That's an improvement over always being the dedicated tech support anyway, no matter how often you explain to them that you have not bothered to take a look at Windows and all its specific issues for a decade or more...
It's an unspoken rule: if you're a Linux user, you're obligated to mention it in every conversation, even if it's not about Linux. I use Debian, btw. :3
Yes darling, we may have a cocktail; but may I suggest rather than a gin tonic we take a mojito? It's made with mint, which is also the name of a Linux distribution.
someone recommended to me the other day to try FreeBSD. After spending multiple hours this morning trying to get the Wifi to work I now want to punch them in the throat.
Ethernet/phone tethering works like a charm though.
Don't forget to see if SMT is enabled... Good chance it is not. Had a buddy go down that rabbit hole earlier today playing around with various BSD flavors.
Have you heard of the gospel of our lord and savior, Linus torvalds? Do you have a minute to discuss salvation from the eternal fires of surveillance capitalism? /j
I talk about Linux with a lot of people. Anywhere from non-technical users, to technical users.
I have gotten a few people to try it. But ultimately in my real life circle I am the only competent Linux user. And I can't get non tech people to try it.
Somewhat related but does anyone know the backstory on the linuxsucks guy? He's the sole poster in that community and has a massive rage boner for Linux but seems to know way too much about it?
Man, idk, but I think the guy is also the one running the Reddit community by the same name. The usernames are different, but the Reddit sidebar links to the Lemmy community and the description and rules are almost word for word.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but anyone who promotes telemetry as some sort of good thing and hates on makes it their life’s work to dissuade people from Linux is either someone with too much time of their hands or an op.
That was my suspicion too but sometimes people just have hate boners for things like an autistic fixation on hating something. A good example is that CPU benchmark website where the owner has a rock hard hate boner for AMD no matter how well they do. When they kicked the crap out of Intel they used every disingenuous reason to score it lower because Intel should always be better.
Win 10 user not realizing they are self-reporting how unenthusiastic / unimpressed they are by their OS, to the extent that they literally cannot even imagine being excited by any OS.
I have been using Linux for 30 years. Never recommend anything to anyone. It's their decision to make. I will answer questions if asked but I try and be conservative. Lots of people don't need computers and would be better off without them or only need something simple to do their jobs or play games. Also my experience doesn't translate to normies. Inlaw was asking around for laptop recommendations and I just shut my trap. They can buy a Mac or a box store Windows laptop and it will do the job and I won't be on the hook for support.
I am not a preacher and Linux is not a religion. It is an effective tool for technically minded people to get shit done. Nothing more. If companies want to turn it into a product and an experience like Valve or Google then it will end up in more or less polished consumer ready products but that is nothing to do with why I use it.
Entire fam and friend circle is okay with paying for things. They have no sense of privacy to remove, and believe any alternative would be too conveluted for a bunch of mobile users to reliably depend on, and they're complerely right.
With zero computer experience, there is no way out. The learning curve is a sheer cliff.
Nothing, not even TOR or i2p would help, their entire OS is backdoored, as is anyone's on stock software.
This seems as good a place as any to ask. I have a shitty old laptop that ran Arch pretty good, but I'm not good enough at Linux and I managed to fuck it up. Something about the root partition being full, and discussions about the fix went over my head. So I pulled all my stuff off of it and installed Mint like my other computer has, because it's braindead easy to use. But even Mint Xfce runs like doo doo on this machine.
Is there any good middle ground that's more beginner friendly than Arch, and runs on weaker machines than Mint?
Is it actually your drive slowing you down? Do you have a hard drive or SSD? You could run ReadSpeed to see the speed at different segment of your drive. If it's slow across the whole thing, that's probably why it's so sluggish. If it's just the beginning and end of the drive on an SSD, you might be able fix it.
Just plain Debian, with either xfce or i3. I have a rediculusly old laptop that runs them both fine. I generally prefer i3 on it because the touchpad is pretty terrible, but xfce works well with a real mouse.
Debian won, I'm trying it first. So far so good, using KDE because Arch ran pretty well with it, but will likely try i3 if this gets slow. Side note: This is the first distro I've tried that shows accurate colors on my laptop! I'd resigned myself to always having a slightly washed out, slightly cool color palette. Not anymore! It looks normal!
You could try basic Debian, maybe with lxqt?
