I gave Linux a real shot a while back and tried Linux Mint, was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get up and running on my laptop.
Then I immediately had wifi driver issues, spent 3 hours trying to fix them by downloading random files linked on Linux boards and running terminal commands that I had no clue what they were doing, and eventually gave up and went back to Windows.
That's a pretty standard Linux experience to me, and largely why non-techy people will never be on board with it.
Installed kubuntu on a secondary drive cause plasma looked really slick. Booted it up after install to find that I couldn't connect to the internet—turns out the drivers for my extremely common (30k Amazon reviews) wifi adapter were not included. Couldn't get a hardwired connection (don't have access to router) so it seemed I was SOL. Then I found out I could use my phones hotspot if I plugged it in to my desktop—lucky I had a USBC to USBA cable.
Finally got connected and ran the terminal commands to grab drivers and updates, only the adapter still wasn't working. Ran some more suggested fixed online that didn't work. Looked into it more and apparently my (again, very common) model doesn't have native Linux drivers for whatever reason. Then I hopped through a few links to some random person's GitHub where they had taken the windows drivers and repurposed them for Linux. Installed those and finally got it working, albeit my download speeds seem a lot slower than on my windows install.
I don't want to harp on it that much because I like the idea of Linux and am hoping it gains more market share and becomes more user friendly, but the circlejerk of "It's so easy! I got my mom a Linux laptop and she's got no issues! Never need a terminal!" is very misleading in my experience. The minute your needs as a user diverge from the most basic things (or apparently when you're trying to get the internet to work, in my case) you're going to need to open up the terminal and copy cryptic inputs off some stackexchange post from 2015.
model doesn’t have native Linux drivers for whatever reason
That's not any Linux developer's fault. I think Linux fans should probably stick to telling people to buy a computer that is known Linux-compatible instead. Like a ThinkPad
Yeah I don't harbor any ill will about it, just more baffled than anything. I guess suggesting specific PC models is better for preventing compatibility issues, but then you're putting yourself in the position of "Hey check out this cool new OS, you just need to buy a new computer for it!" which is also not very welcoming to new users.
Same experience, but trying to install a program that doesn't include its dependencies, then finding out the dependency hasn't been updated since 2004 or something.
This is a huge thing that Linux purists can't seem to get over. Things like flatpak and snap need to become commonplace and easy to set up and well documented for application developers if anyone is going to use desktop software on Linux.
flatpak is cool, especially since it actually tries to sandbox apps instead of letting a single game access all your personal information if it wanted to
Yeah if Linux is going to try to do some of the stuff Windows can do, it needs to do it much better (i.e. sandboxing, privacy, ease of use). That's the only way you're going to get people to switch. It should also be easier on the developer side, which I think is probably not necessarily the case right now. I'm not sure how easy it is to develop a flatpak app or which programming languages you can use with it easily.
Could the issue have been due to the Linux Mint's kernel simply not yet supporting your wireless adapter? I have heard that Linux Mint remains on older kernels longer than other distributions for the purpose of stability. I had the same issue when I tried Linux Mint myself, which I fixed simply by switching to a distribution that used a newer kernel version.
I gave Linux a real shot a while back and tried Linux Mint, was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get up and running on my laptop.
Then I immediately had wifi driver issues, spent 3 hours trying to fix them by downloading random files linked on Linux boards and running terminal commands that I had no clue what they were doing, and eventually gave up and went back to Windows.
That's a pretty standard Linux experience to me, and largely why non-techy people will never be on board with it.
Installed kubuntu on a secondary drive cause plasma looked really slick. Booted it up after install to find that I couldn't connect to the internet—turns out the drivers for my extremely common (30k Amazon reviews) wifi adapter were not included. Couldn't get a hardwired connection (don't have access to router) so it seemed I was SOL. Then I found out I could use my phones hotspot if I plugged it in to my desktop—lucky I had a USBC to USBA cable.
Finally got connected and ran the terminal commands to grab drivers and updates, only the adapter still wasn't working. Ran some more suggested fixed online that didn't work. Looked into it more and apparently my (again, very common) model doesn't have native Linux drivers for whatever reason. Then I hopped through a few links to some random person's GitHub where they had taken the windows drivers and repurposed them for Linux. Installed those and finally got it working, albeit my download speeds seem a lot slower than on my windows install.
I don't want to harp on it that much because I like the idea of Linux and am hoping it gains more market share and becomes more user friendly, but the circlejerk of "It's so easy! I got my mom a Linux laptop and she's got no issues! Never need a terminal!" is very misleading in my experience. The minute your needs as a user diverge from the most basic things (or apparently when you're trying to get the internet to work, in my case) you're going to need to open up the terminal and copy cryptic inputs off some stackexchange post from 2015.
That's not any Linux developer's fault. I think Linux fans should probably stick to telling people to buy a computer that is known Linux-compatible instead. Like a ThinkPad
Yeah I don't harbor any ill will about it, just more baffled than anything. I guess suggesting specific PC models is better for preventing compatibility issues, but then you're putting yourself in the position of "Hey check out this cool new OS, you just need to buy a new computer for it!" which is also not very welcoming to new users.
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Same experience, but trying to install a program that doesn't include its dependencies, then finding out the dependency hasn't been updated since 2004 or something.
This is a huge thing that Linux purists can't seem to get over. Things like flatpak and snap need to become commonplace and easy to set up and well documented for application developers if anyone is going to use desktop software on Linux.
flatpak is cool, especially since it actually tries to sandbox apps instead of letting a single game access all your personal information if it wanted to
Yeah if Linux is going to try to do some of the stuff Windows can do, it needs to do it much better (i.e. sandboxing, privacy, ease of use). That's the only way you're going to get people to switch. It should also be easier on the developer side, which I think is probably not necessarily the case right now. I'm not sure how easy it is to develop a flatpak app or which programming languages you can use with it easily.
Could the issue have been due to the Linux Mint's kernel simply not yet supporting your wireless adapter? I have heard that Linux Mint remains on older kernels longer than other distributions for the purpose of stability. I had the same issue when I tried Linux Mint myself, which I fixed simply by switching to a distribution that used a newer kernel version.
Maybe, but Mint was sold to me as the easiest and best distro and these types of issues are still the reason many people don't vibe with Linux.