I saw plenty of efforts that aim to create a Linux distribution for non-enthusiasts, for people who just want to use their computers, and not care about the details - A Desktop for All on the GNOME blog, most recently. While I commend the effort, my own experience is that these efforts are futile, and start off from a fundamentally wrong premise: that people are willing (let alone wanting) to manage their own operating systems.
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My family is using Linux because that’s the system I can maintain for them. Apart from my Dad, they never installed Linux, and never will. They don’t install software, they don’t upgrade, they don’t change settings either. All of that is something I do for them. And to do so effectively, I need a distribution I am familiar with, one that is also flexible enough to fine-tune for every member of the family, because they prefer fundamentally different things!
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The common pattern between all these three is that neither of them maintains their own systems. I do. As such, how beginner friendly the distribution is, is meaningless. The users of the system don’t care, they’ll never see those parts. They’ll have a preconfigured system maintained by someone else, and that’s exactly what they want. To make this work, I’m using distributions I am familiar with. For my parents, that’s Debian, because I was a Debian person when their systems were installed. For my Wife, it is NixOS, because I’m a NixOS person now. For the Twins, it will likely be NixOS too.
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Installing Linux is definitely not something, the average computer user ever wants to do. The same goes for Windows. Unfortunately you can’t just buy a Linux computer at your local electronics store. Until that changes, Linux will remain in a niche.
Even if you could, it would change nearly nothing. The average computer user doesn’t want to maintain their system either. They want a system they don’t need to care about, or at worst, a system their friends & family can help with. Thus, the best way for a Linux enthusiast to help their family use Linux is to install and maintain it for them. For that, you need a general purpose distro you’re familiar with, one that’s easy to maintain remotely.
In other words, distros that target the average computer user are futile, because the target audience is not interested in neither installing, nor maintaining their systems.
(And this is what the linked blog post is about, in more words.)
One big issue with retail computers coming with Linux is the kickbacks from the Windows ecosystem.
Things like AV trials and MS Office. I don’t know if they break even or make a profit on all the bloatware from a Windows based sale.
I use fedora atomic and I maintain nothing.
I use my computer once every week and I don’t have to care about anything. Fedora does everything.
If you take care of the systems of your kids or family, that’s up to you. You choose to do that.
Same here with Bazzite. I freaking love it. I love the whole Ublue project. I haven’t tried the Fedora Atomic spins, how do they differ from Ublue?
Any other take to add to this?
Difference are preinstalled packages and DEs. In the end, it’s all fedora linux with rpm-ostree. They are all good
Imho, the best way to help a beginner should have happened many years before they put their hands on any Linux distro. It should have happened when they were still a small child, at school. In the way they were taught how to… learn and how to get better… aka, by expecting difficulties and by expecting to fail, often.
Failing should be expected as a beginner learning anything new. Like, say, we all learned to walk as toddlers. It was not by being told we walked perfectly but by falling on our diapered butt. Failing at outing one foot in front of the other and falling, over and over again.
That sounds obvious but, to my old eyes at the very least, it also sounds almost like an heresy when compared to what I see kids being taught nowadays. That things should be frictionless and that nobody should fail at anything, ever. That’s such a poor choice that doesn’t prepare them much. Well, imho.
When I switched (from 35+ years being an Apple user) to Linux, it was frustrating.
Even when where things went smooth, it could still be frustrating and it often was. If only, because it required me to change 35 years old habits. And when it wasn’t going smooth, even when I was using the best docs and guides, at times it could be incredibly and utterly frustrating, when not completely maddening. Either nothing on my machine was ever exactly like described in the doc, or the app version was different and some setting had changed, or my issue was a somewhat different, or the solution simply did not work, or I missed a tiny detail or a word somewhere in the guide. Whatever. Frustration was a constant.
That’s what people should be taught to expect and to be fine with. And not just with Linux, btw ;)
I’m going to disagree here, partially. I agree that teaching people how to use a computer, at an early age, is important. It’s also important to teach them about failure, and set realistic expectations.
