Horrible when those in charge make decisions that make your life much harder for purely selfish reasons without giving a crap about your situation, isn't it. Just awful.
Ignoring the real issue and blaming the outside observer is a very 'Press' angle to take, ironically.
If Press and Media were functioning as the ideal they LOVE to glorify themselves with, then you'd have a case. However, they are not, and haven't been for as long as my near-half century of observation of them. Overwhelmingly, both institutions are now tools of State and forces higher that suppress human freedom via obfuscation, misinformation and outright hostility towards anything but Approved topics and individuals. The good kind of both still exists but is so marginal, the mainstream dominating to such an extent - by design, that it can be difficult to find those good examples amidst the ocean of anti-human drek.
I'm kind of angry about this because I watched my country, Scotland, become the first country in global history to vote against it's own freedom, and the blame for that can be placed squarely amongst a media rabidly hostile to any idea of separatism, that destroyed any form of sensible debate and used every trick in the book to ensure it was denounced and de-legitimised. A few years later I watched it again be applied to the entire UK with the Brexit vote, resulting in years of suffering. Where was Press and Media in both of those instances? Being the problem.
Shifting the blame for this to popular ignorance is basically doing the PR work of those corrupted entities for them. Press and Media want to be taken seriously again? Respected again? Do something about the daily fascist shit-show. Dismantle the tabloids. Direct the weapons of truth and justice against the people spraying the shit, meaning journalists also. Take those co-opted institutions back. In the meantime, stop blaming normal people for giving up on Press and Media when the failures of people in Press and Media are also responsible for where we are now.
"Just use Linux" is much like "just ride a bike" or "just shop at a refill store" - accessing the non default option can be time consuming, expensive or unavailable locally. We need to recognise you need a certain degree of privilege to have the capacity to complicate your life voluntarily. We need to be trying to make the better, harder thing more accessible, not blaming people for not using it.
We need to recognise you need a certain degree of privilege to have the capacity to complicate your life voluntarily.
While this is true it could do with expanding to say that this pain is only in the short term. Once you're up to speed with the basics of Linux you'll find it isn't the same as those other examples that involve sustained extra-effort commitments - it settles down to become exactly as easy as using Windows.
@InsertUser@Mux@afewbugs This is where Linux's supreme form and software adaptability/variability does it a disfavour; you haven't given much detail beyond being on the RaspPi. but my experience in the last 14 months (and in earlier attempts) is so completely different from this. Extracting a file is exactly the same as it was in Windows and I've never not known where the files would appear. I also wouldn't generalise about Linux GUI apps like you have: much to my delight I've found a few apps with better GUI than anything I used on Windows.
We tend to throw stories like yours out about Linux but gloss over the Windows experience; there are as many forums for Windows Technical Support as there are for Linux, arguably more because of the larger userbase.
Windows is no longer in the habit of borking the whole OS because of a single software install going wrong and hasn't for decades.
You can't play many games, then. BSODs in the 2020's? Oh yes.
Ah, forgive me, I've picked you up incorrectly. You mean a software install that actively destroys a useable OS? LOL, I have a personal story to tell you about a W10 Windows Update you're not going to believe. And as a user on a Bleeding Edge rolling Arch distro I've yet to see any of the updates I perform often, sometimes daily, reduce the OS to an unusable state in 14 months of being on it. And I read often about people's experiences on Distros like Fedora and Mint being even more stable than this...> There is no in between.
I'm in between and having a ball. My 30 years of Windows learning and troubleshooting have transferred well to my Linux use where I'm still picking up some elementary CLI commands and concepts (every day is a learning day) but have so far not had to ask for help to solve any of the issues I've encountered.
@InsertUser@afewbugs@Mux A half-dozen programs in the package manager? Point to where he mentioned that figure? That's made up from whole cloth, and wildly, hilariously at odds with what I can see in, as an example, Pacman with its thousands of packages in my default repos.
