The biggest thing holding back the mainstream adoption of Linux on the desktop is that it basically needs to become a hobby. Generally speaking, people want an operating system that gets out of their way so they can use the computer to do stuff they enjoy.
And hasn’t been for some time, since the nvidia drivers stopped killing your X-server every so often, making sure you remember your console commands.
Most things people complain about (partitioning drives, installing an os, setting up dualboot) isn’t something that is deliberately made complicated by Linux either. It’s only necessary because Windows is in the way, because your pc came preconfigured with it. and with Windows, these things are actually even way more complicated.
Tl;dr: Computers are complicated machines. Maintaining them requires knowledge. That has nothing to do with the OS. Also: Buy a PC that comes with Linux if you want Linux easy. (As you do with Windows or MacOS)
Even if someone never runs into a technical issues (which is unrealistic on any OS), simply picking a distro is a hobby of its own. It’s the Windows/PC debate, turned up to 11. As it isn’t just picking a platform. It’s pick your kernel, do you want actual Linux, or Unix with something like BSD, what desktop environment do you want, do you want a desktop environment or a window manager, do you go with one of the big core distros and configure it to your liking or find a smaller distro that matches what you want, what do you want in a distro, what file manager, what kind of desktop theme, what package manager, traditional apps vs Flatpak vs Snap vs AppImage, how’s the community for that distro, the list goes on.
All of that is one decision with Windows or macOS. Getting something pre-installed could solve it, if the person never knew about this whole debate, but they’ll find out the second they try to do anything, because looking up how to do anything will give different answers depending on what is picked, and people can’t help but debate it at every opportunity.
I don’t buy that. You either want that as a hobby or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Buy a PC and use the distro on it. They seem alright. Or use the mainstream distro of today. They come with a desktop and a browser and LibreOffice installed etc
Or you want everything 100% specifically tailored to you and make all the important decisions yourself.
You just cant have both at the same time. It is just physically not possible. And that isn’t a limitation of the OS.
And also with other computers you do answer that question. Do I buy a Mac, do I buy something with Windows, maybe a Chromebook? Acer? Lenovo, HP?.. M2 processor or Intel or AMD? It’s pretty much a hobby…
(If you want an honest answer to your other questions: Use your distro’s defaults unless you specifically need something different. I cannot stress that enough. Otherwise you will need to put in extra effort. And it’s going to be your fault. Always use the distro’s package manager if possible. Don’t use Flatpak, Snap etc if you aren’t specifically told to because of proper reasons. And don’t listen to Ubuntu and whatever they’re trying to push nowadays. This might change in the future. But I think it’s sound advice for the next few years. And don’t use custom file managers etc. You’ll get one of the major destop environments. Use the default software that comes with it. It comes with a default file manager etc for a reason.)
I just watched a video on KDE Neon, within 2:30 he was into the terminal to run a command to get the standard home directory folders so browsers would have a downloads folder to download to. It also seemed pretty slow, and maybe it was running in a VM, but my experience with KDE was always that it was slow and rather quirky with all the panel stuff.
When I checked out a Zorin OS video it took 1 minute for him to say using the command line would really level up your experience and then he tried to push a course on Linux mastery. After the sales pitch he talked about the new upgrade app that made things super easy, but I couldn’t really tell what was going on. It kept opening browsers and made it look like he had to pay for an update? There was some kind of “pro” version. He also mentioned it doesn’t do automatic updates and it’s up to the user, because that’s “the Linux way”. Average users aren’t going to do updates on their own, ever.
Not a great start. Not to mention all the research someone would have to do to even arrive at these distros as their short list. There is more to making an OS usable and not a hobby than just copying the old Windows start menu. Picking a distro is its own hobby.
I did like what I saw with Zorin when it came to having a simple settings option to pick the preferred desktop layout, rather than making people switch desktop environments and install and bunch of plugins and customizations to get to what most people probably want. The way wine was integrated it was interesting, nice if it works well, but I think it might hold some people back form finding proper Linux alternatives to some of their apps (which is another hobby in and of itself).
I may look into Zorin OS a little more, but I still don’t think I’d recommend it to someone who wasn’t looking for a new hobby, assuming they need more than just a web browser.
I have been running KDE Neon on my 10 year old laptop for a couple of years and I haven’t done anything you’ve mentioned here. KDE Neon gives you a notification when system updates are available and it’s just a mouse click if you decide to do it. No terminal involved.
As far as resources usages, it’s by far the lightest desktop among the “heavyweights” like Gnome etc. KDE used to be a resource hog in the past but it is not the case any more. In fact it has not been the case for a few years now. I installed latest Fedora Gnome last month and immediately went back to KDE because Gnome (or Fedora) took too much resources that the laptop was practically unusable.
I have also run Zorin OS in the past. The pro version is to get extra themes and customer support. You are not missing any functions in the free version.
I think it’s come to the point that it only becomes a hobby because software isn’t built for Linux, like adobe or games. Everything else it is genuinely easier than windows
Linux
The biggest thing holding back the mainstream adoption of Linux on the desktop is that it basically needs to become a hobby. Generally speaking, people want an operating system that gets out of their way so they can use the computer to do stuff they enjoy.
Yeah, isn’t true anymore.
And hasn’t been for some time, since the nvidia drivers stopped killing your X-server every so often, making sure you remember your console commands.
Most things people complain about (partitioning drives, installing an os, setting up dualboot) isn’t something that is deliberately made complicated by Linux either. It’s only necessary because Windows is in the way, because your pc came preconfigured with it. and with Windows, these things are actually even way more complicated.
Tl;dr: Computers are complicated machines. Maintaining them requires knowledge. That has nothing to do with the OS. Also: Buy a PC that comes with Linux if you want Linux easy. (As you do with Windows or MacOS)
Even if someone never runs into a technical issues (which is unrealistic on any OS), simply picking a distro is a hobby of its own. It’s the Windows/PC debate, turned up to 11. As it isn’t just picking a platform. It’s pick your kernel, do you want actual Linux, or Unix with something like BSD, what desktop environment do you want, do you want a desktop environment or a window manager, do you go with one of the big core distros and configure it to your liking or find a smaller distro that matches what you want, what do you want in a distro, what file manager, what kind of desktop theme, what package manager, traditional apps vs Flatpak vs Snap vs AppImage, how’s the community for that distro, the list goes on.
All of that is one decision with Windows or macOS. Getting something pre-installed could solve it, if the person never knew about this whole debate, but they’ll find out the second they try to do anything, because looking up how to do anything will give different answers depending on what is picked, and people can’t help but debate it at every opportunity.
I don’t buy that. You either want that as a hobby or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Buy a PC and use the distro on it. They seem alright. Or use the mainstream distro of today. They come with a desktop and a browser and LibreOffice installed etc
Or you want everything 100% specifically tailored to you and make all the important decisions yourself.
You just cant have both at the same time. It is just physically not possible. And that isn’t a limitation of the OS.
And also with other computers you do answer that question. Do I buy a Mac, do I buy something with Windows, maybe a Chromebook? Acer? Lenovo, HP?.. M2 processor or Intel or AMD? It’s pretty much a hobby…
(If you want an honest answer to your other questions: Use your distro’s defaults unless you specifically need something different. I cannot stress that enough. Otherwise you will need to put in extra effort. And it’s going to be your fault. Always use the distro’s package manager if possible. Don’t use Flatpak, Snap etc if you aren’t specifically told to because of proper reasons. And don’t listen to Ubuntu and whatever they’re trying to push nowadays. This might change in the future. But I think it’s sound advice for the next few years. And don’t use custom file managers etc. You’ll get one of the major destop environments. Use the default software that comes with it. It comes with a default file manager etc for a reason.)
They have been existing for along time now. Only that the public don’t know about.
KDE Neon and Zorin OS come to my mind. I recommend trying them out if you haven’t done already.
I just watched a video on KDE Neon, within 2:30 he was into the terminal to run a command to get the standard home directory folders so browsers would have a downloads folder to download to. It also seemed pretty slow, and maybe it was running in a VM, but my experience with KDE was always that it was slow and rather quirky with all the panel stuff.
When I checked out a Zorin OS video it took 1 minute for him to say using the command line would really level up your experience and then he tried to push a course on Linux mastery. After the sales pitch he talked about the new upgrade app that made things super easy, but I couldn’t really tell what was going on. It kept opening browsers and made it look like he had to pay for an update? There was some kind of “pro” version. He also mentioned it doesn’t do automatic updates and it’s up to the user, because that’s “the Linux way”. Average users aren’t going to do updates on their own, ever.
Not a great start. Not to mention all the research someone would have to do to even arrive at these distros as their short list. There is more to making an OS usable and not a hobby than just copying the old Windows start menu. Picking a distro is its own hobby.
I did like what I saw with Zorin when it came to having a simple settings option to pick the preferred desktop layout, rather than making people switch desktop environments and install and bunch of plugins and customizations to get to what most people probably want. The way wine was integrated it was interesting, nice if it works well, but I think it might hold some people back form finding proper Linux alternatives to some of their apps (which is another hobby in and of itself).
I may look into Zorin OS a little more, but I still don’t think I’d recommend it to someone who wasn’t looking for a new hobby, assuming they need more than just a web browser.
I have been running KDE Neon on my 10 year old laptop for a couple of years and I haven’t done anything you’ve mentioned here. KDE Neon gives you a notification when system updates are available and it’s just a mouse click if you decide to do it. No terminal involved.
As far as resources usages, it’s by far the lightest desktop among the “heavyweights” like Gnome etc. KDE used to be a resource hog in the past but it is not the case any more. In fact it has not been the case for a few years now. I installed latest Fedora Gnome last month and immediately went back to KDE because Gnome (or Fedora) took too much resources that the laptop was practically unusable.
I have also run Zorin OS in the past. The pro version is to get extra themes and customer support. You are not missing any functions in the free version.
I think it’s come to the point that it only becomes a hobby because software isn’t built for Linux, like adobe or games. Everything else it is genuinely easier than windows