So I’m building a new computer before the end of the year and lemmy is obviously pushing me towards Linux.
I am not computer savvy, I have a family member that will help me set up my PC, but I do not want to be calling/messaging them every day when I want to open a program.
Basically my question comes down to: can I operate a Linux PC these days without needing to troubleshoot or type code.
I use my computer about once a week for a few hours I would say, so any time spent troubleshooting is time wasted.
Thanks!
EDIT: since a lot of people are asking what programs I typically use, I’ll just list my most used programs.
Word, Excel, ect(I’m fine with alternatives)
Spotify
Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I’m glad it’s supported)
Brave browser (browser is a browser)
Steam
Discord
I would say that while I could figure out how the kernels work, I’m at a point with computers these days where I don’t have the time. My priorities fall with a seamless daily experience. If I have the time to figure something out I can, but ideally my day to day usage being unbotherd is what I’m after.
A lot of the comments so far have been helpful! I’m definitely going to give Linux a fair shot with my new build, probably start with Mint.
You should be fine doing what you want on Linux. Just make sure everything works before installing completely. There is a liveUSB mode that let’s you try it before you install.
Mint and PoP os are good ones to try.
Can also check out Zorin os which is pretty good too but doesn’t update as often.
Mint should be pretty easy to get used to, solid choice IMO, as for the programs
Word, Excel, ect(I’m fine with alternatives)
If you’re fine with libreoffice, no problems
Spotify
Don’t know.
Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I’m glad it’s supported)
No problems
Brave browser (browser is a browser)
Not sure if there’s a flatpak, U might need to add a PPA, but it’s just a one time copy/paste a few commands.
Steam
Works fine, but some games might not run or require some tinkering, check games u play on protondb.com
Discord
It’s a bit annoying because they require u to have the latest version all the time, it won’t auto update, and the package might take a while to update, so u either download and update manually every time (it will be a different install than the flatpak package) or use the web version, peraonally i just run a script to download and extract the
tar.gzversion when there’s an update.brave has flatpack , and you don’t really have to do all that to update discord just go to software store and click update?
I don’t use flatpak but i assume there’s a delay between discord and flatpak updates, or even if there is no delay
just go to software store and click update?
This would update everything, right? That’s usually not what i want when i’m opening discord.
I’ve had no problems with the Discord flatpak and updates. I use a KDE variant of UBlue and the package manager prompts me to update all flatpaks when I start the computer (whenever there are updates available), which I do with one click.
For a new user, i would think that individually managing package updates is probably not a desired workflow.
There are also 3rd party interfaces which are basically web client wrappers that add some features.
Could you share that script with op?
Sure
#!/bin/bash DIRNAME=$(dirname -- "$( readlink -f -- "$0"; )"); cd "$DIRNAME" wget -O discord.tar.gz 'https://discord.com/api/download/stable?platform=linux&format=tar.gz' && tar xvf discord.tar.gz && rm discord.tar.gzEdit:
DIRNAMEis just to find the script location and download/extract there, in case u call the script from somewhere else
I actually tried linux (Fedora) this past weekend; I had fewer issues installing and using it as a day to day computer, than I did with Windows. Tried out Gnome and KDE both, preferred gnome but UI scaling (for my shit vision) was simpler out-of-the-box on KDE (about 125-150% was comfortable for me.) I found KDE a bit overwhelmingly customizable to start out with, and maybe a bit bloated.
The caveat to this was Gaming, in my case I did not have a good time with gaming (probably because I am trying to run at 4k and play a game dependant on Ubisoft DRM, as well as an older MMO that doesnt handle high DPI screens and ui scaling). Very frame-y at 4K, a decent amount of tinkering is/was required. YMMV, check ProtonDB as it is heavily dependent on what games you play, and heavily dependent on Steam. If you want to multi-box (without software, just alt-tab through windows) an MMO, I found functionally no information on how to open multiple instances of the same game to do so (which is why I mentioned the dependency on steam, which only seems to let you have one game launched at any given time)
Moving back to windows for gaming felt like a major downgrade as far as general computer work goes. Inside of an hour I had a fully functional, up to date, linux machine. Windows 11 took 1-2 hours to install and update itself, then another hour to install drivers, then longer to de-bloat and start disabling all the stupid shit from Microsoft. I’m sure I’ll be doing that continuously for the next few weeks.