That has little to do with constant system updates & maintenance. That is an entirely different skillset. Like, I can use my oven just fine, I know how to get around its kinda awkward menu system, to tell it whether I want to heat up frozen pizza, or if I’m baking bread, and stuff like that. I’m okay with learning a new menu system if I have to replace my oven. I will, however, leave the replacement to a professional. I will let a professional fix it too, should it break.
Same goes for computers and my family: they are perfectly capable of using computers. They can - reluctantly - adapt to change. They do not want to fix or maintain things, however. And that’s fine! It’s not their area of expertise, nor are they interested in it.
Most end-users are like that: they can use their systems, but don’t want to keep up with the constant change. That’s tiresome and distracting and annoying and error-prone. I believe these things are best done by someone who can smooth out the experience, someone who can help the end-users adapt, too, perhaps even prepare them in advance. That is what we should focus on, rather than trying to force unwilling people into maintenance. That never ends well.
Nix? Nah better stay away from that one.
The main goal of the author is to explain that the best way to help a non-enthusiast use Linux, is to maintain their system for them, so they don’t have to.
Use whatever distro you’re most comfortable with to do so. For the author (hi!) that’s NixOS. If it’s Debian, Fedora, Arch, or whatever for you, it makes very little difference for the end-user, they’ll see nothing of it.
the best way to help a non-enthusiast use Linux, is to maintain their system for them, so they don’t have to.
Uhh that’s a very unpopular approach. Nobody wants to do that.
Indeed. But someone has to maintain a system, and those of us who know what we are doing are much better equipped than those who don’t.
The fact is that my family needs to use a computer. I have two options: let them try to do so on their own and deal with the fallout, or do it myself. I will choose the latter, not because I want to, but because the alternative is even worse: I can’t help with systems I have no clue about, even less when it is an OS I am not familiar with.
Thus, I developed a bunch of tooling that makes it almost trivial for me to maintain linux systems for the family. 15 minutes a week on average, I can sacrifice that to make them happy.
The best way to help a non-enthusiast Linux user is teach them basic system maintenance.
You should have basic maintenance knowledge like checking tyre pressure and the fluid levels in your car.
By doing it all for them, you are perpetuating the learned helplessness encouraged by Microsoft and Apple over the last few decades and doing them no favours at all.
Consider what they would do if you were unavailable to help them.
Nope. That leads to frustration on both sides. If they want to learn - sure! I will teach them.
But if they aren’t into computers at all, trying to teach them sysadmin skills is a recipe for disaster.
You should not need to be a sysadmin to use a computer.
Or we can just decrease the importance of desktop. Users like mobile more. So I just self host stuff and offload data and apps to my server. Thin client (desktop/laptop/mobile/tablet) + thick server.
That does not address the problem at all, though. That solves the upgrade and maintenance problem, but does nothing for users who just want things to work as they always did. It does not address change.
By maintaining a system for my family, I can address that: either by undoing things, working them around, or preparing them in advance. No amount of automation will solve that. It’s not a technical problem.
Lots ppl nowadays don’t even own a pc or mac. The market shares already prove lots of ppl can live without desktop. Unless your family need to use complicated softwares like cad, compilers… My point is most ppl do consider their phone and tablet just work. And those two’s maintenance are a lot simpler. Of course, your family, your choice.
Again, you’re misunderstanding the problem. Keeping applications up to date is not a problem. Keeping things working the way my family got used to is an entirely different matter, and it’s actually worse on Android & iOS (thus, most phones and tablets).
The main reason the family even has desktop PCs is because we couldn’t make tablets work for them. Something as simple as reading email was a problem, because the various email apps (gmail, k9, etc) changed their UIs, confusing the heck out of my parents. It would’ve been possible to improve that situation, but the tooling to remotely manage an android phone are far more limited than on a bog standard Linux desktop.
A lot of people do use phones tablets as their main computer, yes. Ask them how happy they are about it, how much trouble updates and random UI changes cause. Just because they “can live with it” does not mean they enjoy the experience, or want to live with it. Chances are, they don’t have other options. My family does. I think more people should have those options available to them.
(Also, the blog post is about desktop, specifically, and is a critique of distros trying to aim at non-enthusiasts. When it comes to mobile, those efforts are even more futile, because those specialised distros will have absolutely no chance of working on anything but a very tiny subset of mobile devices.)