I never see the point of Debian derivatives anyway.
Or maybe try out one with a lightweight wm like fluxbox or icewm.
These are more barebones i think. last time i used fluxbox many years ago it did everything i needed and was pretty cool.
maybe . . . MX linux " the most popular linux distro" /s
Except i think they ban systemd.init so lots of debian based help wont necessarily work.
Meh - maybe none of these are good answers to your question.
Void should be fine if you've used arch before. You'll likely have an awkward moment when you go into xfce and there's no audio playing with your music/video, but you can get it working by linking pipewire's folder under /etc/sv into /var/service. There're other ways too
I'm going to get obliterated in the distro wars for recommending a Manjaro derivative, but how about Mabox? It's more of a ricing distro, but it's also the most beginner friendly distro I can think of that doesn't use one of the heavier desktop environments but still keeps the floating window paradigm as the path of least resistance. I think you'd be fine, just use the AUR sparingly. https://maboxlinux.org/
81 Comments
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world · 114 pts · 27d
Talked about Linux so much my 14 year old niece installed Fedora by herself on her computer and loves it.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 57 pts · 27d
Uncle goals
Crazyslinkz@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 27d
That's quite different from what I learned from my uncles growing up....
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 27d
If I were still drinking, I'd have tought mine both skills.
0x0@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 27d
Drunken linux installs are always the best. It's the side effect of installing gentoo while drinking some wine.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 27d
That's how we got a Mars Rover clone in a FedEx box
dudeface@lemmy.world · -42 pts · 27d
Just buy her a MacBook if you want to be a good uncle
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 27d
No thanks, I endeavor to pass on independent life skills, not dependent ones.
dudeface@lemmy.world · -54 pts · 27d
People who understand computers use macOS exclusively
Linux is not good outside server or embedded applications
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 27d
You should join the 21st century. That is a very outdated notion.
dudeface@lemmy.world · -33 pts · 27d
Apple have only been clearly the best the last 5 years
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 27d
I found the Lemmy Daring Fireball account.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 27d
Best at what exactly?
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 27d
Extraction of wealth from the lower classes
Amdouni@lemmy.ml · 12 pts · 27d
Hope you are justo trolling
CubitOom@infosec.pub · 8 pts · 27d
Hahahahahahahaha...dude...hahaha
Bless your heart
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 27d
LOL
jesusactuallyhateshorses@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 27d
irate944@piefed.social · 47 pts · 27d
reporting this post to the mods
TwilightKiddy@programming.dev · 17 pts · 27d
No matter how bad the content is, I don't think anything deserves the terrible fate of being put on Facebook.
Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 27d
I tend not to recommended Linux to anyone because I always end up their tech support.
Naich@piefed.world · 18 pts · 27d
Quite. Oh you are using Windows? Sorry, I don't know anything about that.
Ooops@feddit.org · 13 pts · 27d
That's an improvement over always being the dedicated tech support anyway, no matter how often you explain to them that you have not bothered to take a look at Windows and all its specific issues for a decade or more...
OwOarchist@pawb.social · 6 pts · 27d
And then I get called in to diagnose why they're locked out of their Facebook account...
Atomic_Edge@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 27d
It's an unspoken rule: if you're a Linux user, you're obligated to mention it in every conversation, even if it's not about Linux. I use Debian, btw. :3
ranzispa@mander.xyz · 29 pts · 27d
Yes darling, we may have a cocktail; but may I suggest rather than a gin tonic we take a mojito? It's made with mint, which is also the name of a Linux distribution.
TwilightKiddy@programming.dev · 16 pts · 27d
It's so hot outside, I wish I could go to Antarctica to cool off with penguins... Did you know Linux logo is a penguin?
0x0@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 27d
Smooth, like the way she left.
rozodru@piefed.world · 27 pts · 27d
someone recommended to me the other day to try FreeBSD. After spending multiple hours this morning trying to get the Wifi to work I now want to punch them in the throat.
Ethernet/phone tethering works like a charm though.
pmk@piefed.ca · 9 pts · 27d
Honestly, OpenBSD often works better out of the box on laptops and workstations.
0x0@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 27d
No ZFS in the box though.