I found KDE a bit overwhelmingly customizable to start out with, and maybe a bit bloated.
I’ve said this kind of thing before; Gnome feels like it’s trying to appeal to Apple users, “Look how simple it is, look how few settings menus there are, you use it the way we designed it to be used and only that way, nothing else works.” They like their empty blank windows. The ideal Gnome utility app is a blank window with a single button in the title bar that says “Cancel.” Featurelessness is their goal.
KDE always felt like the polar opposite of that to me. Every feature under the sun, sometimes twice. Nothing is consistent, nothing aligns quite right, they love their cluttered windows. The ideal KDE utility app is a window crammed edge to edge with text boxes, drop downs, radio buttons and check boxes that never opens quite big enough for all the elements in it. This one little utility app can do basically everything even remotely related to the task it’s made for plus several other adjacent tasks, to the point it takes you a long time to find the one option you ever actually need in a sea of settings menus.
Cinnamon felt somewhere in between. Except where Gnome apps crept in with their hamburger menus and top bar UI, Cinnamon felt consistent and good looking without being an iPhone commercial, and their included utilities tended to have the functionality you needed and nothing you didn’t.
I just recently built a PC, and to get the most out of an AMD GPU I’m using Fedora KDE instead of my long time favorite Mint Cinnamon, and I’ve already had to boot up my old computer once to use a Mint utility because I couldn’t seem to get the job done in KDE. You know that USB stick formatter tool in Mint? Why doesn’t every OS have that?
Just out of curiosity, how does Fedora KDE get more out of amd than Mint Cinnamon?
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I went with Fedora because of newer packages than you generally get in the Debian family lineage.
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KDE, especially KDE 6, has a fairly robust implementation of Wayland. Cinnamon is just now rolling out experimental Wayland support. This wasn’t an issue on my previous machine with an Nvidia GPU as X11 was the better deal there, but now that I have a Radeon GPU Wayland is the better deal. My two monitors running at different resolutions and refresh rates work. FreeSync works out of the box. There’s even the beginnings of HDR support. Having tried both on this machine, Fedora KDE has a lot more features of my hardware that “Just Work.”
I much prefer using Cinnamon to KDE, but I’ll deal.
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I assume you’re talking about Desktop Environments. Yes, of course. KDE and Gnome rival MacOS as far as usability goes. The better part is that other software development groups port their software over to Linux as well and make it as seamless as possible.
Only thing I might add would be potentially Bluefin. It is Fedora with Gnome, except Atomic. It markets itself as:
The best of both worlds: the reliability and ease of use of a Chromebook, with the power of a GNOME desktop.
It’s been fantastic for me with automatic updates and everything installed through flathub so you don’t bork your system with any misconfigured installs.
There’s also a KDE spin called Aurora: https://getaurora.dev
No. This is your own spin.
Why the fuck can’t y’all just let people have it easy and get shit out before you feel you MUST say your piece about your own fucking experience.
Fedora and Ubuntu for beginners. That’s it. Nobody’s asking for performance or immutable bullshit until you confused them with it. STFU!
Well this is literally Fedora, and I offered it for consideration, not a recommendation. This seems a tad hostile.
*Immutable. Get lost.
Also: should you wish for something with Fedora literally in the name, Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kionite are the upstream—published by the Fedora Project—versions of Bluefin that use GNOME and KDE, respectively.
Either could be an excellent choice should you wish for
Atomic
The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
Fully agree with this. There will be a slight learning curve since it will be different from what your used to, but it’s friendly enough to figure out.
If you know the windows program you want to use just search something like “Linux alternative for x” (sometimes there is specific KDE or Gnome progs)
I would maybe add Linux Mint to that list, but otherwise you’re spot on. Fedora and Ubuntu are the easiest and most robust systems for novice computer users.
Depends. If someone is gaming with new hardware, don’t use a distro that doesn’t update the kernel quickly and regularly.
