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

  • raven [he/him]English
    4•1 year ago

    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.

    • Owl [he/him]English
      5•1 year ago

      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:

      • Nobody believes you that they can use Linux; once you’ve got somebody to that “playtest” you’ve already skipped over the imaginary Linux demon in their head.
      • You have to install it. The installer is as friendly as it can be, but it sure doesn’t beat just plugging the thing in and hitting the onboard screen. People selling pre-installed Linux computers for tech nerds are rare, and pre-installed Linux computers for a general audience are unheard of.
      • Sometimes it doesn’t work with your hardware, and then it’s a mess, and if you’re new you don’t know that’s what up (This also wouldn’t happen if you could just buy a Linux box).
      • raven [he/him]English
        2•1 year ago

        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.

        • SuperZutsuki [they/them]English
          3•1 year ago

          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.

          • raven [he/him]English
            1•1 year ago

            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.