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The people who are 'used to Windows' will often be none the wiser if they're confronted with a Linux installation which is configured to look like Windows. Wind

The people who are 'used to Windows' will often be none the wiser if they're confronted with a Linux installation which is configured to look like Windows. Windows has many faces going back all the way to Windows 3.1 and many of those faces can show up when clicking around on a 'current' Windows version. This rather inconsistent look and feel means it is fairly easy to create something which more or less looks and acts like Windows in the eyes of those 'used to Windows' since they're used to things sometimes looking out of place. I think Windows is close to the end of being ubiquitous. The more Microsoft forces online features onto its users, the more those users will see Windows as that thing which launches the browser and with that the easier it will be to get people used to alternatives, especially if those alternatives offer many advantages over whatever Microsoft is peddling under the Windows moniker.

weirdal3333 2y ago
My grandma is currently using Linux Mint with a Windows skin. She doesn't know it's not Windows. Automatic updates run in the background.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  My mother - 86 years old - uses Linux (Debian with Mate, default theme), she knows it is Linux but it does not matter since she uses it in the same way as she used Windows 7: as a launcher for Firefox and Thunderbird and occasionally as an interface to her phone so I can help her remotely given that she lives in the Netherlands and I live in Sweden. Apart from Linux being faster and less intrusive there are no real differences as far as she is concerned. She used to click on Firefox and Thunderbird icons on the desktop on Windows 7, now she clicks on Firefox and Thunderbird icons on the desktop on Debian Mate. There are many more people like her who use personal computers in this way and they are much better off running some Linux flavour which is kept up to date, which does not spy on them, which does not try to upsell them, which does not insist on contrived expiry dates after which they need to buy new hardware so as to run the next version of the intrusive spyware called Windows 11/12/...

weirdal3333 2y ago

My grandma is currently using Linux Mint with a Windows skin. She doesn't know it's not Windows. Automatic updates run in the background.

hagbard_c 2y ago
My mother - 86 years old - uses Linux (Debian with Mate, default theme), she knows it is Linux but it does not matter since she uses it in the same way as she used Windows 7: as a launcher for Firefox and Thunderbird and occasionally as an interface to her phone so I can help her remotely given that she lives in the Netherlands and I live in Sweden. Apart from Linux being faster and less intrusive there are no real differences as far as she is concerned. She used to click on Firefox and Thunderbird icons on the desktop on Windows 7, now she clicks on Firefox and Thunderbird icons on the desktop on Debian Mate. There are many more people like her who use personal computers in this way and they are much better off running some Linux flavour which is kept up to date, which does not spy on them, which does not try to upsell them, which does not insist on contrived expiry dates after which they need to buy new hardware so as to run the next version of the intrusive spyware called Windows 11/12/...