It is wild that people will say that using apt to install things is too hard, but then suggest a registry edit to remove Bing from seach. Windows just isn’t as casual user friendly as it pretends to.
Honestly, with Flatpak and immutable base systems this is a place Linux is really excelling now too. Being able to show a novice user a shared package manager with a search and a bunch of common apps and them actually install/remove them in a safe manner with a high likelihood they’ll work out of the box (since they come with all their deps in sync independent from distro) is kinda huge.
It’s a pretty mixed bag honestly. Sure there are some apps that we get in a mammoth poorly made appimage we’d probably have to have run in wine before or some terrifying statically compiled program embedded in a run script and that’s probably a win.
The trade-off is every developer being their own distro maintainer, 100s of gigs of duplicate dependencies, broken containers with missing libraries, leaky requirements on the underlying system, and everyone needs to be a security expert to understand all the options in flatseal to expose the right features.
Also, instead of one distro source, I’ve got at least 3 and I’ve in the last week had to install programs from multiple sources trying to get a functioning version. This feels like the norm rather than an exception.
Also this week had an app image broken by a requirement on a removed system library outside the app and a flatpak missing a key library forcing me to dig up an old .deb version. The later I lost like 6hrs on because clearly libusb was installed on the system but I didn’t realize I’d installed the flatpak and in wasn’t in the container. Such fun.
Fwiw, this is not an endorsement of Windows. I strongly believe if most people spent half the time they spent fighting Windows learning Linux they’d never go back.
Don’t really need sandboxed software for that. Ubuntu comes with their own software store and even if you only select deb, you just klick on install and you’re done
I’d even add that now 99% of the distro have a gui over the package manager. Have an android or iPhone? You already have experience in installing stuff in an easier way than windows
Once there are some fundamental changes in the Android framework, these old apps will actually become incompatible. So Google wants to prepare their users for that scenario, and force devs to update their apps.
“Windows is easy. I just install it and it works. What’s so great about Linux?”
“You can customize it however you want”
“Oh yeah that sounds amazing. Okay I installed Linux, how do I make a customized desktop and set of desktop animations to record YouTube videos of so I can show off my uniqueness through my ability to customize?!?!”
“Read this long ass article and try to understand what it says to do”
GUIs, even the Registry Editor, are familiar territory for a lot of users. Give them a blank screen cli, and there is no hint of what to do next. There are good reasons why the vast majority clearly prefer GUIs.
It is wild that people will say that using
aptto install things is too hard, but then suggest a registry edit to remove Bing from seach. Windows just isn’t as casual user friendly as it pretends to.Honestly, with Flatpak and immutable base systems this is a place Linux is really excelling now too. Being able to show a novice user a shared package manager with a search and a bunch of common apps and them actually install/remove them in a safe manner with a high likelihood they’ll work out of the box (since they come with all their deps in sync independent from distro) is kinda huge.
It’s a pretty mixed bag honestly. Sure there are some apps that we get in a mammoth poorly made appimage we’d probably have to have run in wine before or some terrifying statically compiled program embedded in a run script and that’s probably a win.
The trade-off is every developer being their own distro maintainer, 100s of gigs of duplicate dependencies, broken containers with missing libraries, leaky requirements on the underlying system, and everyone needs to be a security expert to understand all the options in flatseal to expose the right features.
Also, instead of one distro source, I’ve got at least 3 and I’ve in the last week had to install programs from multiple sources trying to get a functioning version. This feels like the norm rather than an exception.
Also this week had an app image broken by a requirement on a removed system library outside the app and a flatpak missing a key library forcing me to dig up an old .deb version. The later I lost like 6hrs on because clearly libusb was installed on the system but I didn’t realize I’d installed the flatpak and in wasn’t in the container. Such fun.
So it’s not really all sunshine and rainbows yet.
Fwiw, this is not an endorsement of Windows. I strongly believe if most people spent half the time they spent fighting Windows learning Linux they’d never go back.
Actually I want to write an app browser for NixOS now.
there’s one called
nix-software-centerDon’t really need sandboxed software for that. Ubuntu comes with their own software store and even if you only select deb, you just klick on install and you’re done
Even good ol’ Debian has that, using either GNOME Software or KDE Discover for managing software.
I’d even add that now 99% of the distro have a gui over the package manager. Have an android or iPhone? You already have experience in installing stuff in an easier way than windows
Unless you want to install older apps on modern Android. Then you need ADB.
Uh. Didn’t knew that.
But that only applies to apps that have a lower target than Android 6, right?
Yes, but it could have been solved with a warning.
Instead I believe it just says that the app is “Incompatible”.
Once there are some fundamental changes in the Android framework, these old apps will actually become incompatible. So Google wants to prepare their users for that scenario, and force devs to update their apps.
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Windows is friendly to its users as long as they trust everything to windows, and do not want to change anything about their system.
“Windows is easy. I just install it and it works. What’s so great about Linux?”
“You can customize it however you want”
“Oh yeah that sounds amazing. Okay I installed Linux, how do I make a customized desktop and set of desktop animations to record YouTube videos of so I can show off my uniqueness through my ability to customize?!?!”
“Read this long ass article and try to understand what it says to do”
“Ugh! This was way easier on Windows!”
“No. You’ve never done this on Windows.”
Isn’t that any OS?
These are not the same people complaining abt
aptand doing regedits lolJust as friendly as using a phone with MIUI
I felt that.
I actually like MIUI, I just wish I didn’t need to memorize many bugs and ways to get around them.
Stuff like this is why I say Linux is more beginner friendly
Don’t want to dive into cli? Easier to do in Linux
GUIs, even the Registry Editor, are familiar territory for a lot of users. Give them a blank screen cli, and there is no hint of what to do next. There are good reasons why the vast majority clearly prefer GUIs.