a good one to suggest for a new user would be pinguy os 18.
everything works out of the box and it has an ubuntu base.
its a good training wheels type distro that they can customize without cli.
they have a great forum too.
but i can agree with a lot of you guys that each user is a different set of problems.
and linux or mac or windows may not be suited for everyone.
a new user purchasing a computer is literally stuck with whatever os is on it and its up to them to learn it.
I am a linux user because it does what i want it to without all the headaches Ive gotten from windows problems.
the same can be said for any mac users, We as advanced users are used to cli and know the advantages of it. new users dont! when faced with cli they will shy away from it unless given an easy introduction to it.
(its one of the reasons i teach some of it to new users both in windows and linux)
I regularly hold classes at our local senior center and fire hall.
If a person wants to try linux I tell them try live cd or live usb and will chose and provide a few different distros for them to try (based on their needs) on their own computers or with systems Ive set up for demo.
so yes i do dedicate a lot of time to leading new users whether its linux , windows, or mac
aside from curiosity if a user is willing to try linux they may already be dissatisfied with their current os enough to be ready to learn something new.
I donât want to put words in Goblinâs mouth, but I think his point is that the steaming outrage from the online Linux community is going to side rail whatever distro X ends up being.
Why did you pick Ubuntu? RMS said decades ago that Ubunut was spyware.
Why did you pick Red Hat? Corporations are evil!
Why did you pick Linux Mint? Itâs out of date and uses an old kernel!
Obvious exaggerations (yet, cherry picked from actual community comments) will flood support and community forums alike. I wouldnât be surprised if there were petitions asking to cut the project off completely.
Something I never understood, and maybe my lack of understanding is making me part of the problem, but what is the difference between a gateway distro and pro/experienced distro?
Outside of the setup, what can you do specifically on Arch or Gentoo that I canât do on Mint or Ubuntu? That, in itself, seems to be a detractor in the community and a problem for adoption. If youâre that advanced that youâre building daemons, using custom kernels, building, altering, and compiling from source, then your operation system really doesnât matter â and arguing against/for âbeginnerâ distros seems absurd to me.
Getting the Linux community to understand that 99% of people want a computer to watch Netflix and kitten videos and post on facebook and twitter without reading or learning a thing.
I think the obvious solution to this is to ignore them. Worked for systemd.
The point isnât to remove or replace anything the point is to set some standards. X distress work 100% with y hardware and y hardware is out pertner. You can use other things but x is supported with y.
Aim to have a UI that is as âfamiliarâ to new users as possible. Docks would be on the same side of the screen, key menus could be found in the same place, and so-on. This would counter the âhelplessly lostâ feeling that many new users experience.
Allow new users to perform common tasks in the same way. Whether it be changing the desktop pattern by right-clicking on the desktop, pressing META-SPACE to bring up a search bar, dragging the windowâs title bar to the right or left side to have it automatically re-size to fit half the screen, having a 'Printers" control panel that lets you add a printer â that sort of stuff. This allows basic operation and configuration (dare we say âcustomisationâ) of the system, and is the first time users âbuy-intoâ (start making an investment in) a new platform.
Let new users add common software the same way they have always added software. Shield them from the PPA/apt/repo/tarball/Github/make/⌠nonsense by just letting them pick the software via (e.g.) a (Mac)App Store -type of interface. There is absolutely no reason new users should need to concern themselves with how software is installed â only that it is installed.
Ensure that common software âjust worksâ. If you canât be on the Internet and watching YouTube videos within about 30 seconds of installing the operating system, then thatâs a fail. The experience should also be the same. You shouldnât be unable to view half of the videos, for example, because âsomethingâ is missing âsomewhereâ (e.g. âubuntu-restricted-extrasâ). Video playback shouldnât be downgraded/choppy.
At least one major gaming platform/portal (e.g. Steam) should be supported right out of the box, and require zero setup. Just log in and play.
⌠and so-on and so-forth. Obvious, simple and basic things should be obvious, simple, and basic â not hidden and requiring arcane wizardry.
The âtypicalâ Windows/Mac user probably spends over 80% of their computing time using less than five (5) applications, and the overlap is huuuuuge, so itâs not like the distro needs to âmake a bazillion apps work flawlesslyâ. Just the common ones.
Once the user starts to stray off the beaten track then the distro should offer contextual, prescriptive and actually helpful âhelpâ on the task they are trying to perform.
e.g. âApplication347 isnât available from the store, but you can install it using the package manager. What is a package manager? [INTRODUCTION TO and EXPLANATION OF package managers] How to install Application347? [EXPLICIT, STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS that have actually been tested and actually work]â
(Note that this should be in the distro itself, not on some obscure website somewhere.)
