What are the main challenges in Linux adoption for New users, and how can it be addressed?

You're viewing a single thread.

380 comments

Make it just run and pre install it on most computers.
With "just run" I mean things like:
Audio just working
Bluetooth just working
Bluetooth and audio working together ~~(I still can't get this one right, after 5 evenings of trying)~~
WiFi supporting all the frequencies, instead of just some
remembering monitor configurations
Troubleshooting audio shouldn't mean that you almost completely kill your OS with that
You know, things like that that might cost you an evening or two or three to figure and make you feel like you're the rarest edge case alive. On Windows, these work just fine out of the box.
I know this ain't easy to get to, but I can't recommend people to use Linux when even a phones does perfectly fine out of the box results in at least an evening of troubleshooting.
- man you must be using some fucked up distro because never had those problems in the last 4 years.
  
  That's kinda the problem here. I've heard people say how complex and difficult Android is so they have to use iOS.
  People have personal experiences and beliefs that differ and there's no way to fix them other than to dive into it and they don't want to dive into it. Unless they are highly motivated to change they will likely just stay where they're comfortable.
  It's like trying to logically and reasonably explain why being vegan is morally right to someone who absolutely refuses to read the labels on the stuff they buy. They're not going to want to go into the BIOS to fix a boot order to boot to a flash drive let alone learn a new UI. Hell, most people didn't even want to move off Windows XP, 7, now 10 till they are absolutely forced to.
  It was never about what problems you have had it is about the problems they have had. Most of the time MacOS/Windows are good enough for most users.
  
  Ubuntu 22.04 (granted it was upgraded a few times, but origianlly a 20.10 box), even with bredr set int he conf, wouldnt work with Airpods...
  pop_os does, but since its a dual boot, i have to re-pair them if i use it in another OS, since they share the bluetooth adapater.
  Using an egpu has no hotplug. And you need something like egpu-switcher to manage the config. - https://github.com/hertg/egpu-switcher
  this also wont apply to pre-login stuff. You would need to copy that over to a different file there.
  this also wouldnt work if you had say....3 monitors and wanted to use 2 configs. In windows you can do that with super+P and swap between extend and only external etc.
  My pop_os install wont recognize my logitech 720p USB camera thats like. Its a brand new install of 22.04.
  Teams, even in the PWA, and other apps often dont respect the system defaults for sound/mic inputs. Especially if you have a few, which all laptops do since theres always shitty onboard speakers and mics.
  There are all experiences of mine from this calendar year. I can work around them mostly. But my wife or others....no way. They would just chuck the PC at me and say "fix it". These are all also things that work OOB on windows or MacOS.
  
  A fellow laptop user :-) For the monitor setups I use batch files with xrandr settings. I could imagine there being a way to get them to run via hotkeys...
  But yes, the whole thing summs up with "I may use it for myself, but I just can't recommend the whole package without providing tech support for it".
  
  Yeah I use Debian. (At least once a while when I decide to give it yet another shot...)
  Edit: in case you are interested, I can give some extra details on that list, and how I fixed them or not. But all these fixes ain't a thing I'd expect the median user to be able to figure.
  
  Out of curiosity, how long ago did these problems happen? I've been using Mint and Xubuntu for a while now, but had to use a few different troubleshooting distros to fix a Windows boot issue, and none of these came up. As these are Debian based distros, I'd expect the same problems to filter down.
  The only thing I've had issues with lately is setting up a USB wifi adapter on a Raspberry Pi, but I'd expect some problems with that.
  
  Around a year ago I fixed the bigger issues, but I started with Linux around 5 years ago. The WiFi issue has been around a month ago, but didn't do a lot of troubleshooting outside of rebooting and browsing all wicd settings because well I was offline because of it. Didn't visit that place again and at home there's wifi on all bands as well as ethernet almost everywhere, so the issue doesn't hurt me that much.
  Booted into it today to see if things are better, ran the update/upgrade/reboot after and:
  Bluetooth seems to be better! It now connects to my headphones even when paired before. But now I fails a2dp even after forget/re-pair.
  I had to start the system a couple of times before it actually did start, there's been some issues finding thermal data of the cpu during startup. I'll play around with it a bit these days, but sadly it did not magically just work.
  Why would you expect issues with an external WiFi adapter for the RasPi?
  
  I wonder if it was an edge case that the Linux driver didn't account for, like a minor incompatibility between the two devices.
  You've just reminded me that I had a Bluetooth problem with my laptop a few years ago. My headset would connect and work properly, but wouldn't be recognised after the laptop had either been to sleep or shut down. I had to go through the bluetooth device folder, something like /dev/bluetooth/, find the folder that corresponded with the headset's address, and delete the cache folder inside. It would then work until the next sleep / shut down.
  I expected problems with the Pi because USB wifi has always seemed to be a bit dodgy, even on Windows, and wifi is apparently still a problem area with Linux. Add to that the Pi's limited distro, and I thought it was bound to go wrong.
- I just had the opposite problem, tried to re-image a brand new laptop with windows 10, keyboard and mouse dont work in setup. Works in the bios, works in linux, doesn't work in windows until it can hit windows update. Honestly in recent years stuff in linux just works.

380 comments