Almost every problem with hardware on mint is solved by going through the process of updating the kernel or switching to a distro with up to date libraries.
It’s fine for a lot of people, but it doesn’t “just work” outside of the use case of only browsing the internet and word documents.
This is coming from someone who used mint for 4 years. There was about a dozen times where the software on the software center was so out of date that it simply didn’t work and I had to resort often to using random ppa’s which often broke other things. Definitely not user friendly.
That being said, Cinnamon is probably one of the most user friendly DEs for people switching from window. It is very nice.
Linux Mint is Ubuntu with specific changes.
That’s how all distros work. They exist so that you don’t have to make changes yourself.
Yes it is. Pick a newbie friendly distribution. Say Ubuntu.
IMHO Windows is only “user friendly” because it’s preinstalled on most PC’s.
User friendliness comes with experience.
Linux Mint is pretty user friendly. I’m also not a fan of typing code, but so far the only thing I’ve HAD to use terminal for came with really easy instructions and the commands were listed out (like a recipe) so all I had to do was copy/paste and things worked out just fine.
The 1 issue I ran into was upgrading from LM 21.3 to 22. I had to go back to 21.3 because 22 couldn’t connect to wifi (I’m guessing because my machine is old) but 21.3 works perfect. My other machine is a lot newer and just about to the end of its warranty period, so once that’s up I plan to switch that one to Linux as well.
What do you typically use your computer for? That’s going to have a major impact. If it’s pretty basic stuff (web browsing, text editing, etc) you shouldn’t have any issue. If it’s something that’s more complicated or unusual, then sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes not, depending on what you want to do. In general, a little bit of comfort searching the web and working in the command line helps a lot with troubleshooting Linux
A test could be to start by using Libre software on Windows.
Switch to LibbreOffice or some other alternative instead of Word. Gimp, Inkscape, and Krita for graphical stuff. Whatever proprietary software you use, check if it exists for Linux; if not, see if you can find an alternative you’re happy with.
For the people I know, Word is the biggest deal breaker.
Mint is pretty dumbass proof.
It could not be simpler.
My grandfather in law kept getting scammed and installing viruses while on Windows. I installed Linux Mint on his desktop last year, setup automatic updates, created a non admin account for him, and he fucking loves it.
Keep in mind getting this man to login to Netflix on his TV is a minimum 30 minute long phone call. We had to send people to check on him because his phone was off for 3 days straight; he put it on airplane mode and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.
He has had 0, yes, exactly 0, problems with his computer since I installed Linux Mint. It’s faster, to point where he noticed and commented on it, and he finds it easier to use than Windows, which has been on every computer he has ever owned.
I promise you, it’s really that easy.
Same experience with my relatives. I had some family whose Macbooks were no longer able to update (for Apple forced obsolescence reasons). They run Mint now, and have never had a single problem since I first set them up.
Well, one of them called me because they couldn’t figure out how to attach a file to an email… But that problem would have been identical on Mac OS.
I feel like Linux is good for power users or users like your grandfather who are not very tech savvy. The issues arise with users savvy enough to get themselves into trouble but not enough to understand how to fix it or how to do a slightly more advanced task.
I guess uBlues main images are. I use Fedora Atomic Kinoite, which is not ready at all.
I had a friend who was about as computer illiterate as they come, they had a crappy gateway laptop(netbook maybe) that had kubuntu on it they preferred it to when they had win vista(yes this was forever ago, i replaced vista with kubuntu because it was lighter than gnome at the time) they loved the kde interface and most of what they did was Myspace Tumblr and Facebook, but even they managed to figure out play on Linux and wine after a few months
If you mean “dumb friendly” by “An exact Windows clone”… there are plenty of “Windowslike” Linux distros out there.
If you mean “user friendly” by “Easy to understand by any user”… then yes, (any) Linux distro is user friendly as is.
Everyone is saying yes.
They are wrong.
You will absolutely have to troubleshoot in order to figure out how to do what you want to do.
Linux is different than windows or macos and you’re gonna have to gain an understanding (however dumbed down you might describe it) of those differences in order to use the computer.