@InsertUser@afewbugs@Mux Paraphrasing can be indicated in English instead of having to let people guess, and failure to read intent behind ambiguous English certainly doesn't warrant implication I'm not ""most folks"" (he says, paraphrasing clearly). It's the fact that by paraphrasing you selected such an obviously low-ball figure that I take issue with: you're not being fair or factual, too reliant on sweeping generalisations without detail to evidence them, and I'm continuing this conversation purely so that anyone finding it at least has another visible opinion to counter your own.
I can come with you part way on there being less software; Linux desktop usage is barely at 4% of worldwide total according to Statcounter. That naturally means less choice overall, and certain professional avenues just aren't catered to as fully as elsewhere. The great Chicken and Egg scenario - you need users before you get the software, but without the software how do you get those users....
But for your general casual user who wants a browser, email, maybe type a letter or two, a chat client maybe...Linux has plenty of choice available.
but the feeling of having your hands tied because everything you can access with a mouse is so shockingly limited is very real.1/3
I got that feeling trying DE's like Gnome and XFCE. Here on KDE it's much better. And yesterday I just installed yakuake, a terminal client that actually respects the mouse as a tool and makes it useful.> The impression Linux users have of what a normal user needs seems to fundamentally confuse someone who wants things to be easy on a day to day basis with someone who never has to do anything remotely involved ever.
There are plenty Linux folks out there fully cognisant of what being a lay user means, despite their personal knowledge or tolerances. I freely admit there are the Elitists, though, who tends to come at it with a fair amount of condescension. Personally I love a bit of tinkering but my god not every day; most days I want things to be easy so I can get work or play done without having to bury myself in tedious forums for hours. And I've helped enough people with IT issues throughout my life to know that some folks will struggle even using a mouse, something I count as being part of my body these days.
Take Games. I had a chat with a chap about that a couple of weeks ago. I was selling the wonders of Proton but this person had WINE in mind with all it's fussy fiddly setup and actually accused me of being so comfortable with tinkering that I couldn't see it any more, and calling THAT my definition of Normal. But I fought through that to tell him that no, I genuinely did mean it was an ABC, install-and-play experience, discrete from the tinkering he was imagining.
It's great that your Granddad used it, btw. Kudos. And yes I get that even casual users occasionally need something more specialised but I have to say that's the case with Windows users too, and that ain't always easy or straightforward.
@elsandosgrande@afewbugs Oh totally, I get that point absolutely. There's not just inertia to overcome there is always a period of adjustment and it isn't always practical. No-one is saying it's for everyone in every circumstance, and I've acknowledged that inconveniencing yourself, even mildly, is a luxury many won't have access to.
I just didn't want to see it characterised as a cost that you'd keep paying in the same sense as choosing to bike everywhere instead of drive.
But see, now that we're looking at this point, this is a weird point to make as well because Windows never gets this kind of argument: "Oh no, I can't use a Windows machine or learn Android or IOS because I just don't have the time/money." People were mesmerised by cell phones enough to find ways to overcome the costs and learn the OSes...why is Linux the poor relation that gets framed this way? Especially when it's FREE software. People seems to forget the costs and time investments they've already made without even thinking about them in some cases but when it comes to Linux it's suddenly too much?
At this point I have about 100 mods installed (via Vortex, via SteamTinkerLaunch) and some new shaders in OpenMW and this 2002 game is looking mighty sweet, if'n I do say so myself.
I'm a moderate Modder. I don't particularly like vast HD texture overhauls that give everything noisy 'grain' at the expense of the under-stated original look but in some cases they can work wonders, like in the armour you see in the second screenshot I've posted.
I bloody love OpenMW's new Shader capability, though. God-rays suit Morrowind thematically. The enhanced point-source lighting is MWAH. And those Mist/Fog shaders do absolute wonders for the atmosphere of the game. It's so great being on a mountain peak and suddenly a whole area vanishes as the mist thickens...
Linux still being hit with 24 year old anecdotes...is a problem we need to fix. Yeah, Windows ME was horrific but that has zero bearing on Windows 11 and yet folks still drop this stuff on Linux like it still applies.
I mean I get that this post is largely positive about that Linux experience but it still dredges up the old "hardware doesn't work" meme. I connected my creaky old Canon printer to Linux a few months back: It just worked, and continues to do so more reliably than on Windows.
If Linux is to have a future it really needs to move on from its past.