Even though I highly support Linux and what it's thriving to be, but comments like this are why people don't switch. Calling people names never is a good idea to get them to support your cause.

I think most of normal users don't even know what an OS is, so they don't think who is choosing it.

I talked to some colleagues some time ago and they had never heard of Linux. The very concept of different operating systems was news to them. We still have a long way to go.

Windows has so little competition, most people are oblivious to choosing an OS at all.

You forgot "it came on the computer and it works fine".

I know, the average person probably only knows 2, maybe 3 distros Max

And Mint

Yes, of course Mint

I work on the IT side of a non tech company. I don’t think vastly even comes close to covering how un-savvy the average person is

Oh, absolutely. They've never had to do family tech support, and it shows.

I think it's more like people still hold onto a view of the difficulty that hasn't been true for years now in the big ones (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc). I agreed with this position 10 years ago, but not anymore. Users that aren't super technical are likely just browsing, watching video, and playing games. All that works out of the box now with nearly no set up in my experience. My 7 year old has been using it with less problems than he was getting in Windows 11 (seriously).

I tried to upvote you twice but was not allowed. So here is my second upvote: You hit the problem spot on!

Shit's better now. That's not to say that your average person could handle everything.

If I have a normal person linux on a usb on a computer set to boot from usb, they could totally install it.

If an update fucks over a driver or a package, they're completely fucked.

If they need to make their own boot usb, they're completely fucked.

If they need to configure their computer to boot from the usb if it's not setup that way ... completely fucked.

If they're good with generic drivers, generic browsers and probably steam, they'll be fine.

Grandma is probably fine with Linux now.

Of course, a decent number of gen-x grandmas might have actually fucked around with linux years ago :)

TempleOS users in this post:

Hated by both sides for different reasons but both are valid

Also BSD

macOS is for people who think people should earn for their work.

Linux is for people who believe NOBODY should EVER earn money for ANYTHING EVER.

Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about SuSE. Or Red Hat. Or IBM. All “evil” the second they started charging “money” for the “work” of the “laborers”.

lol

Open sources in awesome thing, but people should get paid for their labor without suddenly being considered evil

And you can debate the abominable labor practices of Apple Inc., but poor labor practices does not devalue their products, no matter how far you twist your logic or philosophy. nor how many childish tantrums you throw.

You think this sounds like a absurd argument? This is what you all sound like when you talk about macOS. Or even windows (which I have to agree is garbage, but that’s beside the point). Every single time. ridiculously, myopically, one-sided and so ignorantly biased… but nooo… nothing but Linux can ever be acceptable. And any criticism of it or any user of it is worse than the Holocaust.

You’re all a bunch of childish clowns

Even Microsoft are now renting Linux VMs on their cloud infrastructure.

I use arch btw

There is not a comment in this thread worthy of a shitpost, just lots of boasting how great Linux is. The Linux users don't even get the irony of this. But, you're technically correct.

And a whole bunch of Windows users clearly thinking way more about Linux than they care to admit.

There's just as many bugs, they're just pretty sometimes.

It's because Lemmy is a techy tinkering hub. The same skills and interests needed to be aware of and migrate to Lemmy lend themselves to people migrating to Linux.

Both are free and open source and arguably better than the alternatives of reddit and windows so of course there are a bunch of dorks on here trying to get you to switch.

Both also cut down on how much you can be spied on and manipulated by algorithms so that's a big incentive to convert people too.

Edit: btw you should switch to linux

Is every other person here some kind of computer science enthusiast or something like that?

That's a fair way to sum it up, yeah. Politics aside, we like to tinker with tech and Linux is inherently tinker-able.

Yes, most lemmings use Linux and because you have to care about your choice of operating system at least a little bit for Linux there is a lot of talk about it here

Lemmy, like linux, has a very small learning curve that keeps out most people.

