Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies
-
Freedom Penguin has an excellent article that talks about what @scottalanmiller often mentions - that Windows users have the hardest time using Linux, but your grandma probably won't have any issue at all. The top thing he talks about for people coming from Windows to Linux is the struggle to leave Windows thinking behind and just let the system take care of things. Often the easiest tasks are seen as impossibly hard on Linux because of an expectation of needing to do things the Windows way or needing to do manually what is already handled.
Freedom Penguin talks about how new or casual computer users rarely experience problems using Linux, but Windows power users often struggle to use it. It's a good read and mirrors what SAM is often talking about.
-
It's a good read and I've seen this a lot first hand. As early as 1998 we tested this, @Eric was one of the people who tried this and found KDE 1 to be significantly easier and more intuitive than Windows 98. He had no previous Windows experience, but had used things like the Apple ][ for a long time.
When I worked with K12 schools doing Linux desktops, there were very few existing computer users and they found using Linux simple and intuitive.
When I've moved family to Linux, same thing. They were casual users and found it instantly simple to use, no problem.
But find people that work on Windows full time, and almost always they are struggling with things that they shouldn't need to struggle with. Really big ones include wanting to do lots of unnecessary drive and partition management, wanting to get technical where it isn't needed (wanting to specify a drive letter for every task?!?! why do you need to know what drive its on?) or not leveraging things like package repos to make installing apps easy.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
It's a good read and I've seen this a lot first hand. As early as 1998 we tested this, @Eric was one of the people who tried this and found KDE 1 to be significantly easier and more intuitive than Windows 98. He had no previous Windows experience, but had used things like the Apple ][ for a long time.
When I worked with K12 schools doing Linux desktops, there were very few existing computer users and they found using Linux simple and intuitive.
When I've moved family to Linux, same thing. They were casual users and found it instantly simple to use, no problem.
But find people that work on Windows full time, and almost always they are struggling with things that they shouldn't need to struggle with. Really big ones include wanting to do lots of unnecessary drive and partition management, wanting to get technical where it isn't needed (wanting to specify a drive letter for every task?!?! why do you need to know what drive its on?) or not leveraging things like package repos to make installing apps easy.
You brought about drive letter, would Linux be easier for Mac users or would they be in same boat has Windows users are?
-
@black3dynamite said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
You brought about drive letter, would Linux be easier for Mac users or would they be in same boat has Windows users are?
My opinion is that Mac users have it easier, but there is still a barrier. There is a barrier any time you are used to something and it changes. But Mac and Linux share a lot of ancestry and I think that it's easier to move from one to the other. Mac still does a lot of abstracting like Windows and still expects you to "know" a lot of things. But at least it tends to do so in more similar ways.
-
I think that most Mac users also have the advantage of having used Windows at some point so tend to be aware of places where assumptions need to be removed.
-
Util I was 11-12 I used mainly windows (since I was 6 probably) to play games, but my uncle (since I was born probably) always let me play with his Macintosh (Put-Put games on OS 8-9), then I got a MacBook, and now it's been 10 years that I use regularly OS X. But I always been kind of "fascinated" by the "Penguin world", so 7/8 years ago I tried Ubuntu (with dual boot), while the last 3 years I moved to try Fedora. Oh, and since I was 14 I always had to deal with Unix servers (CentOS in particular), without any kind of previous knowldge.
After this long premise, my opinion is that Windows is kind of mainstream. Everybody more or less can learn how to make it work (also thanks to google), probably because everybody can ask someone else suggestions. It is not really intuitive how the interface should work, and in particular the settings are a real mess (still, after a lot of year I have to search on google).
OS X is always been familiar to me, so I am a little biased, but it has a different concept (in particular last versions) of how applications and data are disposed respect to windows: I have friends that don't even know that exists an "Applications" folder, they just put things on the Dock or in the Launch control, and other friends (ex windows user) that if they don't have the "drive" folder on the desktop they don't know how to go on.
GNOME interface to me is closer to OS X than to windows, it has a lot of stuff going on in the background that you don't have to take care, but still: friends that come from OS X or Windows doesn't find it intuitive enough, probably because used to different gestures/key bindings/interactions.
CLI was kind of "strange" at the beginning, probably because I didn't know english (I still don't
) or because I didn't remember commands (I had to copy them from internet every time), but since I started the university I prefer to use it to the GUI for a lot of tasks now.. 
-
I was a windows user first before I joined the Linux party. Dos to the early Windows, then Linux.
