Hehe. It’s funny because it’s true.
Huh, a statement that’s not been true for at least a decade
It still haunts the OS though, especially as Windows used to be actually good back then.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Anybody who thinks that Linux is as user-friendly to the average user as eg. Windows or macOS is completely out of touch with how helpless the average user is
When I was college back in 2009 I was dual booting Ubuntu and Windows Vista on a gateway laptop. I never fiddled with Ubuntu at all. The things that worked out of the box worked reliability and I never bothered fighting with things that didn’t work like the stylus.
The reason why I didn’t make the switch back then was not the OS or the drivers. It was the lack of support for the software I needed for school, like Matlab and orcad pspice. Things have improved substantially since then between first party support (Matlab started supporting Linux with R2016a) and wine/proton letting windows applications run mostly normally without their developers needing to make any changes to support the OS.
IMO the thing that’s most in the way of adoption these days is the lack of mainstream OEM support. Until the masses can easily buy a computer with Linux pre-installed and the driver niggles sorted they’re not going to switch.
The distros that tout themselves as user-friendly come with pretty much everything an average, non-power-user would need pre-installed ootb: Internet browser, file browser, media player, app store, and some sort of settings app/menu to fiddle with basic things like screen resolution, input devices, audio settings, etc.
Has your experience been different? Is there some specific distro or some specific missing/confusing feature you’re talking about?
I’m not speaking from personal experience as such because I’ve been using Linux since the late 90’s, but I do know a bunch of people who haven’t had great experiences with Linux, mainly due to eg wanting to run games – which is fairly easy nowadays thanks to Proton but it’s still not as stupid simple as just installing a game in Windows – or driver problems (esp graphics)
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I definitely recognize that gaming isn’t 100% perfect on Linux yet, and graphics drivers can still be a pain. I think both of those statements hold true on Windows though, and I don’t think I’d consider a gamer an “average” PC user. PC gaming is a niche hobby. A large niche maybe, but it’s not the main thing people use a PC for. So I think it’s a little unfair to point to gaming-related issues when trying to claim that Linux isn’t user-friendly.
I wouldn’t call gaming a niche hobby at all – I know plenty of people who aren’t “technically-minded” in any way but who still play games on their computers and not just on mobile devices or consoles. 54% of Europeans aged 6-64 played games according to a 2024 poll, 43% of them on a PC – that’s a huge chunk of the population.
Same survey:
71% play on smartphones or tablets (vs 68% in 2023) 59% play on consoles (vs 56% in 2023) 43% play on PC (vs 46% in 2023)
I know there’s overlap, people who play multiple devices, but even with that, 43% is smaller than the other numbers
Looks like the numbers are similar for the US: 64% of the population plays games, 45% of them using PCs: https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Essential-Facts-Booklet-05-30-25-RGB.pdf
I think the issue is Linux users think user friendly means 100% freedom to adjust and configure as desired (the system is friendly to users), and most other people think user friendly means a single obvious green path to getting things done.
These are not strictly incompatible, they’re just difficult to balance.
I think KDE does it well? “simple by default, powerful when needed” works a charm on their applications
KDE was a nightmare for my wife since it has the configuration right in the desktop bars and dialogs. Misclicks and drags meant she was making changes she didn’t want to. GNOME was a better choice, 100% simple and no surprises.
I like Gnome too, and I think their settings done via terminal is genius. I know Apple has it too. I have no idea who invented this first, but I love it. The pro user can tune the things they like, but an average user don’t need that many configuration options.
That’s stupid. We do not design cars such that it’s impossible to crash if someone starts yanking on the wheel randomly.
Expecting an OS to do as much is … just beyond pathetic.
You make a point but, hey now, let’s not be cruel to people. I think we’ve all had a situation where a click was accidentally a click-and-drag and now things aren’t how they were before, and we didn’t realize exactly what was happening.
I feel like KDE might have features to lock down taskbar customization a little better but, I haven’t looked for such a feature… 🤔
I’ve done that click and drag many times. Nothing worse than accidentally dragging a folder designated with pseudo random numbers into another pseudo random numbered folder, and not knowing if you actually dragged it into a folder, or missed and did nothing
Part of basic computer literacy is to not barrel forwards when something unexpected happens. It’s not the end of the world to have to pause and go, “wait what?” and figure out how to get back or undo it.
Except GNOME did exactly that. Sh can’t accidentally alter anything. Some people just have a hard time with computers and expected UI. Ever tried watching a good grampa deal with printer install and windows popups…you have to simplify things for less tch savvy people. Just like cars now have auto ebrake and lane assist
And cars are one of the most dangerous things on the planet, accounting for nearly 2% of all annual deaths by themselves. So maybe safety features are actually good?
Nobody is dying because they accidentally started desktop customizing on KDE. It’s beyond pathetic to expect an already safe environment to protect you from yourself when the consequences are a moment of confusion.
Yeah I’m saying cars should be safer, not that KDE should kill you
There can’t be single obvious green path for a lot of complex things and most of the things that we do on computers actually are complex like that. I would think that user friendliness is more of an indicator of a sane default behaviour or something that people already are taught to expect. Balancing that is even harder i think.