If you can get over that hump of understanding then I think you’ll be fine.
I’ve got to agree with this. I love Linux and have run it on my servers for years. That said, I’ve got Mint on my laptop and tried to print an image over wifi at a friend’s place and could not for the life of me get it to print properly.
For the most part things do just work, but there are a lot more “obscure” scenarios that are handled correctly in windows but not Linux.
I also find that when things go wrong on Linux, they are harder to fix. I’ve had several times I’ve had to deal with circular dependency hell to get something to install properly. I did eventually get those problems resolved, but it was often a single person having a tangential problem that hinted me to how to solve it.
Edit: I think if your usage patterns are straight forward enough, it is by far and away the better choice. If you do the same stuff all the time, it’ll pretty much never break, which is not something I could say about windows. So for OP, it sounds like it would be a good fit.
Dude, your wrong. Not what OP was asking about.
Desktop light usage only. DFQOH and don’t come back.
DFQOH
I can’t work out what this an acronym for. Please help!
They are wrong.
The sad truth. Enough said. Linux is still not there, as much as we’d like to pretend it is. And it’s especially not there for dumb users.
Another dumb user here Been using Arch for a year now, things just works without much tinkering… mostly
Dumb user here. I completely disagree with this.
I was using Ubuntu for a few years, now I’m on Fedora. I don’t really know how to do anything. For my needs it’s just very easy.
Maybe my needs just aren’t sophisticated enough for me to encounter all those problems I’m supposed to be having. But I’ve been using it for years and my experience is that it really just works.
While there’s a little bit of getting acclimated to slightly different programs for the same tasks, I kind of imagine sophisticated needs primarily comes down to hardware. A company making some sort of computer hardware doohickey might design and test and provide support for something with Windows/Mac in mind, and maybe for other operating systems they’re not cooperative with documenting support, under the mindset that it would reveal trade secrets or decrease shareholder value in some other way. Linux support then comes from other means like reverse engineering. This could mean that it will take time before all the kinks are ironed out, or if the product was short-lived the linux community might not care enough to have someone volunteer to keep up with support. Common, time-tested hardware will have good support. Plugging in some old printer that was discontinued shortly after launch will be more of a crapshoot.
Yeah. I’ve double checked that my last few laptops worked well with Linux before buying them. But I don’t buy very flashy technology, so it was never really any question.
My printer is from Brother, and it’s just plug and play. At work it’s all web print and has been since I started working for pay, really.
I’m just speculating on reasons behind why people might feel it’s still not user-friendly. It was a pretty easy transition for me too, and that was years ago.
So you are saying that dumbs can’t read? Because hey, that is all it takes to troubleshoot a problem on linux.
Thus, even your grandmother can “do google” nowadays.
I consider myself a reasonably tech literate user and tried to set up dual boot on my pc using a whole separate ssd just for Linux to be safe. Installing it went fine but GRUB wouldn’t let me boot into windows, somehow the instalation nuked my windows boot partition and no amount of repairing would work, I had to completely reinstall Windows and now I’m seriously worried of trying Linux again.
That sucks. I’ve done that a lot of times by either not understanding what I was doing or fat fingering some decision.
If you do decide to try again, tag me and I’ll set up a vm environment similar to yours and walk you through any confusing steps.
Most operating systems these days are just micro-kernels to run the actual operating system, your browser. Most users will be perfectly happy using whatever in most cases as long as you can get one of the major browsers on it.
If they have special requirements, then you need to figure them out first.
Yes. If you want something easy, look at:
- Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
- Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based, great for newbies)
- Spiral Linux (Debian, easy to set up, rock solid)
- Aurora (Fedora Atomic based, hard to break, automatic updates)
Never heard of Spiral, and I’ve heard of a lot of distros, so I’d steer clear of projects like it, that are new and/or niche, as there will be lower reliability and support available. Aurora is also pretty new, but it (and Fedora Atomic, and uBlue in general) has a strong community, so I’m more likely to trust them.
PopOS and Linux Mint get a thumbs up from me.
Spiral is to Debian as Endeavor is to Arch. It’s a painless way to get Debian (bookworm) set up.
