Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Why don't more people use desktop Linux? I have a theory you might not like (www.zdnet.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linux is different in many ways from Windows

I kinda want to softly disagree with this point (and i'm sure others will disagree with my disagreement), because the average user pretty much does everything they do in a web browser. A few of them might have to use thunderbird for email, instead of their web browser, and thats about it.

And to be perfectly honest, Theres no significant functional difference, for those average users, between linux and windows. Just got to put the browser and email icons somewhere on the desktop where its visible and thats basically that.

I speak of personal experience (so take it with a grain of salt and skepticism), because I have pretty much my entire family on linux, though to be fair I got them on linux by basically saying "Listen, your computers old, and the OS is no longer supported. Either you can pay me a lot of money to get you a new computer and new version of windows, or I can install linux on what you have for free and you can keep going without any investment". Being cheap, they always chose linux.

in my experience, almost all the terror that rises from the deep with regards to linux, comes the second you try to do anything more intensive than web browsing/email.. Cause they you are running into installing things, tweaking things, problem finding, etc etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but when I tried to get my mom to use Linux, she kept asking me how to do some things like moving a file, printing a PDF, saving a document in Libreoffice (even though she had no trouble doing it on Windows also with Libreoffice) etc. I've set up everything to be as seamless and close to Windows as possible but she still always had trouble doing something so I gave up, and reinstalled Windows. Ig my mom is just less tech savy than your family ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it takes literally no tech savy to open a browser.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, my mom didn't have issues with that, but she did have issues with other almost as basic stuff