Switched my Parents to Linux

Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 365 points –

I'm visiting my parents for the holidays and convinced them to let me switch them to Linux.

They use their computer for the typical basic stuff; email, YouTube, Word, Facebook, and occasionally printing/scanning.

I promised my mom that everything would look the same and work the same. I used Linux Mint and customized the theme to look like Windows 10. I even replaced the Mint "Start" button with the Windows logo.

So far they like it and everything runs great. Plus it's snappier now that Windows isn't hogging all the system resources.

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Good job on that! Linux is way better for average uses like you described. 😊

And that's the thing. It's great for casual users who do simple computing tasks, and it's great for the programmers, hackers, and IT professionals. But there's no middle ground for power users who know a bit more than the average users but can't be bothered to learn shell scripting.

I'm using Linux ten years now and I never learned shell scripting. Or do you mean running commands in the shell?

I don't agree with your exact reasoning on the middle ground, but I think there's truth in the underlying sentiment.

I do think that users that are are competent with technology but unfamiliar with Linux are pretty likely to get frustrated with it. I had this discussion with a friend just yesterday. They want to try out Linux because of frustration with Windows 11's restrictive hardware requirements. But they also want to ease in to it. I think that's wise. In this specific case, I think if they tried to dump Windows in it's entirety and try to use Arch right off the bat, they'd get frustrated and give up. But if they tried a user friendly distro on a secondary piece of hardware? I think that has a good chance of creating a new Linux user.

I guess the point of that rambling paragraph is that that type of a user is a challenge, but there is middle ground to be had.

It was hard for me too, but PopOS made my life easy back in the day when I first tried.

No drivers needed, everything worked out of the box, including the Nvidia GeForce 2060 Mobile. So I just needed to get comfortable with the OS in general.

Or gamers who want to play triple a titles

I play AAA titles all the time on linux. Just not ones that come bundled with viruses and rootkitskernel-level invasive anticheat.

And during anti-cheat outages... Turns out the games play fine with proton.

*linux-hostile-anti-cheat multiplayer titles