That sort of guidance/help will start the process of building up new usersâ Linux-fu and make it easier for them to migrate to a different distro when they feel ready.
A gateway distro should be like a wading pool for people learning to swim. It should be small, shallow, and keep their heads above water so they donât drown. They should be given arm floats and swim vests. The combination should let them acclimatise to the new medium (water) without threatening their lives or invalidating previously understood/mastered concepts like âupâ and âwalkingâ.
A pro/experienced (regular) Linux distro is akin to a new swimmer being thrown into the middle of the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, by themselves, with no flotation devices, all of the ladders retracted, and the staff pulling up deck chairs and placing bets on how long it will take the newbie to drown whilst eating pretzels and drinking beer.
Lack of settings in gui, and ease of access to them.
It needs to be intuitive - its not - and you I myself find spending couple minutes looking for stupid options like even basic resolution/Hz change. Learn from windows please⌠Some settings are unreachable from GUI and can be only made by editing config files - this is wrong as a desktop platform.
Should be like this: âThereâs setting? There should be GUI for it.â
Customizationâs can, and will break your GUI - just go ahead and play around in any kernel around the settings for GUI (themes etcâŚ) No way to revert back, only sometimes recreate user or reinstall whole systemâŚ
More important:
Update process -
If you apply updates, and then do not restart but apply your updates again - youâll break your posting due to grub pointing to wrong kernel files.
If update is stopped due to loss of power etc, its likely your daemons will get broken.
Software isolation - As it stands now, there is no software isolation⌠they will be forced to use same libs and repositories. In some bad cases like firefox drm plugins (for netflix) , ffdshow plugins and vlc - you are likely to break one or the other thing while trying to fix the other. (thereâs a way to do it if they run under their own users and environmental⌠but thats too much work, it should be done automatically with forked sub users of that user instead.)
Isolate libraries per software requirement basically make each software run with its own isolated libs rather than force it in uneasy incompatibility layers where one needs newer other requires older etcâŚ
I think a lot of the answers here are on the right path, but have missed a few things.
There will never be consensus of pushing a single distro. Assuming most users will move on to something better is not going to happen. The Gateway distro will be what most people stick with, simple as that. Users are lazy and not interested in the best - they want something that works decently enough to get their work done. Like Windows. Therefore, the one gateway distro would gain a tremendous following that make all other distributions look like midgets in comparison, which means their influence over Linux will be pretty much down the gutter. Fortunately this is also a non-issue, since one distro will take over everyone else eventually, just like what is happening with Android right now.
Many mention lack of GUI configuration tools, to which I say hogwash. Most users are lazy and do not wish to educate themselves. The less knobs they need to turn, the better (from their perspective, of course).
Personally, I find Gnome Shell to be extensible enough to meet all needs, but sane defaults would have to be procured. So the technology is already in place to make Gnome the default desktop for everyone. If the modern Linux is based on Gnome, Wayland, Systemd, Pipewire and Linux I would not shed many tears for the loss of the alternatives. That said, Gnome certainly is not a perfect desktop at all, and work should continue.
My personal dream distro? Well, imagine a fresh install that asks the user âNo Gnome configuration file is found on your system! Please fill in this form to create oneâ. Then it would present a simple form that asked you to choose between the Unity, Gnome, OSX or Windows setup for your desktop environment.
After the install, you may start up a utility that allows you to choose a number of things:
Activation and configuration of virtual desktops
Ability to activate window tiling
Ability to use tiled windows per default
Ability to treat each display as their own virtual desktop
Ability to set up default desktop configurations for both tiled and non-tiled environments
Ability to switch base user paradigm from Windows to OSX to Ubuntu to Gnome
And so on. You get the idea. This, I feel like, would take care of 90% of all the complaints about the âLinuxâ GUI. But thatâs just me perhaps.
If currently X people use all combined Linux distros, and a new gateway distro is created (anointed/whatever), and Y new users end up using that forever, what is the problem? There are still X users using the other distros, so their health/communities have not been negatively affected at all.
The only difference is that we now have an additional Y âlazyâ (as you call them) users cruising on the gateway distro. Those extra bums on seats makes the Linux ecosystem larger (X+Y >> X), which attracts investment and developers. Since a gateway distro would be based on a parent distribution, all of the extra development effort that goes into catering for the âlazyâ new users spills over as a benefit to the parent distribution, all derivatives thereof, and perhaps the majority/entirety of the Linux ecosystem.
Steam games that run flawlessly on the gateway distro, for example, will be able to be enjoyed by many, many other Linux users on different distros.
Whether other distros âlook like midgets by comparisonâ is only a problem if you suffer from inferiority complexes. The goal is to grow the whole Linux ecosystem â not just your (or any one personâs) preferred distribution.
