People should really consider if the mental models they have in their heads about different operating systems are actually based on reality.
These people’s reality is: they are familiar with Windows, and anything else is scary and perceived as even more difficult to learn to use. 20 years ago a colleague asked me about changing to Linux, I told him he could do all the same things he was doing, just use Open Office instead of MS Word and Excel, GIMP instead of Photoshop - he didn’t even dive as deep as the differences between GIMP and Photoshop usage, his response was: “You mean I’ll have to learn all new icons and names for my software?” “Well, yeah, that’s part of moving.” “In that case I don’t think Linux is for me.” “I have to agree with you there.”
huggingstars@programming.dev 18 hours ago
With Windows you simply have much less problems to solve. Normal people don’t care about jumping through hoops to create local accounts, they’ll just register.
Windows interfaces are designed for easy learning and backed by real telemetry data from millions of systems, like Ribbon menus. On Linux power users run the show so even blatant violations of basic principles tend to stick since the development version is the shipped version and is what they are used to.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Though when you do encounter problems in windows, they will likely be something that just cant be solved or its unnecessarily big hassle. Or bad stuff will happen that was mostly out of your hands in the first place, like what happened with the article.
But yeah, there should be a distro that is specificially aimed for tech illiterate people that is nice and easy to use and also safe. But then again, if majority started using linux it might also draw more attention from malicious parties like criminals and corporations. Its just that for me, once you have linux set up and automated, you dont need to do anything complicated with it if you dont want to. At least i havent had to on mint. I understand that basic users can’t do that on their own, but I bet there are tons of people who have skills to do so and could do it for a reasonable pay or even as a favor to friend.