My dad has been using the ("proudly antifascist") antiX I installed on his beloved, ancient Compaq netbook for more than a year, and it seems to make total sense to him.

I have friends who says "I still run Windows because I don't want to do any tinkering," but don't realize they'd do less tinkering if they switched haha. It's not 2015 anymore.

Nice it's always great to hear the work millions of people put into the Linux ecosystem is paying off.

This is the kind of story we should forward to Linus Torvalds, the Linux mailing sublists and other volunteers so they see how their work gets recognized ^^

I suggested a friend to try out Bazzite (KDE desktop). He told me it felt like he was playing on a console because everything works from the get go. He didn't have to tweak or install anything.

Excellent. That means it’s working as intended.

The best user interface is one that you don’t even notice. The seamless layer between you and your tool (or game in this instance).

The "doesn't come preinstalled" part is still huge, combined with the "doesn't have first-party device manufacturer support".

If you buy a PC with Windows preinstalled, that doesn't only mean that you don't have to install Windows, but also the whole set of hardware in there will work just fine under Windows. They don't put a fingerprint reader in there that doesn't have a Windows driver, or a GPU with bad Windows driver support.

And yes, most hardware natively works pretty well under Windows, but the manufacturer taking care that they only select components that work fine under Windows is a big part of why there isn't a hardware lottery under Windows.

Compared to when I started with Linux 21 years ago, we are absolutely spoiled with games that work well today.

Yeah Linux's biggest problem now is "oups, your application / driver isn't available"

Not user friendlyness.

Man do I feel that PS, I think the worst part of gaming on Linux (which is massive credit to how well it works) is not knowing whether a bug is just... the game, or is somehow Linux/Proton/Drivers. I hate not knowing if it's worth stopping to look into a fix or not.

I mean, if you have Windows like DE’s it’s really not THAT hard for a Windows user to use Linux. The issue is when you have Gnome and others installed.

But yes I agree with you. I definitely think we’ve come a long way from having to use the terminal for everything.

AMD drivers are so smooth on Linux!

I almost broached the topic with my mother (60s) the other day about moving to Linux. She's got a computer that sucks, and my other brother got windows 11 on there so it's exceptionally slow. I was helping her with some documents and printing and whatnot so I started asking a couple of the questions you would ask, like what she uses the pc for. She uses this tax software and "needs" it installed (as opposed to the browser version) so I didn't continue down that road but I'm pretty sure it'd blow her mind how much better this thing would run with mint. And other than that tax software, it'd be nearly identical for her, open a browser and go to the thing.

I'm old and thus my relationship is old enough to drink. As we met they were using an utterly virus riddled Windows XP install. I suggested alternative and that Debian install has survived a couple decades. Sure, I'll do anything major like hardware changes but mostly it has just been easy living. For most people working browser, some sort of office package and an image editor is plenty. Linux has been ready for that for a long time.

The different file system was the biggest adaptive hurdle for me. Just the default knowledge of how windows worked from the MS-DOS era took a bit to adapt to. I think knowing Windows actually made it harder to switch compared to someone who wouldn't know much more than opening the internet browser.

But for gaming: more than anything navigating all the compatability files being used by WINE and Steam can be a nightmare.

My mother, who is the stereotypical boomer that doesn't get technology, got upset with all the privacy invasion of Microsoft, and has been running Linux for over a decade

My partner is the same way roughly. Biggest issue she's had was her drawing tablet pen not working. Turned out she was using the wrong pen for that tablet, the correct pen worked flawlessly. An hour of my life troubleshooting I can't get back haha.

There have been a few games that have had issues, and the updates aren't the most intuitive on Kubuntu, but she did manage the last update just fine on her own without me even being home, so that's good.

Yeah - my wife has occupied for hundreds of hours the SteamDeck and really doesn't care that it's Linux. Her games do work. And after Microsoft switched off Win10, I moved her to Mint and she really had no issues at all with that. Everything she does still works the same. We just saved a few hundred Euros by being able to keep using the Laptop

Glad to see the “working as intended” responses. Linux as a computer for people to use and Linux as a hobby can sometimes be at odds. It’s not a problem at all if someone’s able to use a Linux computer without noticing.

Linux does come preinstalled on a number of laptops if you buy them in Europe.

Problem is that the Linux variants used are usually incredibly out of date, with no straightforward way to upgrade, abysmal desktop experience and so on.

There's also simply too much choice when it comes to Linux for the average people. Your Average Joe wants to sit in front of a computer, turn it on, and have a usable desktop, readily available office and basic utility apps, and easy installation of software.

They don't want to learn the difference between KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, X11 and Wayland, open or closed sourced drivers, licences, and so on. To most people, a computer is a tool that should be as complicated to use as a screwdriver - you can swap different heads (software for different purposes), but it works the same, no matter how you sit in front of if.

Historically, there's been a singular distro offering anything even close to this requirement, Ubuntu, and even that has gone to shit.

Hopefully, with gaming being a major pull force, this can change and we will see more generic use distros pop up like Bazzite and SteamOS, but at the moment, there's simply no alternative to Windows or macOS that can proper take them over.

it is a shame some of my apps and games just dont work flawlessly with WINE.