Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.
“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.
You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.
Tell me you don’t know that much about computers without telling me. MAC stands for Media Access Control, it’s a networking term, every device has a MAC address.
Mac is a computer made by Apple. It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s short for Macintosh. But there hasn’t been an “Apple Macintosh” in a long time. They’ve just been Macs. Oh, and macOS is certified UNIX, whatever that means, so stuff your elitism. We’re both using *nix. Mine just works without issues.
But in the interests of transparency, no, I haven’t actually tried to use Linux, like gave it a shot as a daily driver, in like 15-20 years. I’ve dabbled off and on but I think we can agree dicking around in a VM doesn’t count. More recently than that, I put Ubuntu on my mother-in-law’s computer and supported it for about a year, but then she went back to Windows — that was like a decade ago. I have used Linux off and on since the 90s. But what really stopped me — I got married. Settled down. Now, my wife doesn’t give a shit what the thing runs as long as Firefox works, but any weirdness with the OS, I gotta deal with it. That kept me on Windows, until I switched. If I were still on a regular PC, given all Microsoft’s bullshit, I’d probably be on Linux, most likely Ubuntu. But I had a hardware failure and I always wanted to try Mac, so I did.
Oh — just saw, “using it inside Windows”. Weird that you don’t know what that means since you’ve been using it for so long, but maybe that’s the reason. So, I’m not sure if they still do, but when I did this, Ubuntu had a thing, you’d download the distro, burn it to DVD, and run it, and it would run inside Windows as an app (in a VM, I assume). You then had the option to install it, because if you didn’t, nothing would survive a reboot. (Why it didn’t just save a config file to disk, I don’t know. Maybe that was an option.) So you install it, and while you use it, it partitions the drive and installs itself, in the background, then it copies its configuration/whatever you’ve downloaded to the install. Then it reboots into that, and then you’re dual booting. You can also delete the Windows partition. Not sure what you mean about a round peg and a square hole. Are you saying a computer built using off-the-shelf parts should only be used for Windows, and specific hardware needs to be used for Linux? Because I’ve literally never heard that before and you really sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about by saying that. So maybe clarify?
They said that Linux is really good, and they are not wrong that for the regular person, who struggles with even the most basic IT shit, there still isn’t a full “finished” option for them, really. Power users and more savvy people grow the technology but it’s the masses who fund it and the masses need something reliable or at least a close enough friend who can help them.
Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.
If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.
In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.
Let’s not compare usability using different standards
If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.
With printers spesifically I’d bet people don’t need to pay for support with Linux as much. Sure, there are models which just won’t work, but in general my experience is that printers are mostly plug’n’play with Linux.
A few months ago I did a helpdesk gig on one local small business. They consume a lot of paper due to requirements on their business and they have some fancy KonicaMinolta photocopier. They guys who installed the printer had struggled for hours to get that thing to work on their Win10 machines. I did what was requested and they asked if I could print out notes I wrote for them for reference but immediately started to wonder if that’s feasible as the printer was so difficult to install. It took less than a minute for my mint-laptop to locate the printer and start using it. No idea if the printer company techs were just incompetent or if the software for it is bad, but apparently I’m now some kind of tech-deity in their office…
Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.
“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.
You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.
Tell me you don’t know that much about computers without telling me. MAC stands for Media Access Control, it’s a networking term, every device has a MAC address.
Mac is a computer made by Apple. It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s short for Macintosh. But there hasn’t been an “Apple Macintosh” in a long time. They’ve just been Macs. Oh, and macOS is certified UNIX, whatever that means, so stuff your elitism. We’re both using *nix. Mine just works without issues.
But in the interests of transparency, no, I haven’t actually tried to use Linux, like gave it a shot as a daily driver, in like 15-20 years. I’ve dabbled off and on but I think we can agree dicking around in a VM doesn’t count. More recently than that, I put Ubuntu on my mother-in-law’s computer and supported it for about a year, but then she went back to Windows — that was like a decade ago. I have used Linux off and on since the 90s. But what really stopped me — I got married. Settled down. Now, my wife doesn’t give a shit what the thing runs as long as Firefox works, but any weirdness with the OS, I gotta deal with it. That kept me on Windows, until I switched. If I were still on a regular PC, given all Microsoft’s bullshit, I’d probably be on Linux, most likely Ubuntu. But I had a hardware failure and I always wanted to try Mac, so I did.
Oh — just saw, “using it inside Windows”. Weird that you don’t know what that means since you’ve been using it for so long, but maybe that’s the reason. So, I’m not sure if they still do, but when I did this, Ubuntu had a thing, you’d download the distro, burn it to DVD, and run it, and it would run inside Windows as an app (in a VM, I assume). You then had the option to install it, because if you didn’t, nothing would survive a reboot. (Why it didn’t just save a config file to disk, I don’t know. Maybe that was an option.) So you install it, and while you use it, it partitions the drive and installs itself, in the background, then it copies its configuration/whatever you’ve downloaded to the install. Then it reboots into that, and then you’re dual booting. You can also delete the Windows partition. Not sure what you mean about a round peg and a square hole. Are you saying a computer built using off-the-shelf parts should only be used for Windows, and specific hardware needs to be used for Linux? Because I’ve literally never heard that before and you really sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about by saying that. So maybe clarify?
They said that Linux is really good, and they are not wrong that for the regular person, who struggles with even the most basic IT shit, there still isn’t a full “finished” option for them, really. Power users and more savvy people grow the technology but it’s the masses who fund it and the masses need something reliable or at least a close enough friend who can help them.
Again. Have you used Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu?
Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.
If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.
In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.
Let’s not compare usability using different standards
With printers spesifically I’d bet people don’t need to pay for support with Linux as much. Sure, there are models which just won’t work, but in general my experience is that printers are mostly plug’n’play with Linux.
A few months ago I did a helpdesk gig on one local small business. They consume a lot of paper due to requirements on their business and they have some fancy KonicaMinolta photocopier. They guys who installed the printer had struggled for hours to get that thing to work on their Win10 machines. I did what was requested and they asked if I could print out notes I wrote for them for reference but immediately started to wonder if that’s feasible as the printer was so difficult to install. It took less than a minute for my mint-laptop to locate the printer and start using it. No idea if the printer company techs were just incompetent or if the software for it is bad, but apparently I’m now some kind of tech-deity in their office…