Ig yea, I do use Linux too, but the "Linux VS WindOws" bs OS wars is everywhere tbh, but yea- if you are on reddit, you wouldnt see it cuz the algorithm knows you don't care- on the other hand if I open reddit rn (I haven't opened it in, god knows how long) I bet, the first post that gets shoved in my face is some fuckass stupid OS war rage bait.

One of the Reason I quit reddit was because of this kind of negative engagement farming kind of posts just filling up my feed, This place is better compared to reddit on that case, but because there's not a prominent algorithm that tracks you, what you see is what everyone mostly sees and Ig somany privacy consious people who switched to lemmy, also uses some form operating system that respects their choice.

I don’t get why people on Lemmy care so much about either of them so passionately

Weirdos who feel the need to let everyone know their team is superior, so they can feel superior. Its just as dumb as apple vs. android or Xbox vs playstation vs pc. Guys, It's ok to like what you do and NOT shit on people who don't do what you're doing.

Lemmy's full of linux fans. Theres not really much more to it

If there's a linux circlejerk community this needs to be there asap

You know people would just.... Use other operating systems, right? The march of Technology doesn't just halt because Linux never got invented, it likely would have just ended up with smaller machines using a stripped down form of windows

I just got a second SSD and installed Linux on it and in BIOS I set the boot order to boot from the Linux drive. Still have my SSD with Windows 10 in case I need it. During boot, I then can just press F8 and select the boot drive, should I desire to use my Windows 10 drive. Easy.

What I did was clone my windows drive as a virtual machine on an external drive, like a flash drive, then, I wiped the drive, installed kubuntu, moved the VM back to the drive, and when I run into something that I'm like "I can't find an alternative to this app on Linux" or "I need a copy of that one thing from my old windows install" I just boot it up, use the app and do what I need, or transfer the file over, and I'm good.

In my case I will admit, I did not wipe the windows drive and ended up dual booting, but not very often, just because I haven't been able to get a vm to run smooth using virtual manager since I switched, running windows or Linux, pretty sure it's because of Nvidia and their proprietary driver. If I don't need GPU, I can use the VM just fine. But for specific games or software, switching to Windows on bare metal is handy.

I'd say the VM thing isn't the best solution to the problem you're facing, but it is a solution that can make the transition a little easier, it helped for me anyways, so I figured I'd share.

2-3 days seems very optimistic, but it depends how much you enjoy tinkering with your setup.

Maybe consider dual-booting so you can go back to windows if something urgent comes up while you migrate.

Try Linux on a USB stick in live mode (JUST DON'T PRESS INSTALL YET) . It will be a bit slower than a direct drive boot but you can play around with Linux and get to like it without having to wreck all your windows stuff or wipe any drives.

My wife is in the same boat. But it's more like 2 weeks, 2-3 days to migrate and the rest to get used to the different OS. After that you're good forever though (at least until you see new shiny distro come out)

If you have nothing backed up then you can just pretend the drive failed and you lost everything. Now you can just wipe the drive and install Linux.

Linux can access NTFS-based drives. I say that you should just move everything onto drives that aren't hosting the OS, then format the OS drive with a fresh Linux.

Not true in my experience. Windows users hate their OS and all the crap they have to live with.

Oh god, I remember that guy now. He would post vague linux memes that weren't really for or against linux, then shit on linux in the comments. He made his own communities that he would solely post to. I blocked him after I realize he wasn't going to get bored very quickly.

I assumed it was a Linux person making it. As someone who is a Windows user by trade, but a Linux user at heart, I found it quite funny.

does that imply linux is being made terrible by accident? which implies also that linux is being made terrible?

is your OS usable by anyone that isn't you? because i've written a few programs (for work) and made them intentionally obtuse to fuck over anyone who tried to steal my work.

Yes, go to the linuxsucks community. Seems like one guy spends all his time making anti-linux propaganda. If you point out the misinformation portions he bans you.

I do sometimes feel bad for MS Windows users. I rarely "hate on" them, but that largely depends on their reaction my inability / unwillingness to use the communication/collaboration tools and data formats they are used to.