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 27d
Try Zorin. Very easy transition from Windows.
rozodru@piefed.world · 3 pts · 27d
I'm already on NixOS and have been on linux for a few years now. I just wanted to try something a bit different.
halcyoncmdr@piefed.social · 2 pts · 27d
Don't forget to see if SMT is enabled... Good chance it is not. Had a buddy go down that rabbit hole earlier today playing around with various BSD flavors.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 27d
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 27d
I only suggest it when someone is complaining about windows.
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 27d
Exactly.
It's not "randomly recommending an operating system"
It's noticing when people have problems, and providing a solution.
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip · 21 pts · 27d
Have you heard of the gospel of our lord and savior, Linus torvalds? Do you have a minute to discuss salvation from the eternal fires of surveillance capitalism? /j
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 27d
Bro we get that you're joking.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 18 pts · 27d
Maybe it's because the survey respondent hasn't used an OS worth recommending.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 27d
Fucking hilarious because just recommended Linux to a customer over the phone. This 100% spot on.
Wispy2891@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 27d
Since Linux transformed my 8gb Lenovo 11th gen laptop from e-waste to daily use I became like a jw, I need to convert everyone
AeonFelis@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 27d
I’m willing to recommend Windows 10 to someone who considers “upgrading” to Windows 11.
hellmo_luciferrari@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 27d
I talk about Linux with a lot of people. Anywhere from non-technical users, to technical users.
I have gotten a few people to try it. But ultimately in my real life circle I am the only competent Linux user. And I can't get non tech people to try it.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 26d
A bunch of non-technical family members have been on Ubuntu for a decade. I'm only involved in LTS release upgrades and hardware failures.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 27d
Somewhat related but does anyone know the backstory on the linuxsucks guy? He's the sole poster in that community and has a massive rage boner for Linux but seems to know way too much about it?
cannedtuna@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 27d
Man, idk, but I think the guy is also the one running the Reddit community by the same name. The usernames are different, but the Reddit sidebar links to the Lemmy community and the description and rules are almost word for word.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but anyone who promotes telemetry as some sort of good thing and hates on makes it their life’s work to dissuade people from Linux is either someone with too much time of their hands or an op.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 27d
That was my suspicion too but sometimes people just have hate boners for things like an autistic fixation on hating something. A good example is that CPU benchmark website where the owner has a rock hard hate boner for AMD no matter how well they do. When they kicked the crap out of Intel they used every disingenuous reason to score it lower because Intel should always be better.
Phantaloons@piefed.zip · 3 pts · 27d
Brian Lunduke
as for info about him... eh, I'll leave you to it.
knacht1@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 27d
Stallman?
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 27d
I hate that we can now recommend win10 over win11 because win11 now has AI in your fucking notepad.
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 27d
I fired up an old Win7 box this weekend, and by the end of the day Microslop had force installed copilot onto the system.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 27d
ITT:
Win 10 user not realizing they are self-reporting how unenthusiastic / unimpressed they are by their OS, to the extent that they literally cannot even imagine being excited by any OS.
shirro@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 27d
I have been using Linux for 30 years. Never recommend anything to anyone. It's their decision to make. I will answer questions if asked but I try and be conservative. Lots of people don't need computers and would be better off without them or only need something simple to do their jobs or play games. Also my experience doesn't translate to normies. Inlaw was asking around for laptop recommendations and I just shut my trap. They can buy a Mac or a box store Windows laptop and it will do the job and I won't be on the hook for support.
I am not a preacher and Linux is not a religion. It is an effective tool for technically minded people to get shit done. Nothing more. If companies want to turn it into a product and an experience like Valve or Google then it will end up in more or less polished consumer ready products but that is nothing to do with why I use it.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 27d
What else would I be talking about to people?
OwOarchist@pawb.social · 4 pts · 27d
The Revolution.
sixty@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 27d
My friends want me to shut the fuck up
Phantaloons@piefed.zip · 7 pts · 27d
No one I know but me even owns a computer to install it on.
pirateKaiser@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 27d
Wait, hol'up, please tell me it's because of some socioeconomic reason, not because everyone around you just defaults to phones and tablets. Please.
Phantaloons@piefed.zip · 3 pts · 26d
The... second one.
Entire fam and friend circle is okay with paying for things. They have no sense of privacy to remove, and believe any alternative would be too conveluted for a bunch of mobile users to reliably depend on, and they're complerely right.
