exactly! thats what i was trying to express
Ive have tried many distros that would be good but in many cases would be a bit much for most win users.
I havent had much with arch or bsd (of which i want to study more)
ark linux for example was a smashing little distro and I was on the forum and team as admin.
windows and mac users both would have been right at home there.
but the distro didn’t last long as the developer was living at home and his paranoid mother shut it down ( she though all of us linux users were criminals)
so the whole point of the topic is to get distro names and input on them
distrowatch is good and there are other sites but many are seriously out of date.
I used to fix and build computers for people with low income, and yes poor people do buy new computers. It is how a lot of them get out of being poor in the first place.
it themes nice. the darker theme is bliss for the night eyes better than redshift imo, with the red theme there is no (blue)white text on any UI item. A few choice extensions and it’s a nice mix of traditional and gnome workflow.
Although you could run manjaro/antergos and install dash to dock and achieve an almost identical experience, the extensions are forked for Zorin so they do the maintaining should result in less bugs to updated extensions.
It’s the little differences on distros stand out though. I don’t have a screen shot right now, but for instance the calender program on mint is the same as Zorin and yet adding an entry on mint results in a font color that merges into the back ground making it hard to read, useless really you wouldn’t expect such a thing. On Zorin they have made it contrasted so you can actually read your entry no matter what theme you choose.
Yes KDE plasma desktop nowdays can be count in as a decent desktop alternative to Windows like desktops.
Because you can switch to an active desktop aswell in kde since plasma 5.4 or so.
In my opinion an active desktop is a must for desktop user experience,
especially if you look at the windows way of doing thing.
The only downside that kde still has, is that you can get lost pretty quickly,
wenn it comes to setting and configure things properly.
Kde should simplefy in settings a bit maybe, or atleast putting settings more in a central appropriate location.
BEcause you can get lost pretty quickly.
But i agree that there are distro’s that do kde pretty well, like Open Suse.
But KDE Neon or Kubuntu are definitely good choices aswell.
tried out ghost bsd and it was an installation you had to pay close attention to but all in all its a nice distro Im going to leave it on that test drive to study some more because ive heard a lot about it on other forums.
anyhow Im also downloading Feren os (and ubuntu/debian branch) originating here in the US that boasts to be a good alternative for win and mac users.
While im not a mac pro I do have familiarity with it from doing repairs and upgrades on them.
so Ill post my impression on it later.
installed feren os on test drive connected to an old converted thin client.
the os states it works good for old computers and this one is the lower boundaries.
1.10 ghz dual core and 2 gig of ram
installation was the typical buntu 7 point install process. and surprisingly it installed decently and runs much better than i expected on this old test bed system.
on the welcome screen they stated it is resistant to viruses but suggested to install an antivirus app or program.
(thats a new one)
and i agree windows and mac users would be comfortable with this disro. .
as you can see Im typing this post from it.
it has wine and steam capabilities so it might be ok for a gaming platform
gigaware webcam 25-496
cheap pos for lighting and stills but fast for video conferencing with deaf people
I keep the old beaters for testing hardware
If theres an unexpected fault in a video card Im not gonna burn a good display
I think that is a poor stance. Because eventually, without new users, Linux will stagnate. It will become useless and stale, and never have the influx of new users to drive innovation.
So, as much as I hate to say it, considering the amount of respect I have for you… on this point AdminDev, I disagree with you.
Personally i can’t stand most of the “easy” UIs for Linux. Cinnamon for example just feels brain damaged last time i used it.
“Easy” doesn’t mean “everything stripped out”.
If i can’t do the things i need to do with it because they’ve removed any sort of feature that may need documentation to explain then i can’t do my job.
So, i run KDE. It’s a trade off of being able to actually do things with the UI vs. bloat.
I think that may be without new developers. But I see your overall point. At the time I wrote that comment I think I mixed up “long term” with “short term”.
Linux needs new users, testers, developers, sure. But I don’t think catering to the vanilla, virgin, new user is the way to go. It ends up crippling features (see: Gnome3) and causing a flood of “common sense” threads in community forums (see: gatekeeping).
thats why its up to us to introduce it to them.
given the fact that most people inherantly do not like change out of their comfort zone it can be a touchy subject introducing something new.
I learned cli back when i had to work with the ibm model one while in the navy and progressed as os’s changed.
windows and mac users work with what they are used to, and to introduce something new tends to make them uncomfortable in some small ways.
When i switched to linux it was because i was finding more and more control being taken away and so much intrusiveness that it tended to make my blood boil.
i can honestly say now since ive switched that whenever i have to work on a windows system I am inspecting both hardware and software for key-loggers and listening to the hdd for excessive read/writes or strange behaviour of the sound system or cameras!
while i have nothing to hide the very fact that someone is snooping in my systems gives me the urge to hunt them down and kick their ass over their shoulders.
I try to wake the curiosity and the urge to explore with new linux noobs so they can progress at their own pace and it does pay off with most of them
There is a vast overestimation of how much people care about this.
