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Linux is too hard (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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The indoctrination of windows is extreme. Windows is just as hard as linux, harder even with all the layers of obscurity.

And yet... linux is hard, and users decry RTFM as "not growing the userbase"

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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I finally switched to Linux, while Linux itself is just as easy to use as Windows, actually installing Linux can be a nightmare. When setup works properly its no harder than windows, the other 95% of the time its about chasing down an easily solved problem but you have to figure out which easily solved problem it is.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I install Linux on many machines each year, and I can't even remember the last time I had a problematic installation. Your experience sounds quite unusual. Are you using some obscure distro?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Mint Cinnamon. It turned out just to be switching the name of a file on the boot media but it took a long time to work through other issues to get there.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I love Mint. It's still my favorite Debian-rooted distro, even though I moved on from it more than a decade ago. But their refusal to adapt their install image to newbie-proof it frustrates me so much. I can't think of another mainline distro that's given me any problems in creating install media or installing, and that makes it impossible for me to recommended Mint to anyone who won't have me over their shoulder during the install process.

    I commend you for sticking to it and figuring out what the issue and fix were. 90% of users would have given up, reinstalled Windows, and went on Reddit to complain about how shitty Linux is.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I mean I did complain on lemmy about how annoying it was a few times, its a shame too because this problem turned out to be super simple and potentially super common, it would just take a couple of lines being changed on the official setup guide to resolve it... actually come to think of it since its just renaming a file all it would take is having 2 copies of that file in the image with both names since only one is ever going to be used at a time anyway.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    For sure, you never lose your right to complain. But be fair to yourself too, even if you complained incessantly, you stuck it out (and what is a Linux user without incessant complaining?).

    The point is what you said though, they could very easily solve an issue that could be preventing a large group of potential users from adopting... because the maintenance team doesn't want to update the installation guide or the file names. Again, it's a very Linux thing for them to take that position. And that's why I end up recommending an Ubuntu spin to people, even though I think the whole package that Mint presents is nicer out of the box.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I had the same experience until i bought an HP (Omen) gaming laptop a couple of years ago. Even regular Ubuntu didn't boot from USB drive. I had to mess with some kernel parameters (ACPI or something) to even boot it. Unfortunately sometimes you have some hardware or weird bios that just doesn't work. Never had this with any other laptop after

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    This may be due to manufacturers locking their machines down with Secure Boot and only installing the keys that allow it to boot Windows. It's not something that could be fixed by the makers of the Linux install disk. They'd need to persuade the hardware manufacturer to preinstall their key.

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