. The only questions I get occasionally are “do you know an app that does thing”.

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4 points

There’s no difference if they are on windows

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-22 points
14 points

Make me use windows and I will write a similar blog post about me hating every second of it. But I don’t have to, so I won’t.

The part about dragging and dropping files like its the 90s, instead of just pushing to your git repo was funny.

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-10 points

Cmon, this isn’t a compatible and good enough alternative:

It is something that will just give you issues down the line when people expect documents to look consistent.

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11 points
*

This article seems misguided, people pick their OS because of what they need. I can list many things with subpar experience on Windows: emacs suck; latex is slow; libreoffice and thunderbird crashes like nobody’s bushiness; opam is straightup unsupported (which means ocaml, dune, coq is a pain); there is absolutely nothing in the app store, means that people will need to resort to commandline tools to install and update app.

All of this obviously will not decrown Windows from a OS with mass appeal. Since the software most people need runs well on windows.

Another example, in my crowd it is quite rude to send a docx file between people assuming people want to use or have access to Microsoft office, so everything is in PDF. Yet in many other crowd docx is the default. We were never bounded by the need of a specific office software, while others do not enjoy the same luxury.

There is needs by different groups of people, and that means they choose the OS that is most comfortable for them. Linux is not going to have 70% desktop adoption rate overnight, and no one is saying that. In fact both the quote in the article and this post explicitly dismissed “linux is ready for everyone” delusion. They are just comfortable in Linux, and what is wrong with that?

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13 points

In 99% of cases I have seen, people pick their OS because it came preinstalled

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-6 points

Well the article lists at least 8 groups of people with real and common professions that can’t run on Linux because it wont cut it.

Linux is not going to have 70% desktop adoption rate overnight, and no one is saying that. In fact both the quote in the article and this post explicitly dismissed “linux is ready for everyone” delusion. They are just comfortable in Linux, and what is wrong with that?

Yeah, Linux isn’t for everyone yet people here on Lemmy defend it like a religion.

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7 points

It depends a lot. If you are never using MSOffice for anything other than the most basic writing Libreoffice does cut it. Linux overall does just work for the most part if the person using it just plans on using the browser anyway. Everything else is spot on tho.

And funny thing about the gaming performance bit, I’m no expert and this is anecdotal, but my games actually run better on Linux than Windows by default. Dunno why

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-8 points

. If you are never using MSOffice for anything other than the most basic writing Libreoffice does cut it.

Does it tho? It can even render a simple, unformatted bullet list consistently:

Linux overall does just work for the most part if the person using it just plans on using the browser anyway.

With this I agree 100%.

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