They don’t.
Yes, you’re technically inclined, a bit paranoid (not making an insult), a professional and/or “power user”.
Anyone that has worked in commercial or enterprise support, college, MSPs, etc. knows that an overwhelming number of people are technically inept, have no desire to learn, and intentionally make things more difficult. These one off success stories of Nana learning to use Linux are extreme outliers, not the norm and not even an exception to the rule. They are far and few between.
Sitting someone down with a Linux laptop at a coffee shop saying “Look how easy?!?!?!?!?!” when the Chrome logo is staring them in the face doesn’t do anything to prove the point. Because if you do the same thing with Mac, Chromebook, Windows, etc. it’s going to have the same effect. The next step is getting it at the retail level/consumer electronic level, which the community will kill itself and each other screeching on which distro/DE/Kernel/Release should be in the market.
This method fails every time because of the community at large. Let people find Linux on their own, let them drown or wash at sea. If they make it to shore, we can share our near death stories with them too.
crippling features? designing an os to be easy is not crippling it, removing features that more advanced users value may be, But who is deciding to remove them?
certainly not the one wanting to try linux.
the problem with this is expecting someone to have a minimum level of experience before trying linux is putting it out of bounds for many people. you cannot compare your experience with those who have done a little word processing or spreadsheets and emails.
flood of common sense post’s common sense to whom?
the biggest issue with forums getting flooded with these questions is lack of sufficient moderators! (when i set up the training forum for our factory I picked 20 of the top journeyman and masters and made them moderators) we oversaw 500 employees for training
and they did a good job! If you dont have sufficient staff they are overwhelmed with a workload and cannot complete the tasks efficiently.
think about it are they paid for their efforts?
granted this was a small private forum but the ratio still applies, spread the workload out and instruct your moderators to discuss operations and set up a password protected moderator sub-forum
you know distromania had a section for beginners only with a list of distros for them to try
if they wanted to try it that was their choice. But if someone is showing an interest in trying linux Im not going to throw them to the wolves! I will work with them until they are comfortable enough to explore.
now again this discussion is going off topic and this is the second time Ive mentioned this
I’m pretty disappointed when people don’t mention Solus nor Budgie when talking about beginner Linux.
Budgie is very easy to use, functional and has a similar layout to Windows on most distros… only Ubuntu put the bar at the top, but moving it to the bottom is a few clicks away.
Solus is super high quality, probably the 2nd highest quality OS I’ve used after macOS. It’s made for desktop in mind, it’s not a little monster created with a server distro with a GUI on top like Ubuntu, Debian and others. It doesn’t have all the bloat that Ubuntu does, it’s way more stable whilst having up to date software in their repo. The repo contains packages that Ubuntu relies on snap for, you have stuff like vscode or discord right in there. Instead of using PPAs or installing debs, you have install scripts in the software centre for stuff like Chrome, Spotify etc. There is a lot of support on how to do X on Ubuntu, but it’s extremely inconsistent; to install some stuff you need to compile a github repo, for some stuff you have to use PPAs, for some stuff you have to use standard debian repos, for some stuff you have to use snap, and for some stuff you need to install deb packages, which can be very annoying with their dependencies.
yes solus is a decent distro and easy to learn
the only issue ive had with many ubuntus is the ever changing repositories. you get no notice of when a new repository comes into existence or when one becomes defunct.
all you get is failed downloads of your apps or updates
I would love it if the official sites for the distros posted the repo changes then users could update their repository lists.
Some would argue that Gnome killing features for the sake of simplicity has crippled it.
Developers.
You say this, but then later recommend a website that recommends distributions to manually install. I don’t see anyone wanting to do that, especially those with no experience.
Gatekeepers.
I’ll recommend Ubuntu and Google.com. Good on you for wanting to work with someone for hours and hours or years and years. I don’t have that time, unfortunately. I used to be the family tech support, and I outsourced that job because it’s tedious, daunting, and no one listens.
You’ll get 5,000 answers for easy alternatives to Windows. You want a beautiful, immersive experience for new users, no one is going to agree on what that means. People will recommend XFCE, KDE, Cinnamon, and then start arguing about it. Some will drive by with Arch or Gentoo (or Void Linux).
I appreciate the enthusiasm, I am full force in pushing LInux to the masses. If Windows laptops were swapped with KDE laptops I don’t think anyone would notice (until they tried to install Office or QuickBooks or whatever). The community will be there every step of the way to stop you, however.
Hell, just look at the recent examples of Linus Tech Tips and Wendell setting up gaming environments in Linux.
“Fagbuntu”, and other colorful comments, as well as the flood of hate mail Linus received was enough to probably deter future videos.
Hell, Jupiter fraking Brodcasting, a pro Linux company with a slew of radio shows promoting aspects of the system, said it was bad (I disagree, I thought it was really well done, especially on the Level1 side).
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