It is entirely reasonable to expect that the flood of new users to a gateway distro would contain the same fraction of âadventurousâ users as currently exists in the migration path, and that that fraction â at an absolute, bare minimum â would move rapidly on to other distributions. Thus it is inconceivable that a gateway distro would cannibalise existing distros (in absolute terms). Androidâs success in the mobile space is not cannibalising Linux numbers on the desktop. âOne distro taking over everyone elseâ is a baseless fear â especially if said distro looks and behaves like the MacOS or Windows.
In practice, well, just look at the Android space, which is pretty much divided between Samsung and everyone else. What will happen is that once one or two distros gain prominence (and if Linux keep growing, they will), the one or two big distros will steal pretty much all development and support. This will of course introduce a number of incompatibilities as âold-schoolâ distros inevitably drift away from the mainline distro. So, yes, some good will come out of it, but for your favorite distro, it means less developers and more stagnation. Unfortunately. Not to mention, for better and worse the gateway distro will lead the pack.
It is what the market wants, so Iâm not one to blame them, but this distro will never come voluntarily, it will be dragged kicking and screaming out in the daylight by a corporation with resources enough to make it happen.
Its pretty simple the average person is so invested into the already well developed platforms with integration and convenience. Unless linux can provide and not only provide but MARKET in an nvidia like manor the benefits of their ecosystem and provide 100 percent of those needs as well as the occasional candy treat that most proprietary systems use. Then the average linux user will remain advanced. Even with linux Mint its a beautiful OS so is ubuntu ⌠Most consumers are just too familiar with the contempary environments. There are many issues but Open source has always had the issues that plague any coder or programmer based environment. The inherent support network is never tailored to the average consumer. The question then becomes can you tailor linux to this and preserve what its power users love?
Can you provide libraries for proprietary softwares to use and interface with. Can you support all the blobs? seemlessly without much installation knowledge needed?
My personal opinion is, that Linuxâs greatest benefit is âholding it backâ in the âDesktop massmarketâ. Variety.
I donât think investment in a Platform or such is that big of a factor anymore. At least not in the Laptop and Desktop market. Since most stuff people do every day is now web based anyways, it doesnât matter for the average person.
Every day people go from Mac to Windows because of the Hardware or from Windows to Mac because of the OS. And they mostly donât have major Problems with the Platform. But Linux is another thing entirely for most people.
First off, lets say John decides he wants to switch from Windows to Linux. He already knows that there is not any Hardware with Linux on it available to him (a disadvantage we have over Microsoft and Apple). But he has no clue otherwise. So, he starts looking to download âLinuxâ because he heard itâs free. Thatâs the first time you encounter the word âdistributionâ. And half an hour later, decision paralysis sets in because no newcomer that isnât techsavy will understand what the difference between Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch is. All they wanted was LinuxâŚ
If you want Linux as a major player in the Consumer PC market, you need âTHE Linuxâ. Not Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Debian⌠They are all competing for the same space and will loose âcustomersâ in the process.
I donât think most of us would actually want the Linux that would be compatible with a mass market. And many of the benefits a wide adoption would bring, wouldnât be backportable to other distros at that point.
Iâm happy with where Linux is. For the most part, the community is great and filled with people that are interested in the OS and are willing to help or ask for it. The fact Linux (or any Distro) does not have to care to much about how decisions influence a Userbase of Billions of People gives it great freedom in many aspects. And finally, this allows all of us to run the exact setup we want. Thatâs why we are with Linux and not Mac or Windows. Because we decide what exact Flavor of Linux we have on our Machine, not some Tech/Marketing guy at a big company trying to find out what works best for Millions of people.
But yes, a little more âpolishâ and consistency wouldnât hurt anyone to be fair
This really makes me sad, and youâre not the only person Iâve heard this sort of thing from. This isnât a criticism of you, or people who come to this conclusion. Youâre rational actors making valid decisions with the information you have.
It makes me sad for a couple of reasons:
Itâs wrong headed: If you want to âlearn linuxâ these are the moments when it will happen. If you reinstall, youâll never âlearn linux.â This is the point where you learn by figuring out how to fix it. (and then maybe you find a new distro if the fix is vomit inducing enough, but you do it anyway for the learning)
It does suck. Operating systems should be installed and maintained, not replaced every 6 months. It sucks that people feel like they need to reinstall to fix something, because they donât see a path from where they are to a fix.
I think âdistro hoppingâ as a past time is fantastic. But âdistro hoppingâ as a solution to problems is depressing.
Obvious exaggerations (yet, cherry picked from actual community comments) will flood support and community forums alike. I wouldnât be surprised if there were petitions asking to cut the project off completely.
