I’ll readily admit to being what the author of the article doesn’t believe exists : a not very techie long-time Linux user, enthusiast and advocate.
But I’ve managed to flash Ubuntu and Lubuntu onto a couple of laptops, and UBPorts’ Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 5 - I can follow instructions!
There’s an unequal playing field… PCs come already flashed with OSs most of the time. i.e. it’s not the Linux GUIs that’re necessarily user-unfriendly. The barrier to adopting GNU/Linux is probably the fear of bricking your tech.
Most distributions know the value of writing proper documentation and faqs. Sadly many don’t bother reading it. And then the Linux community (whatever that is supposed to mean at this point) is toxic because they told someone to rtfm :/
From my experience it’s mostly technical people who don’t read the manual properly. Of course software should come with sane and more importantly secure defaults, but not so admins can be lazy…
The barrier to adopting GNU/Linux is probably the fear of bricking your tech.
Thats why live-images are so cool, you can try everything out before you install and even if you brick that installation you still have a working system. You just have to get people to leave the image on their USB-drive, which isn’t as easy as it sounds :D
Would be cool to have a configuration standard for desktop applications (gsettings?!)
Some ideas:
I’ll readily admit to being what the author of the article doesn’t believe exists : a not very techie long-time Linux user, enthusiast and advocate.
But I’ve managed to flash Ubuntu and Lubuntu onto a couple of laptops, and UBPorts’ Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 5 - I can follow instructions!
There’s an unequal playing field… PCs come already flashed with OSs most of the time. i.e. it’s not the Linux GUIs that’re necessarily user-unfriendly. The barrier to adopting GNU/Linux is probably the fear of bricking your tech.
Most distributions know the value of writing proper documentation and faqs. Sadly many don’t bother reading it. And then the Linux community (whatever that is supposed to mean at this point) is toxic because they told someone to rtfm :/
From my experience it’s mostly technical people who don’t read the manual properly. Of course software should come with sane and more importantly secure defaults, but not so admins can be lazy…
Thats why live-images are so cool, you can try everything out before you install and even if you brick that installation you still have a working system. You just have to get people to leave the image on their USB-drive, which isn’t as easy as it sounds :D
:) Yeah
Your idea is basically already living in GNU Guix or NixOS.