Recently been playing around with Mint. For the most part it’s user friendly. Where it falls apart is it’s not intuitive, it took me hours of googling to try to figure out how to add windows specific drivers (because the manufacturer didn’t create Linux drivers) for a Bluetooth mouse so I could program the mouse buttons. There were community created drivers on GitHub but no direct way to get them, I would have had to download and configure several support files before I could even try to install. I eventually gave up and just bought another mouse.
Most people would have given up in the first 5min and tossed their PC out and kept the mouse.
It’s not that Linux doesn’t work, it’s that it takes work to get it to work.
If Linux worked in the sense of clear step by step instructions and the developers/legacy users didn’t expect everyone to be experts or expect everyone to spend hours trying to figure out world peace just to perform a mundane task, then it would probably replace windows pretty quickly.
To an extent that’s an anathema to how software tutorials on linux are designed: Developers don’t know which distro a given user may be using, have no idea what sort of edge cases a random person may find themselves within, and as such are reliant on the only universal component to unite them all - the terminal.
Installing a windows driver on Linux Mint is a definite edge case - there’s no chance that the Mint developers had that in mind as expected user behavior. In addition, there’s no way they could have determined the originated issue and suggested a solution in a nice GUI prompt, because unlike Microsoft, there is no telemetry involved that could be utilized to determine an appropriate package like that community made driver automatically.
So yeah - a bit unfair to those making tutorials.
I guess that’s the problem with having multiple distros and this example might be an edge case. But I would also make the argument that installation instructions can and should be clear cut for the terminal for novice users. For example, the instructions for the terminal commands shouldn’t assume that I know the inside lingo or acronyms. I shouldn’t have to be indoctrinated to use Linux, that’s gatekeeping and seems to be pretty common on websites for the Linux community.
Fortunately most of these tutorials have copy/paste fields that list out the contents of each command in plain text so you can make sure you know what you are running. Although unfortunately there’s no easy way to incorporate non-acronym or shorthand text within the actual commands themselves (since terminal commands are intentionally shortened for decreasing the amount of typing required per manual command), but good tutorials will include an explanation of what each copy/paste line is doing (sounds like you might’ve witnessed some bad ones).
In regards to gatekeeping, at some point it’s an unfortunate byproduct of users on forums sharing answers that “you should already know why this command is here and what it does”, because they’re tired of explaining to people who should really read the troubleshooting guides included in their distro, or are burnt out from offering their time repeatedly over and over. Nobody is being paid to give you advice, and that’s a double edged sword - because they are doing this out of a genuine desire to help users like you, but aren’t willing to deep dive like a professor would during their paid office hours.
With all that being said, those of us who enjoy using the terminal whenever possible are more than happy to share our secrets with you - just realize you may have to read and copy some lines of text from time to time and check a wiki, instead of a GUI installer. Since we’re not all on Mint XD
meh, we already have an option for the first (KDE Plasma) and for the second (GNOME) as far as I’m concerned, so what else is missing
yes… very user friendly…
proceeds to copy-paste random commands from internet strangers
BRO!
Bro.
We’re forming a squad! Almost a team!
where did you find this 😭
It was a gift, over 20 years ago. I married her
I don’t know about marrying a coup, but to each their own i guess.
Windows pretends it’s friendly, but in reality it’s just there to sell you Copilot 365 subscriptions.
OneDrive secretly changing all of my save paths to OneDrive and not adding the cloud symbol to show that it’s beed saving my files to Microsoft servers, even when OneDrive sync is turned off.
I wish I could drop Microsoft completely.
Before you know it, it’ll start not letting you save anything because the cloud account you told it not to use is full
I feel like I’ve seen this exact complaint around the internet before…
You still have to configure OneDrive yourself for any of that to happen.
I once knew someone who became an insurance salesman.
When hanging around, after a while all conversations drifted towards stuff he could insure against.
This is what using windows feels like
It really doesn’t. I mean I hate windows to the point of having it in my signature on my email, but let’s not perfect this is true. If your going to say what’s bad about it, tell the truth so people know. It’s not trying to sell you anything, it just sucks as an operation system, has more holes in it then swiss cheese, and it’s so convoluted that their own devs have to compete against each other.
there’s literally adverts in the start menu now
Somehow you got downvoted even while there’s the occasional full-screen startup spam:
"WANNA SUBSCRIBE TO OFFICE?
ENABLE DEEPER AD DATA TARGETING?! (you can’t disable ads)"
Options:
{YES PLZ (here monee)}
/
{I’m so dumb I clearly don’t know what I’m missing by refusing your products and services. Remind me very soon.}
too many secret windows fans that are butthurt in here
You mean that thing that is in about every commercial product, but unlike those other options can can be turned off in Windows with one single click on a checkbox?
Uh, the commercial products I use don’t contain ads, dunno what the hell you’re on about
I had this picture 20 years ago, it still is epic.
Linux is like the Internet or even computers in general.
As I always say: “It’s for anyone! But it’s best not for everyone.”
Hey, that’s my coffee mug!
subscriptions optional
That’s the toxic attitude Linux is known for; if you struggle with it, it’s because you’re dumb.
