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What desktop operating system would you recommend to the average user? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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Say a friend is looking for a new system, and said person is not particularly savvy with technology, what system would you point them toward?

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[–] 19 points 6 months ago (1 child)

If this average user doesn't need to use Microsoft or Apple software, Fedora Workstation Linux. My dad, who is 78 and of average intelligence can use it, anyone can.

Linux can run on older, used hardware, has no AI, no Apple or Microsoft account required.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Bazzite. Fedora + drivers + immutable + gaming works out of the box.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

    I don't get the appeal of immutability. System files are read-only for users for a reason already. Don't modify them as root unless you know what you're doing and you'll be fine.

    What am I missing?

    (Also gaming for a 78 year old, meh.)

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Making them immutable for everyone protects users who enter their password in prompts without thinking.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    How can the system be upgraded at all if not even the root user has access though?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    The updater downloads an updated copy of your root system and saves it next to the one you're running.
    When you reboot the next time, the bootloader boots from that new system image.
    Userspace applications are installed as flatpaks and sit in a writeable directory.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    And "the updater" is what? A program running as [not root]? How does it have write access if nothing does?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    It's the package manager. And it doesn't have write access to your installed root either.
    It doesn't change anything on your installed file system at all, it installs a new system next to it.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    So it installs a whole new filesystem? Interesting. That feels like it sets limitations on how well you can take advantage of the full space of your hard drive.

    And this action can only be performed by the package manager running under some magical God user that sits above root? Or some other mechanism?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    It utilizes the copy-on-write functionality of the BTRFS file system.
    So it doesn't need double the disk space, it only actually writes the differences between your installed system and the new one.
    And it runs normally with sudo, not some special god user.
    You could do it manually, too.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    it runs normally with sudo

    So root still has write access to the system then, gotcha. Then it's not really immutable per se, the package manager just has a different way of writing to the filesystem that simulates immutability, I guess?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    So root still has write access to the system then

    No, not while the system is running. The base-layer of the OS is fully read-only.

    An update doesn't write to the existing system, it creates a new one that will be switched to on next reboot. So the current system is not actually changed, hence the term immutability. This has two benefits:

    • atomic updates: either the upgrade is successful and you switch over to the new system, or it isn't and you stay on the untouched current system. There's no way to end up in a broken OS because an upgrade went sideways.
    • rollback: the old version stays untouched on disk, so even if the upgrade was successful but something still turns out to be broken after you boot into it, you can just switch back to the old, known-working system
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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    What you're missing is that the question was what would you recommend to the average user.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Exactly, so there should be no reason to edit sensitive system files in either case. Great, further to my point.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Bazzite?

    Really, you would recommend a young, gaming focused distribution for a non-tech person?

    I'd want something stable and trusted rather than something new and hip

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Yes. I've been switching non-tech people to Linux for 17 years. Ubuntu used to be the go to, but it has a steep learning curve for the average user, sucks, and has gotten consistently worse. Everyone eats their shit over Mint, and Cinnamon is nice, but I'd still field a lot of complaints. Pop! OS is awesome, but still only 90% of the way there (and also people hate the name).
    Bazzite is feature complete, requires zero tinkering on their end or mine, and 'just works' the way people expect a modern desktop OS to. I've converted just under a dozen people and several of my personal machines and haven't had an issue yet. So yes, I would recommend a young, gaming focused distribution to a non-tech person. Isn't Steam OS also young and gaming focused? And yet it's arguable that most non-tech people start their Linux journey there. bazzite is just an improvement on Steam OS. So yeah, I like it. I don't understand all the ire in this thread for my answer to the question. Everyone has their opinion, I have field research.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Yes.

    • In my Linux experience so far, Bazzite is the first time things have actually just worked out of the box and I haven't had to fix a single weird issue
    • It's immutable with atomic updates, so much lower likelihood of the base system getting messed up, and it's super easy to roll back to previous versions if something still manages to go wrong
    • Updates happen fully automatically in the background, you don't even notice it
    • You don't ever need to touch the terminal in normal usage. Everything is set up so that you can find any software a normie would need through the built-in app store. Flatpaks are great
    • If you object to the gaming focus, there's a variant that's just for regular desktop use and doesn't have the gaming stuff preinstalled, but otherwise comes with all the same benefits

    The one thing I'll give you is that it's a young distro and hasn't proven itself to be reliable and still available in the long term, but honestly, given all the other benefits, I'll take that chance

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    If you pick the correct hardware. Which is a crap shoot per distro, bazzite included.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    People keep saying this but I've not had a single solitary issue getting Bazzite working on a myriad of older and newer devices.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I've had issues on multiple devices.

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