For me, the hard part was getting Linux to work with my hardware, whether 15 years ago, or today. That's it. The ONLY turn-off Linux gives me is hardware compatibility issues.
Basically, Linux is hard because it has trouble working with some hardware, and you spend all your time trying to make it work and end up leaving it in a frustrating way, going back to Windows.
Grandma can use it easily, because what is given to Grandma, is a system that works. Give Grandma a system that doesn't... like it shut down or reboot without holding in the power button, won't boot to the desktop, won't play videos, wireless card don't work, etc... then no, Grandma will hate you.
-
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Basically, Linux is hard because it has trouble working with some hardware, and you spend all your time trying to make it work and end up leaving it in a frustrating way, going back to Windows.
OT: Last week I spent 2 days to install Nvidia GTX 980Ti's drivers on ubuntu (uninstalling nouveau)
But that's because I never did it before, now that I now how to do it probably it will take only 1 day and half
-
@Giggiux said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Basically, Linux is hard because it has trouble working with some hardware, and you spend all your time trying to make it work and end up leaving it in a frustrating way, going back to Windows.
OT: Last week I spent 2 days to install Nvidia GTX 980Ti's drivers on ubuntu (uninstalling nouveau)
But that's because I never did it before, now that I now how to do it probably it will take only 1 day and halfThis kinda goes back to what @Tim_G was saying about hardware. Folks coming from Windows expect things to just work.
-
@dafyre said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@Giggiux said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Basically, Linux is hard because it has trouble working with some hardware, and you spend all your time trying to make it work and end up leaving it in a frustrating way, going back to Windows.
OT: Last week I spent 2 days to install Nvidia GTX 980Ti's drivers on ubuntu (uninstalling nouveau)
But that's because I never did it before, now that I now how to do it probably it will take only 1 day and halfThis kinda goes back to what @Tim_G was saying about hardware. Folks coming from Windows expect things to just work.
Yeah, it should... but since there's I don't know how many HUNDREDS of versions of Linux flavors... there's not enough people and resources to keep up with hardware support.
Now, if people could just stop creating a new Linux flavor every week and focus on the good main distros that exist, perhaps this wouldn't be an issue any longer.
-
@dafyre said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
This kinda goes back to what @Tim_G was saying about hardware. Folks coming from Windows expect things to just work.
What Windows works like that? Windows requires SO much massaging. This case was him wanting to switch drivers from the built in ones that "just work" to something high performance from nVidia. nothing wrong with that, but it's extra work that an end user would not experience. If they did the same thing on Windows, they'd have the same problems. And I can attest to that because I do that on windows, and it has lots of problems.
-
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Yeah, it should... but since there's I don't know how many HUNDREDS of versions of Linux flavors... there's not enough people and resources to keep up with hardware support.
That's not quite fair, though, there are only a very few in actual use. Fedora and its derivs like korora that share drivers, Ubuntu and Mint, Suse and Gecko. That pretty much covers all of the bases. there are a few others out there, but effectively they don't matter because only hobbiests that want to tweak things are using them and they are less than 1% of the market.
-
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Now, if people could just stop creating a new Linux flavor every week and focus on the good main distros that exist, perhaps this wouldn't be an issue any longer.
It's really if the driver makers could not get distracted by some kid's weekend project and focus on the real, in use operating systems then we'd be fine.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@dafyre said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
This kinda goes back to what @Tim_G was saying about hardware. Folks coming from Windows expect things to just work.
What Windows works like that? Windows requires SO much massaging. This case was him wanting to switch drivers from the built in ones that "just work" to something high performance from nVidia. nothing wrong with that, but it's extra work that an end user would not experience. If they did the same thing on Windows, they'd have the same problems. And I can attest to that because I do that on windows, and it has lots of problems.
I can't deny the massaging. But I have never had a problem with Windows being so screwed up that I couldn't get back into the GUI after installing NVIDIA drivers. I've had several instances of that happening in various Linux Distros.
I also agree with you that an average end-user wouldn't have to deal with that type of thing.
-
@dafyre said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
I can't deny the massaging. But I have never had a problem with Windows being so screwed up that I couldn't get back into the GUI after installing NVIDIA drivers.