With zero computer experience, there is no way out. The learning curve is a sheer cliff.
Nothing, not even TOR or i2p would help, their entire OS is backdoored, as is anyone's on stock software.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 26d
Oh that's easy, unless they're rich. Costs are gonna keep going up and at some point they'll start asking questions about cliff climbing. 😄
undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch · 2 pts · 26d
When I moved from the Midwest to Los Angeles, CA c. 2013 it was a bit of a culture shock to learn that almost no one had a computer.
I still don’t know anyone who owns one that doesn’t have to work with one.
And it is totally about phones and tablets. I don’t even think the kids learn to type in schools anymore.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 27d
Hey, it's this meme again!
This seems as good a place as any to ask. I have a shitty old laptop that ran Arch pretty good, but I'm not good enough at Linux and I managed to fuck it up. Something about the root partition being full, and discussions about the fix went over my head. So I pulled all my stuff off of it and installed Mint like my other computer has, because it's braindead easy to use. But even Mint Xfce runs like doo doo on this machine.
Is there any good middle ground that's more beginner friendly than Arch, and runs on weaker machines than Mint?
Bazoogle@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 27d
Is it actually your drive slowing you down? Do you have a hard drive or SSD? You could run ReadSpeed to see the speed at different segment of your drive. If it's slow across the whole thing, that's probably why it's so sluggish. If it's just the beginning and end of the drive on an SSD, you might be able fix it.
Sonicdemon86@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 27d
Lubuntu is a smaller install and will run well on a toaster. It is made for older computers. When no os runs well chose Lubuntu.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 27d
Or Xubuntu!
But honestly Mint is the way to go for new guys.
Sonicdemon86@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 27d
True. Any Ubuntu spin offs would work as they have more support for newbies to help get things working.
digger@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 27d
Let's build it out even further. Linux Mint Debian Edition with XFCE.
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social · 5 pts · 27d
Just plain Debian, with either xfce or i3. I have a rediculusly old laptop that runs them both fine. I generally prefer i3 on it because the touchpad is pretty terrible, but xfce works well with a real mouse.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 24d
Debian won, I'm trying it first. So far so good, using KDE because Arch ran pretty well with it, but will likely try i3 if this gets slow. Side note: This is the first distro I've tried that shows accurate colors on my laptop! I'd resigned myself to always having a slightly washed out, slightly cool color palette. Not anymore! It looks normal!
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social · 2 pts · 24d
If you decide to give i3 a try, I recommend this repo as a sane starting config: https://github.com/shreyas-a-s/debian-i3
bryndos@fedia.io · 5 pts · 27d
You could try basic Debian, maybe with lxqt?
I never see the point of Debian derivatives anyway.
Or maybe try out one with a lightweight wm like fluxbox or icewm. These are more barebones i think. last time i used fluxbox many years ago it did everything i needed and was pretty cool.
maybe . . . MX linux " the most popular linux distro" /s Except i think they ban systemd.init so lots of debian based help wont necessarily work.
Meh - maybe none of these are good answers to your question.
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 27d
Void should be fine if you've used arch before. You'll likely have an awkward moment when you go into xfce and there's no audio playing with your music/video, but you can get it working by linking pipewire's folder under /etc/sv into /var/service. There're other ways too
reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 26d
Maybe try EndeavourOS.
It's pre-configured Arch, since you said it ran Arch well.
prunerye@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 27d
I'm going to get obliterated in the distro wars for recommending a Manjaro derivative, but how about Mabox? It's more of a ricing distro, but it's also the most beginner friendly distro I can think of that doesn't use one of the heavier desktop environments but still keeps the floating window paradigm as the path of least resistance. I think you'd be fine, just use the AUR sparingly. https://maboxlinux.org/
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · -1 pts · 27d
Linux from scratch
ollie@pawb.social · 5 pts · 27d
it-it's happening- SOMEONE HELP M-i use arch btw :3
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 27d
Yeah you got me
I used to like treyarch btw
notabot@piefed.social · 5 pts · 27d
It's great, I get a checkout line to myself now.
Damage@feddit.it · 3 pts · 27d
Sorry for wanting you to know FREEDOM!!
Digit@lemmy.wtf · 2 pts · 23d
i'm a big ol' 5
[for linux!]