Windows hit its lowest market share in decades, Microsoft lost $400 billion in a week, and now their own president is admitting they need to fix the OS. SteamOS and Linux aren’t waiting around.
Windows hit its lowest market share in decades, Microsoft lost $400 billion in a week, and now their own president is admitting they need to fix the OS. SteamOS and Linux aren’t waiting around.
“Install Linux, Problem Solved.”
Seriously, anyone who loves Linux should be setting up training seminars on how to use it, make it much friendlier and cost-free to use.
This has always been Linux’s barrier to entry, that smug attitude of “you’ve just got to learn it”. The majority of people don’t want to learn new things, the vast majority definitely don’t want to learn how to use a terminal.
There are some good low barrier distributions out there, but not many that “just work” for a user who uses their PC for multiple tasks.
Like SteamOS is wonderful if you’re just a gamer, valve has cracked that and made the UI nice and simple, but if you leave steam and launch the desktop it gets very complex very quickly. Hopefully valve continues to improve that experience.
Mint works reasonably well out of the box, but there are always edge cases (weird hardware/missing drivers) that can throw a spanner into the works. Hopefully as Linux becomes more widely used, we’ll see hardware manufacturers release drivers and keep them up-to-date like they do with windows and Mac.
Not without proper insurance.
I’ve been using Linux since 93 and I love it. I’m confident enough to support my family’s machines, but there’s no way I’d offer more than basic advice to a stranger, let alone a group of them.