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Ask Slashdot: the Best Linux Setup To Transition Windows Users?
First time accepted submitter Quantus347 writes "I am trying to convince a number of people to give Linux a chance, arguing that it has come a long way on the road of consumer usability. Can you, oh Wise Ones of Slashdot, recommend a Lunix setup that will be as similar as possible to a Windows environment (Windows 7 or XP). These people hate and fear change, and so will latch onto nearly any noticeable differences, so I'm thinking in terms of both front end functionality and the look of the interface. It would also be very important for them to have to go to the command line as little as possible during daily use (meaning as close to never as can be managed)."
Mint would be the next best choice.
They could use some good word of mouth from the Linux community as well. I'm still depressed that Canonical and Gnome both picked a very bad time to screw around with their usability. With the mess that is Windows 8 coming out, and Steam coming for Linux, there's never been a more promising time for Linux. UEFI still worries the crap out of me for the future though. I wish Google would come out with a 'Google/Chrome Linux' full distro to get some momentum behind adoption.
Metro on the XBox sucks immensely, both with the controller and Kinect gestures. (IMHO, there are major usability flaws)
You'd be surprised.
I'm a best tool for the job kinda guy, so I have a MacBook Air as a laptop and Arch Linux on my desktops. Anyhow, I'm mostly non-evangelical because I mostly don't care what other people use, as long as I use what I think is best.
A couple of years ago I unpretentiously forced-installed Ubuntu 8.04 onto a friend's computer, simply because I wouldn't support Windows when asked.
He not only enjoyed but has become extremely evangelical. He convinced most of our friends to switch over. Last month he installed Ubuntu Studio on the laptop of a friend of ours which is musician. He's a history/military-nerd and recently he's been getting acquainted with Backtrack.
Afters two years of me telling Unity sucks and cringing everytime I ued his computer he recently installed GNOME 3. By himself, without even telling me about it.
I'm the only technical guy of our group, he's a historian, the other is musician, two others are biologists. Sometimes it just seems when people find ou "THERE IS A BETTER WAY??" they simply don't go back.
Games have been dual-booted with Windows and this is the final frontier.
Linux Mint with Cinnamon would be one of your best bets. "Everything" button in the lower left, system tray in the lower right, just like Windows, and yet you're still running (a fork of) Gnome 3, so you get all the latest bells and whistles.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
If these people are willing to give Linux a chance, then let them try out a live CD of something popular, like Ubuntu. If they like it, good, if they don't, no harm done. The idea of trying to accommodate Windows ways of doing things on Linux feels quite counterproductive. If people are really interested in giving some proper consideration to changing their computer tools they should start with a blank slate rather than expecting you to make Linux look and feel like the computer they are used to.
Chances are, they agreed to your "trial" of Linux just to be polite when you insisted, and may have little motivation to carry this through.
Few years ago I had an attempt to switch to Linux Debian. After I was unable to connect to a network printer, went back to Windows. It required sysadm expertise to configure it which is a showstopper for a Windows user.
Last week I gave it a new try with Linux Mint. This time connected to network printer perfectly. Even two finger scroll on TouchPad works. However I had few concerns:
- System freezes several times a day (even numlock doesn't work)
- Only Intel graphic card is used for display (No driver support for Nvidia card)
- It consumes laptop battery three time faster then on Windows
After few days I went back to Windows. Don't have two finger scroll, but can use Nvidia, battery is longer and it doesn't freeze. I'll try again eventually.
Indeed. When TFS says "I am trying to convince a number of people to give Linux a chance", the question is "why?"
Simple: if they want my continued support on their computer issues, they need to be running something I can support. I've used Windows so little over the last ten years that trying to find the right dialog buried somewhere in the control panel is incredibly time consuming. And practically impossible over the phone.
Linux, regardless of distro, can generally be supported over the phone. Even if I'm not running the same distro, most config is the same, in /etc, and I can often see the text file locally. Yes, asking someone to bring up an editor may sound more complex than a dialog, but as long as it's something simpler than vi or emacs, it probably would still be easier than saying "click here, then find this tab, and click there, a new dialog comes up, click on this tab, and ..."
Man, we really need to stop thinking that everyone wants what we want. For an end user, that Apple-like, appliance experience may be just the ticket, and Unity is perfect for them. Only a handful of users in the world even KNOW what a desktop manager is; they don't want to tinker and customize, they just to run apps.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday