this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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There's always some post in here saying for people to use Linux. I find an admonishment to be pretty hollow, so I'll share my recent experience installing a Linux distribution rather than simply saying it's something people should do.
I installed one of the many Debian variants. Getting the installation media is certainly going to be a challenge for casual users. Otherwise, it was easy. It walked through the steps. It was different from installing windows, but I felt it was no more difficult. I am well versed in this stuff, but I feel like nothing in the installation process would be a problem for a casual computer user.
It offered several desktops programs at the login screen. This could likely throw off a lot of people. However, if you just logged in and ignored that you might never even know there were different options. The default was KDE. Everything worked. Nothing needed to be tweaked. This is in starck contrast to Windows, where once you get past installation, you need to get rid of a ton of crap it throws at you. The Windows 10 start menu is an unbelievable collection of weird boxes and shit and the task bar is similarly full of junk. The KDE start menu is just a menu. The task bar has your tasks. There's nothing to do.
I did try Cinnamon too. I prefer the simplicity. I don't think casual users are going to care.
Overall, I think for casual users, it's actually easier to set up and use than Windows. Getting installation media prepared is not something most people are going to readily do, but I think it's the same with Windows. They have the advantage there of having manufacturors install it. Otherwise, whatever issues there have been installing Linux distributions in the past aren't there now. Conversely, installing and especially the configuration after installation is much harder on Windows than it used to be. If you're slightly tech savvy, give Linux a try.
Chiming in to add that the KDE application menu icon (aka the Start Button) is easily changed to whatever picture you want. Mine is currently the TARDIS control console from Doctor Who which is quite fun.
I installed mint recently and I kept the windows partition because I thought I would need to dual boot a lot but I haven't launched windows in the past couple of months
I have a laser HP all-in-onr that I thought I'd have issues with but it worked automatically with the printing and scanner app, not even in windows it works so strangely
My only issue right now were self inflicting, because I created a shared NTFS partition to keep media a torrents and it sometimes give privilege errors after a bit update (it wouldn't happen if it was ext3 from what I've been reading)
My wife needs to use the computer occasionally and I think she had more issues with windows 11 than mint, the only "issue" was that she was trying to find Microsoft word instead of openoffice
You're right to point out the difficulty of preparing installation media.
Also, for the average person, friction will probably happen during installation - possibly having to circumvent safe boot to install and run a new OS (knowing how to enter the bios, feeling comfortable playing around in the bios, knowing how to even disable safe boot once you're there, not exposing your device to security vulnerabilities by having safe boot disabled), the need for an existing understanding of how partitions work and how the partitions are structured on your specific device in order to test the waters with a dual boot setup on a drive that has data/functionality you want to preserve. Needing to know the 'what' and 'why' of swap, /home, and /root partitions. These points all came up on a recent installation, and I'm sure they would scare some people off.
Installation will be easy if you have the time, motivation, existing knowledge and/or bandwidth for a learning curve. But not everybody has that.
And that's just installation, to say nothing of the actual use of the desktop environment, which is not as intuitive as its often claimed to be.
I'm not convinced most somewhat tech savvy people are put off by the install of linux. As you describe it's dead easy in most cases. I think most of their push back is getting their specific programs or peripherals to run. In their mind, Windows "just works" when they want to play a new game, use a specific business software that is required by their employer, or plug in a crafting peripheral like a cricut. That said, linux is an awesome alternative for regular folks that mostly use web based stuff in their daily lives.
What did you do with your file system? I haven’t tried to dual boot Linux yet but I think bothering with partitioning and file systems is keeping me from taking the plunge.
(BTW it reminds me of why I didn’t go to law school, I hated filling out the paperwork for even doing the LSAT and realized the whole job is that. Dealing with partitioning and file systems and shit seems miserable and it’s just the start.)
If you have the port and money for it, I'd recommend a separate drive for the second OS. Windows is kinda notorious for stomping over GRUB if you rely on partitions for your dual boot.
If you're worried about installing to the wrong drive on accident, you can always physically disconnect the existing drive until install is complete, then plug it back in and set the boot order in the mobo config.
Honestly just get a second drive
I could do that, but how does Linux see/interact with my Windows stuff? Am I double-installing games to run-as-Windows with something like Proton? (like a Linux install and a Windows install on the old drive?)
It doesn’t, they operate as two separate logical systems. You can still access your windows drive from your Linux OS, but you aren’t necessarily running anything off of that drive.
I would personally just reinstall everything on the Linux drive.
Linux can mount windows drives (I don't recommend it, but it can if you need a file).
Windows cannot mount Linux drives (in theory ext2fsd can do it but it's massive pain and it no longer works for me).
If you install a game, either it works on Linux out of the box (it's native) or it works under proton, in which case steam will take care of that for you in most cases and at worst you have to change a single setting. Visit protondb to learn what games work and don't work on Linux.
At first I dual booted with Windows and kept my games on the Windows drive. You can just tell steam the path to the games, after mounting the drive. Some games ran fine, some were a little more difficult or impossible to play, even when reported as working on protondb. The reason apparently was NTFS that wasn't playing nice. That was the moment I ditched Windows entirely.
Under the hood windows uses NTFS, while most Linux distros use EXT4. Linux can read NTFS, but Windows can't read EXT4 without some tweaks. So I thought my setup was good.
You can try this setup for yourself, it's a good intro IMO.
As other people have said, you have to be carful with dual booting on the same drive with Windows. It doesn't play nice with others. To add on though, Linux can access your NTFS (or whatever) systems fine*. You can leave them as they are and access the same data on both systems, though Windows is not capable of reading most other filesystems.
*May require installing a package, but every distro I've tried could out of the box.
You can run it from a live USB, which is also the install media. It's not persistent, so if it restarts, you lose data. It's a good easy to say last year it without making any changes. Like others mentioned, I wouldn't dual boot.
I had an old computer and Linux is all that I installed. Not everyone is going to have an extra computer to do that with. However, this computer is more than 10 years old. It was quite good at the time, but it's junk compared to modern ones. Yet, it is more responsive than my very nice modern laptop that's running Windows 10. It's not going to beat a new computer in a race to solve a computational model, but for streaming, browsing, and day-to-day stuff, the lack of bloat means things open quickly and UI elements respond immediately. There is probably a fair number of people with computers they think are useless that would actually work very well with Linux.
I see. I have some old computers kicking around, I actually just deployed a windows media server, but that could easily be a Linux server and probably should be. That system I could easily boot only Linux so that appeals.
The issue with my main PC is that it has multiple terabytes of windows -related stuff. I get how I could read the old drives but there are terabytes of games that I’d have to reinstall to do that on that computer (compatibility issues aside) it sounds like
I don't know about games. Steam stuff is supposed to work but it's something I do much anymore. I was referring more to casual use, Web browsing, streaming, emails. Ironically Linux now seems more suited than Windows to people who use computers for simple stuff.
i just set up virtualbox so i could install windows on it and use some simulation programs i need for school projects. what an unbelievable fight it was. first i can't download the .iso file because their website blocks me. fortunately i found an old w10 iso file on my external. got pissed when i realized i need to use edge to download firefox. takes like 2 hours to get everything adjusted the way i like and all crap out of my way. get MAS, damn thing killed windows boot somehow. start all over again. same thing again, only then i realized it was the activation that kills it. guess i have to use light mode. oh and setting up onedrive and office apps is a whole story for another day.
edit: it wasn't MAS, it was just failed windows updates. booted up with low resolution enabled from safemode settings in repair menu...
Any recommendations on a window manager in Linux that behaves the same as FancyZones in Windows?
It's like...the one thing (other than visual studio and teams) that I can't seem to find a solid alternative for. I've tried a number of things I found online but they aren't the same, they're more like tiling systems.
Perhaps more complex then what you're hoping for.
But consider taking a look at hyprland. I've been very impressed with how modular and smooth this window manager is
I'll check it out, thanks! Hadn't seen that one in my searches.
KDE has very basic FancyZone inspired functionality that is very sub par (doesn't let you have different layouts on different virtual desktops for example). There's a KDE addon (I think) called Polonium that is a bit more capable I think but I haven't tried it. Other than that there's the desktop environment COSMIC that's in the works that's supposed to be a very tile/zone friendly regular desktop environment.
I'll check it out! Thank you.
If you use a KDE desktop
https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth
Many tutorials available for this
Sweet, I'll take a look.
There are a lot of things that try to replace FancyZones but I don't know that any do well. There are gTiles and Linux PowerToys if you haven't seem those already. I've never searched for alternatives to VS or Teams.
One thing you'll have to learn to deal with is that it isn't Windows. Some things will work differently, or the specific tool or functionality you're used to might not exist. There are probably different solutions to the same problem that might do the job, but may be different than what you had before. It's the same with everything. There's tradeoffs, and you have to come to terms with and get used to the differences. You can fight it and try to force it to be what you are used to, or you can get used to what it is.
This isn't to say to give up on your search. I don't know what FancyZones is or what it does. I'm just saying be open to learning a new way to do something. I've seen a lot of people struggle trying to make their system into a Windows clone, and it ends up being more trouble than just coming to terms with it being different.
I get that, FancyZones let's you use keyboard shortcuts to move windows into custom configured zones. Typically I split my screen into a 2 up on the left, single in the middle, and 2 up on the right and I can move apps into those zones with just the arrow keys.
The annoying part of any current Linux solution for me is I have to use the mouse and resize a window and move it into what would normally be a zone. I'd prefer to be able to never use a mouse and be able to move a window with shortcut keys into a predefined zone and size.
Ah, OK. Yeah. So probably what you're looking for is a "tiling window manager". I've never used one so I can't help, but that's the thing you probably want to search for. I've been tempted to try one because using just the keyboard to move windows where I want them seems very useful, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
wait what?? downloading rufus and putting the installation media on it is too much for casual users (by this i mean fresh-off-of-windows)????
It depends on who you're referring to as a casual user. My mother for example would certainly have a hard time with it, then figuring out the key to bring up the boot menu (and being faced with a scary dialog that they've never seen), then selecting the right device, then likely being faced with GRUB which would also look scary to her, and by then she'd be overwhelmed before even getting to the install portion.
Yeah it is. Most computers come with windows pre-installed so most people never do this kind of thing.
And there's also things people need to be careful of. Like wiping all out all of their cherished photos by formatting the entire drive. Considering that casual users probably shouldn't attempt to do this. Not trying to gatekeep or anything, but there is potential for data loss for a user that doesn't back up their data properly, which is common for casual users.
Not to mention changing BIOS settings to allow booting from external media. I've yet to see 2 machines that were the same in that regard, so good luck writing instructions that a casual user could follow.
Yeah I just hold shift and ctrl and start mashing function keys until I figure it out LOL.
isnt one of the first steps listed in any 'move to linux' tutorial is 'back up your data first'
I really enjoy there being a natural filter through this process. I'd rather people who lack the willpower or cognitive capacity to complete an install be kept within the confines of Windows.
Elitism and gatekeeping from a linux user? Nah, never, I must have misread
I no longer view gatekeeping necessarily as a bad thing. In fact, it can be sometimes be necessary to preserve communities.
I've also learned over the years that the only people who succeed in migrating to linux are those who both considerably desire to do so while also having a level of technical competency somewhere north of average. Anyone else is just being strung along by a "helpful" linux evangelist in their family or friends group, and will ultimately drop the solution at the first sign of trouble and frustration.
I can't imagine wasting my time and energy caring about things that don't affect me. Good luck with that buddy.