It’s completely inconsistent with traditional Windows design language and there’s no “Cancel” button or an X in the corner to click on so you can’t cancel out of it with your mouse and have to reach for Esc on your keyboard
It also tries to funnel you into a shitty Microsoft service
They should make a Linux that’s just Windows 7
Just about every single window manager improvement Windows has seen since Vista was introduced in Gnome first then later cribbed by Microsoft.
Or KDE
Here’s a guide. I don’t know if it still works, but regardless making Linux Mint look like Windows 7 shouldn’t be too hard.
Just run a distro with KDE, it’s a lot like old school windows.
That’s the beauty of Linux, it isn’t “they should make” it’s “you can make”!
no i cant, i suck ass at programming
It isn’t just programming. There are literally hundreds of desktop environments to choose from which let you customize things much more in depth than windows can.
XFCE for example would let you put your task bar dead center in the middle of your monitor if you wanted to, no programming required. Another reply links to a guide that requires no programming.
Any distro with KDE + WINE, and you basically have Windows 7, but Linux.
Only real difference is if you want to interact with devices that need special drivers (basically, anything that isn’t a USB HID device), you gotta use native Linux apps for those. Example would be reflashing a phone’s firmware using the proprietary SoC bootrom mode, or trying to use a DJ controller with a Windows program via WINE.
Usual disclaimer: Linux is not Windows, and things will not behave exactly the same. For example, installing software is done through a software repository instead of going to a random website and downloading an exe. When installing software from a repository, it will get updated along with the rest of your system. Think: an app store, but before app stores existed. Also, the only time you have to reboot after an update is when updating the kernel, and you won’t get that annoying thing where Windows Update has to take forever to apply an update when shutting down since Linux will give permission to write to files that are currently in use.
Linux Mint is already pretty close to Windows 7 out of the box, in terms of how the UI behaves.
Hmm
Someone should do some testing where they sit down with a few dozen windows users and have them “playtest” linux to figure out what the snags are for onboarding, and what is generally meant by “make it work like windows” to them. Certainly there are some things linux objectively does better, even if it isn’t immediately intuitive coming from windows.
I did this ages ago with a highly non-technical user on Ubuntu 10.04 and the only question I got was “Should I trust the updater?” (yes)
I think the biggest hurdles are:
The biggest hurdles I run into are relating to software management. People expect to google up a .exe and run it.
What ever happened to those “download in ubuntu software centre” orange buttons I was seeing around? That was a damn good idea to bridge the gap while bringing users into the fold by making sure apt is aware of the program being installed, and that it’s installed via official channels.
Does Mint still ship gdebi or whatever it was called?
Oh and don’t get me started on snap. I always tell people to disable snaps from the software centre if they’re installing a *buntu.
People that are installing .exe files from internet searches are beyond the beginner stage and have started getting the Windows brainworms. It’s best to get people who never install anything except from the Windows store to move to Linux. The discover store in KDE is essentially the same thing.
I always say that your grandma is the best linux candidate in your life. Linux with XFCE works a hell of a lot more like what she’s used to than Windows 10+, won’t get viruses, and will do absolutely everything she would want it to, and will be faster than windows on her old laptop.
Set up BTRFS snapshots weekly and if something gets messed up just have her roll back to the latest one.