We all have opinions on how to procedurally get someone started using Linux. To mixed effect. I wonder if we could be more successful if we paid closer attention to the machine between the seat and the keyboard. What mindsets can we instill in people that would increase the likelihood they stick with it? How would we go about instilling said mindsets?

I have my own opinions I will share later. I don’t want to direct the conversation.

  • phr@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    7 hours ago

    i guess convenience seekers can have linux these days. ppl don’t care for the os, only for “the programs” they “need”. i was agnostic to e.g. office suites (i hate em from the bottom of my heart) long before i considered trying a switch. that helped, i guess. a feature, that can only be reproduced with a certain version of licensed software is fundamentally bullshit.

    i wish people hadn’t told me abt dual boot but using wine properly (or running a vm?). for windows will fuck up your boot section and that’s very scary the first time, alone.

    the only problem i see, is the upcoming dependency on copilot … just leave those ppl be.

    instead teach the willing some fundamentals:

    • piping ps through grep and use kill is not intuitive for the windows user.
    • the packaging system the distro comes with (idc, just call it ‘the appstore’).
    • show them software, there are ppl who arent aware, how e-mail works, and that you can have “your outlook in thunderbird or whatever”
    • show them how to find solutions, and teach them how to read the shell commands they’ll find. (+ the jokes abt rm … they dont need to understand it all, but be sceptical before running any 3 lines found on the net.)
    • …
    • really, its usually abt games. they come from steam. they got proton. teach ppl how to use steam! (and only after that tell them not to buy software that doesn’t run on linux natively!)