This is because on Windows the GUI is the console, it's the primary interface. On Linux it is not. On Linux, the fallback access method is the serial console, TTY. One is designed for end users on desktops, one is designed for headless servers. Both support the other situation, but they are native to different things. On Linux, the desktop is a service like any other. And the desktop is always provided over the network, even when it is local. On Windows, the output is the output.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
Yeah, it should... but since there's I don't know how many HUNDREDS of versions of Linux flavors... there's not enough people and resources to keep up with hardware support.
That's not quite fair, though, there are only a very few in actual use. Fedora and its derivs like korora that share drivers, Ubuntu and Mint, Suse and Gecko. That pretty much covers all of the bases. there are a few others out there, but effectively they don't matter because only hobbiests that want to tweak things are using them and they are less than 1% of the market.
The truth is, is that Linux will never go main stream for personal use until "they" cater to the hobbyists. They being whoever is responsible for making sure the same hardware that works on Windows, also works on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Korora, blah blah blah... I'm not going to name all the Distros it should work on.
And no, I don't think that if a manufacturer releases a driver package click-to-install for Debian, that it'll "just work" on any Debian-based Linux distro. Ideally it would, but nothing works out like that in the Linux world.
-
I'd love to run Fedora, and only Fedora, on my personal computer. But the hardware support is just crap for all Linux distros.
Sure, I may get my video card working after a month of troubleshooting... but there are weird issues with other things I just can't have.
Lack of real fan control... they go crazy sometimes, when the system is cool.
Other built-in hardware that should just work.
Unable to shutdown or reboot usually. Forced to hold down the power button.This isn't just with my personal laptop... these and other less-severe issues happen to like almost every non-enterprise system I've put Linux on.
It's the little things. They make all the difference.
-
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
I'd love to run Fedora, and only Fedora, on my personal computer. But the hardware support is just crap for all Linux distros.
Sure, I may get my video card working after a month of troubleshooting... but there are weird issues with other things I just can't have.
Lack of real fan control... they go crazy sometimes, when the system is cool.
Other built-in hardware that should just work.
Unable to shutdown or reboot usually. Forced to hold down the power button.This isn't just with my personal laptop... these and other less-severe issues happen to like almost every non-enterprise system I've put Linux on.
It's the little things. They make all the difference.
These things just don't happen in Windows. And if they do, it's probably a 30 year old system... or some other anomaly. You can't say "Windows has problems to"... sure, everything in the universe does... but you get the point.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@dafyre said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
I can't deny the massaging. But I have never had a problem with Windows being so screwed up that I couldn't get back into the GUI after installing NVIDIA drivers.
This is because on Windows the GUI is the console, it's the primary interface. On Linux it is not. On Linux, the fallback access method is the serial console, TTY. One is designed for end users on desktops, one is designed for headless servers. Both support the other situation, but they are native to different things. On Linux, the desktop is a service like any other. And the desktop is always provided over the network, even when it is local. On Windows, the output is the output.
You're exactly right.
Windows is for GUI (and users), Linux is for CLI.
Linux went bad when they started trying to cater to Windows users... introducing GUIs and all that. Now look, people like me are wanting to run Fedora on a system with a graphics card... and other hardware that wouldn't be needed if Linux just stuck to CLI.
-
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
@Tim_G said in Why Linux is Hard for Windows Users but Easy for Newbies:
I'd love to run Fedora, and only Fedora, on my personal computer. But the hardware support is just crap for all Linux distros.
Sure, I may get my video card working after a month of troubleshooting... but there are weird issues with other things I just can't have.
Lack of real fan control... they go crazy sometimes, when the system is cool.
Other built-in hardware that should just work.
Unable to shutdown or reboot usually. Forced to hold down the power button.This isn't just with my personal laptop... these and other less-severe issues happen to like almost every non-enterprise system I've put Linux on.
It's the little things. They make all the difference.
These things just don't happen in Windows. And if they do, it's probably a 30 year old system... or some other anomaly. You can't say "Windows has problems to"... sure, everything in the universe does... but you get the point.
My experience is the opposite. Both have their issues but I've seen more Windows 10 issues with drivers than I have Linux ones. Korora on my desktop, Ubuntu on my laptop I see no issues. My wife's machine was non-stop issues till we went from Windows 10 to Korora. Korora fixed the constant network and GPU driver issues.
Same thing with printers. We moved from Windows to Linux and years of my wife complaining that printers are annoying and take so much work just vanished. Suddenly you just "plug them in" and they work.
It's definitely both directions. I think that people get used to them with Windows so much that they forget how much they are actually there and the ones on Linux are new and surprising and they sense them more acutely.
