Comment by NegativeK

Comment by NegativeK 11 hours ago

> I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now.

Ditto. I can't stand other OSs; they are constantly in my way for just the basic tasks.

> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.

Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents. They're capable enough to maintain their own Windows computers, and switching them to Linux would mean that I'd have to take over all of those tasks -- because they've got other, more important things to do than to learn a new OS.

I'd agree with you if you could buy rando PC with Linux installed and working with no stupid hardware issues. People who can live in Google Docs/Office 365 web and don't have industry specific use cases will almost always be fine. But once you break out of that subset of people, tossing them a Linux machine can be kind of mean.

raffael_de 11 hours ago

> Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents.

I don't know about your parents but most people (including my parents) just use a browser and some applications that are identical to their Windows versions or sufficiently similar. There isn't really anything new to learn.

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ryukoposting 10 hours ago

System76!

One huge barrier is printing. I've been using Linux as my daily OS for a decade and I still have stupid problems with printers. I can't print from my laptop because the printer spits out unicode garbage if I try. My desktop works, but sometimes I have to reboot to get the print queue to clear.

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pmontra 7 hours ago

Printing has always been the most brittle experience of all IT at least since when I started printing in the 80s.
To add an anecdote I let a friend print on my HP LaserJet from his Windows laptop today. It detected the printer over Wi-Fi but it could not print anything because it was missing the driver. After a 100 MB download from HP's site the installer wanted an USB connection to the printer. That friend of mine is young so he never saw a USB cable with the small squarish plug that connects to a printer (or scanner, or USB2 disk) but that's another story. The installer run for minutes and failed with an error. I told him not to trust the error and attempt to print anyway. It did print. However after a few pages a pop-up complained about a non original toner (probably true) and it stopped printing. However he managed to find the printer from his Android phone and print from there. Then he was able to print from Windows too.
All of that took about an hour. I installed Debian 13 on my laptop last week and I could detect the printer instantly and print without any problem. No driver to download. I know that I can apt install hplip to get more specific drivers but it was not necessary.

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rkomorn 10 hours ago

To be fair, I also have stupid problems with printers in all other OSes.
Printers are their own slice of misery that seem to transcend brand, OS, platform, etc.

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graemep 9 hours ago

I did give Linux to my dad and he used it fine for many years until my sister gave him a Windows laptop.

Most people just use an OS to start applications. There is nothing they need to learn other than maybe the start button has a different logo on it.

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