Thought as much. Thanks. And, to be fair, LibreOffice took that spot very well.
Thought as much. Thanks. And, to be fair, LibreOffice took that spot very well.
Dunnily enough, I got into Linux through my grandfather (now in his 70s), who had been on and off using Linux since redhat. Although, by now, my tech and Linux knowledge surpassed his (at least in applications relevant in this century) because he’s scared of the internet
You forget the step of installation though. My mum would be totally able to use Linux but creating an installer usb is probably beyond her capability or at least her comfort zone, let alone opening the bios, setting the usb as boot drive, disabling secure boot, and then installing Linux correctly. Although to be fair, the last step is probably the easiest. That’s why you still have to set it up for non tech savvy ppl. Sure, not much different with windows, but usually it comes preinstalled.
I think the most likely answer would be “what?”
Sure, give a somewhat intelligent person between 20 and 40 a PC with Linux on it and they’ll figure it out. However, that doesn’t mean they have the patience of finding out how to install Linux in the first place. And also, they‘ll figure out how to install apps, sure. Until they try to download the installer.exe for Microsoft Office because why would they know that it won’t work.
The problem isn’t, that they couldn’t figure it out, the problem is most people just want a working computer and not relearn what they already know or learn what an operating system is at all.
(And also, I remember reading some study, that a lot of late Gen Z and younger (the ones that didn’t grow up with Windows XP or earlier anymore) are actually less tech savvy than older generations because they’re used to not really having to troubleshoot tech)
Most people care about neither. Most people want a browser, a place to store their photos and maybe an office application.
Is open office even still in active development?
Although I have to say, kdenlive surprised me very positively, when I tried it out recently. DaVinci is still king imo but in a pinch, I‘d prefer kdenlive over Avid Media Composer any time.
Because if you just set it up for them, they don’t have to think about the million choices of Linux. Tell them „here browser, there office and there files“ and most people above 40 probably won’t care.
While LibreOffice has improved immensely over the years, its compatibility to Microsoft’s file formats is still a bit hit n miss at times, while OnlyOffice is a drop in replacement. It looks like MS Office and handles docx & Co. as well as MS Office, which might be a deciding factor for someone who has been on Windows for a long time and has all their documents in docx.
Also, I personally always get MS Office 2003 flashbacks when using LibreOffice, while file types don’t really matter to me.
It reads like a good starting point for someone who wants to get away from Microsoft but has no experience with Linux, though. While Linux and OpenSource software are getting more and more beginner friendly, the amount of choices can make it difficult for newbies to even find out that Linux programs (be they FOSS or not) exist that can do what they need.
Surround sound didn’t work for me with the Jellyfin player and with the native player language selection didn‘t work. If you don’t have to transcode and spare a few quid, Infuse is great. Sadly can’t recommend it to my friends accessing my server from outside my home network because of said lack of transcoding.
A few things (disclaimer, I‘m both a Linux and mac user. Linux on my gaming machine, mac on my work machines):
• Privacy is a big factor. Microsofts track record is bad, even among non FOSS companies.
• Bloatware and Ads. Microsofts insistence on pushing OneDrive, Edge, 365 and bing are annoying to say the least. Why do they think I’m going to change my mind about that after a minor update?
• The UX is less than stellar. Why does the OS have 4 different UI styles for different programs that sometimes even do almost the same thing but not entirely, so you’ll have to use both versions?
• It’s almost impossible for me to keep my desktop tidy short of not using it. I’m dependent on macOS stack feature. On Linux I never had enough random files for it to be a problem.
In short, Windows just annoys me. While Linux and macOS go out of my way and let me just do my stuff, Windows just constantly pulling my attention away from what I advertised want to do and that was even when I was using my PC solely as a gaming machine.
Edit: formatting
I think Mint is mostly for the “I have a PC that’s a few years old and want something easy and reliable to replace Windows with” crowd. Because it works great for that. It’s the perfect beginner distro.
Had that as well on macOS. Problem went away when I switched the system from dark mode to light mode (or the other way round, don’t remember). But generally, I have to use Premiere for work anyways. For personal projects I prefer DaVinci Resolve though because, in my experience, it’s the most stable and performs the best of any program I’ve tried.
And gimp is still terrible, while, in my limited experience, kdenlive is very useable.
I think one of the issues, why there terminal is seen as necessity is, that there are almost no tutorials that refer to the gui. So if you’re a newbie and try to find out how something works like adding a third party repo to your package manager or making an install script executable, all you get is a command. You don’t get a “add this address to the list in the settings menu of your package manager, which you can find here”, for example.
As a German, I am pissed about the way we try to get carbon neutral. Shutting off the nuclear plants before the coal plants was just plain stupid and primarily motivated by unjustified fear and that sweet sweet coal lobby money. And now our energy is still expensive af and still dirty and will be for a while.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that there’s more and more focus on renewables and that they make up a sizeable and growing percentage of our energy supply but it’s pretty clear that that’s not enough or at least not fast enough.
That’s fairly standard for serif fonts like times new roman, baskerville, etc. Although it is uncommon in modern sans serif fonts and/or fonts designed to be viewed on a screen.