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Obligatory: Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?
Sure. Have they managed to create a dumb down GUI that my grandparents can understand? Because until then, barrier for entry is too high for regular people.
If your grandparents can administrate their own Windows PC, they’ll be able to use Linux just fine. If they only use the browser and you set it all up for them, that’ll work in Linux just as well.
Why would they only use a browser? They talk with friends over video chat, watch movies/TV shows and play games and do other casual stuff.
I haven’t seen any distro that manages the basic tasks without any issues that require technical troubleshooting. Really basic stuff, like turning on your computer and having no audio even though nothing changed or your internet not working. That is mere incontinence for you or me, but to non-technical people it’s a dealbreaker.
And that sort of thing never happens with Windows?
Interestingly no. All the data Microsoft collects about OS usage, they seem to use to polish all these issues.
And I’m not saying people shouldn’t try Linux, there are millions of reasons it makes sense, but usability is the only metric that matters for normal users. They are happy to sell their information for convenience and “it just works” attitude. Apple whole existence is based on that mentality. And that is the weakest area of Linux. Partly due to the nature of open source, where people tend to fork and tailor the experience to themselves, and partly due to no usage statistics to base usability around.
Your right about apples philosophy which apple does reasonably well. But microsoft windows? Never my experience.
Just today at work (where windows is mandatory) got a teams call and had no sound. Turns out after connecting a Bluetooth device and then removing it the internal sound-device got disabled and had to be re enabled in a the updated settings menu, which sure didn’t pose much challenge for me, but my grandparents?
Linux in contrast feels so much more stable. when i tell the system to behave a certain way it will continue to do so till i tell it not to, no funny business.
Edge reinstalling itself after being removed and pinning itself to the taskbar… thats literal virus behavior.
Great points, I’m a Linux user and used to use windows myself, what you’ve said about Apple being existential, revolves around this mentality, has hit me. I’d like this to change for Linux. It could provide real freedom to people when using their machines while not being monitored by big tech companies.
I’ve had zero problems with Ubuntu, but I’m going to get down voted for running Ubuntu. It really did fire right up and run though. So far it’s been a fine first distro.
I Ubuntu’d my step-father’s laptop after reinstalling Windows 3 times because he couldn’t be bothered to use antivirus software.
Most linux distros are easier than Windows installs if you include the MS account and other crap you have to click through.
If you (not your grand parents) understand the concept of hard drives and files, you could probably get your grand parents set up on Linux connected to the internet just fine on any PC that’s not some proprietary hellscape of hardware, because Linux will run on almost anything made in the last 30 years.
It only gets weird if you want to use a laptop with a dedicaded GPU ‘and’ an integrated one and only want to use the dedicated GPU sometimes and such.
The last Windows version!
I’m waiting for Windows 12, since it’s only every other Windows OS that’s worth using.
Unfortunately with the way they’re going, W12 won’t have mouse or keyboard support and a Cortana/Copilot/Cockamamie LLM will be the only way you can interact with your computer.
I heard they already killed off Cortana, which is (kind of) a shame since it was one of the more interesting voice assistants I’ve seen, plus it actually had some personality IIRC. They even got the voice pretty darn close to that of Jen Taylor.
At one point I managed to get the voice working in other TTS programs but the process was extremely convoluted and I’m sure it wouldn’t work anymore, if the files are even still buried within Windows.
But back to your point, it will absolutely be Copilot or some other forgettable flavor-of-the-week
data siphonAI
If you want an activation key to apply to a Windows 10 device, you’ll pay $61 per device for Year 1.
And that Year 1 is significant. Microsoft noted: “The price will double every consecutive year for a maximum of three years. If you decide to jump into the program in Year Two, you’ll have to pay for Year One too, as ESUs are cumulative.”
$61 => $122 => $244
And it’s 100% profit per each device, since there is no ongoing work happening.
This is going to be a big problem for corpos, buying a new pc/laptop that meets the requirements with NPU and 16GB RAM is not a cheap. Especially for mid/small companies.
That’s cute, I’ll just keep using the LTSC version for free.
That’s what I did on my ThinkPad (the 5G modem card isn’t supported by Linux without building it, and fuck that, staying on some form of windows). I don’t really want to wipe and install fresh everything for my gaming machine, but I think I’ll have to. Unless 11 has changed some UI elements (like reintroducing keyboard shortcuts for context and right click menus), it’s doa for me.
Best I can do is a one time payment of $3000
This will make me jump to Linux super fast
