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”

  • green@feddit.nlEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    Linux Mint is a great distro, and I’m happy it works for you.

    In terms of mass-adoption though, the fatal point is probably putting a Linux ISO on a thumb drive. Like I said prior, we must be aware of survivorship bias. You don’t care much for the terminal - but you made it through.

    The people that didn’t make it through probably failed from the thumb drive step. I only say this from personal experience, because when I first installed Linux, I was very determined and came extremely close to giving up at this step. And I only got through because I happened to find an obscure forum about how Rufus needed a special setting for my machine.

    P.S. I also was not tech savvy, but I wasn’t completely lost either - and I still struggled really hard here.

      • Lunar_Voyager@lemmy.world
        6·
        2 days ago

        I just imagined a shady looking dude in a dark alley saying in a gruff voice “I got all the distros you need man, check these out” while opening his trench coat and revealing hundreds of flash drives.

    • Russ@bitforged.spaceEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I remember back when I was a kid, the only way I was even able to try Ubuntu was through “WUBI” which was pretty cool - it allowed you to “install” Ubuntu via Windows, by leveraging the VHD support in the Windows 7 bootloader. It could also be uninstalled via the Windows control panel as it was registered just like any other program.

      As far as I understand, it was discontinued because of inherent technical issues with that system - but I always thought if it could be done again, then it’d help bridge the gap a bit. All you had to do was download the installer, and double click it like any other program.

      I had no clue how to write an image to a flash drive, hell I doubt I even had a flash drive to use at the time. 😅

      • Samskara@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Ubuntu used to mail out free install CDs for a while. Nowadays many people don’t have optical drives anymore though.

        • Russ@bitforged.spaceEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I did get one of those at one point! Definitely no longer have it anymore, but it was really cool that Canonical provided those for quite a while (from what I know).

    • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 days ago

      Ya the thumb drive was a tripping point for me. Took me a minute to understand I had to reformat the drive itself. I also didn’t try to partition anything.