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I'm encountering something similar this Christmas. We'd given my wife's grandma a Chromebook - and it has died of its own accord after just 14 months. After ta
by ecaron 14y ago
I'm encountering something similar this Christmas. We'd given my wife's grandma a Chromebook - and it has died of its own accord after just 14 months.
After talking about the replacement, she nearly begged for a Windows or a Mac. By name. This same woman that doesn't think she can run the microwave while being on the cordless phone.
We (Linux, and I'm lumping ChromeOS into this albeit a different beast) aren't going to win the marketing battle. With sites like Netflix not working on Linux and "you'll get it if you try it for two weeks" UX mentality (looking at you Unity), we're not going to win the experience battle - the only one where we stood a shot. Short of a product that thoroughly feels superior we just can't expect consumers to cope with a product just to "fight the [men]". And until that happens, I (and I suspect many fellow nerds) are following this round of the cycle and moving our families away from Linux (again, for now.)
- jiggy2011 14y agoI don't know if it's so much about UI. For a total novice I'm not sure if Unity would be harder to learn than say Windows 7, assuming unfamiliarity with both. It's really down to compatibility and of course with a more common OS there are more friends and relatives that you can ask for help. Compatibility with old software can be a big deal for some people too, for example my mother struggles to understand why she can't just keep using the same version of Wordperfect that she learnt in 1994.