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If only could someone switch to Linux! But there is no Linux. There is Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, Gnome, KDE, Sway, apt, yum, dnf etc. Especially when something i

If only could someone switch to Linux! But there is no Linux. There is Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, Gnome, KDE, Sway, apt, yum, dnf etc. Especially when something is broken and you want to fix it that's the biggest hurdle as a new Linux user. Searching for forums, "how do I do X on Linux?" Oh I mean not Linux but Ubuntu. But MATE or LXQT? etc. It's a bottomless pit. This fragmentation is biggest barrier against the wide adaptation of Linux. I mean Debian and Ubuntu and Arch and openSUSE and Gentoo and. I see Linux as an idea. Or more like an umbrella of ideas that several OSes share. Which sounds good on paper but not enough for end users and for the 99.99% doesn't make any difference. At all. The only thing I personally I recommend to friends who switch to Linux is to use an immutable distro because those are the most breakage resistant ones. Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue are nice. But then we will have Ubuntu Core Desktop soon as well. And other distros. So the wheel of fragmentation rolls forward.

29athrowaway 2y ago
If you could only go to the supermarket to buy water. There's Great Value Spring Water and Great Value Purified Water. And Fiji water, and Dasani, etc. It's a bottomless pit. Having to choose between these similar products makes it impossible for me to buy water... said noone ever. The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.
- nessguy 2y ago
  Water isn't a great example, but decision paralysis at stores from too many options is a thing.
- okanat 2y ago
  You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent. Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent. Of course, each of them possesses some advantage that Windows lacks out of the box, and sometimes at all.
digging 2y ago
I feel like Mint + Cinnamon is such an easy switch from Windows, comparatively, and that Linux users should be more comfortable recommending it to newbies. For people who don't know what they're doing with Linux/unix at all, there's no point in even saying "you have all these distros, pick the one you like!" when they're mostly too advanced. It should be, "Pick Mint. If you like it, you can change later and start working on something more complex." Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.

29athrowaway 2y ago

If you could only go to the supermarket to buy water. There's Great Value Spring Water and Great Value Purified Water. And Fiji water, and Dasani, etc. It's a bottomless pit. Having to choose between these similar products makes it impossible for me to buy water... said noone ever. The problem is approaching these decisions as if there were final and irreversible decisions from which one answer is right and the other one is wrong followed by eternal doom. That's not the situation at all. Most of these decisions are similar and you can change your mind at any time.

nessguy 2y ago
Water isn't a great example, but decision paralysis at stores from too many options is a thing.
okanat 2y ago
You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent. Choosing a Linux distro / DE / whatever is not going a supermarket and choosing a bottle of water. It is choosing a bottling factory next to a sewer or bottled distilled water.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > You make a false assumption that all Linux things are equivalent and provide a good baseline feature set. They are not equivalent, each one misses something that Windows provides out of the box to an extent. Of course, each of them possesses some advantage that Windows lacks out of the box, and sometimes at all.

digging 2y ago

I feel like Mint + Cinnamon is such an easy switch from Windows, comparatively, and that Linux users should be more comfortable recommending it to newbies. For people who don't know what they're doing with Linux/unix at all, there's no point in even saying "you have all these distros, pick the one you like!" when they're mostly too advanced. It should be, "Pick Mint. If you like it, you can change later and start working on something more complex." Now, I am sure there will be not a few disagreements that Mint should be the canonical beginner's choice. Honestly, fine, if there's a distro even more dead-simple it could be that, but bike-shedding won't help. We don't need to find the best distro for each user, we just need to give them a safe and comfortable starting point.