@PurpleJillybeans i really liked the newbie-friendly culture around ubuntu back when ubuntu was still about people, not about commerce/control-centric packaging and monetising extras.

idk about other people, but my love of computing started when i was a noob. the manual was friendlier- and it was all i had to learn from- the web didnt exist. but no snotty person told me to "just fucking read it" either. i doubt that wouldve made me enjoy computers more.

its good to look things up. its not great to just assume people havent already. also few manuals are so great that they are guaranteed to help. also, look what up on google? newbies (even things im still new to) often dont know WHAT to look up.

so ill spend half an hour trying and someone- on a support forum no less- cant spend 30 seconds sharing what i should look for?

@PurpleJillybeans@kind.social I'd like to add:

Linux has come a lonnnnnng way thanks to the Internet and Android. Lots and lots of time and effort by devs to improve the ecosystem they are required to work in... and money... brought us to this point. Some distros are slick AF.

I'd suggest not recommending difficult to install distros. Recommend easy ones that come with all the bells and whistles. IE, recommend Pop!_OS, Mint, Ubuntu over Arch, Fedora, Debian.

Remember, these folks are coming from privacy HELL, so can the purism regarding proprietary binaries and let people dip their toes. Let them lead the conversation by asking questions, and try to patiently answer without pulling them into the deep end before they're ready.

Linux used to be ONLY deep. Now, it has a shallow end. Let them swim in that for a while.

@PurpleJillybeans@kind.social

DON'T TELL PEOPLE TO "GOOGLE IT" WHEN THEY COULDN'T POSSIBLY KNOW WHAT TO SEARCH FOR, OR HOW TO INTERPRET THE RESULTS THEY'D FIND.

@PurpleJillybeans Speaking from experience: Those are not the reasons people won't use it.

And there are entire distros, like Ubuntu, where the communities have the same ethos as you.

You need 4 things to have a successful consumer OS (that people actually interact with directly): A stable UI, a stable ABI (or API), a hardware compat program that specifies minimum feature sets for certain classes of device, and a logo licensing program so vendors can put "Compatible with Linux" logos on the package.

We know the UI isn't stable, which is why the lions' share of Howto guides are focused on using CLI. LSB threw in the tower recently, so we know there's no stable API (this is about much more than the kernel). Most hardware vendors don't try to advertise (or even test for) Linux compat for various reasons.

But we should also be asking ourselves why Android, which doesn't have the above shortcomings, doesn't come up in these discussions. "Desktop Linux" advocates need to ask more questions instead of claiming they have the answers.

@PurpleJillybeans hah, thank you.

I have thought about switching to Linux again and again...

But looking from the outside it seems like Linux users have Linux as a hobby...

But I don't have the time or energy to dive into another hobby...

Especially one that would (at least initially?) impair my other hobbies that are dependent on certain software... And my actual work (because I need my computer for my teaching job).

So, yeah. What you write is highly appreciated.

And it shows again: Just because someone is good at something, they aren't necessarily a good teacher for it.