How is no one mentioning the abuse on r/conservative where spewing all kinds of falsehoods, and xenophobias and you are gold, but trying to provide factual information gets banned?

I think there are more things to worry about than the number of groups someone helps moderate.

And alsothere is no recourse against improper bans. I was banned from my corresponding country sub because a moderator misinterpreted something I said.

Oh. Smart and pedantic about an autoincorrect. I’m not going to say I know more about computers than you because… One never knows. I just started in 1982 and have only worked in IT my whole life in pretty much every role, in more than 30 languages and many different platforms plus contributing as a developer in a small distribution around 2006-2010 and ending up as a lead entreprise architect providing advise on the technological direction of 300+ systems. But again, maybe I don’t know much.

Your answer confirmed my original comment. You are commenting without fundament. “I used it 15 years ago” qualifies for speaking about Linux in past tense. Not in present tense.

By the way, I don’t know if you used virtualisation or WSL to run Ubuntu inside windows (I remember the Ubuntu cd had that executable) but it’s not the same as running a proper installation and back then WSL was lacking.

For me talking about WSL also qualifies as past tense as I haven’t used Windows at all since 2019.

Good for you that you like Apple. It doesn’t mean that Linux is not stable or is lacking though.

I said “you” generic as a knowledgeable person.

The people you are talking about didn’t install windows either. I’m talking about comparing apples and apples.

There is no more difficulty installing or using windows or Linux, but in Linux there are less problems.

You start with any mainstream distro. Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Mint and the like.

The differencea between them aren’t relevant to a new user.

You install whatever you are comfortable with to be able to help them.

I put that in quotes because geeksquad sometime gets called to literally just connect cables and show the client where the power button is.

And my point is not to blame the clients. My car mechanic may be laughing about me taking the car to do things I can do my self in 5 minutes.

The point is that windows isn’t easier. It just has more readily available support and people who start using windows are OK calling someone.

People starting with Linux think that if they find an obstacle, “that’s it, Linux bad”, instead of paying someone to solve it.

Again. Have you used Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu?

Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.

If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.

In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.

Let’s not compare usability using different standards

Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.

“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.

You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.

“Microsoft testing new ways to lose customers”.

It’s well known that piracy was what made Word (.DOC) and Excel (.XLS) the de facto standard.

If the kids at home can’t use windows, they’ll find something different. And when enough of them find if, when they become decision makers they’ll stay away from Windows.

Imagine how different the landscape would be had MS cracked down on Piracy for their flagship programs.

I don’t have a soul, so probably I remain the same.

USB charger.

Your signature is your mark. Uniquely identifying. It doesn’t need to be your name.

I originally signed with name and last name plus a squiggle. I got tired of that and many years ago I changed it to my 4 letter first name barely legible. Way better more consistent than the variance writing my full name.

Butnintinknwe aware saying the same. Cursive is illegible, so. A bunch of squiggles is good enough. Some people call it cursive.

Note: other than nostalgia, I don’t understand why cursive. Barely legible even by the original writer.

I think for me the wave has more peaks and valleys.

I get to the last stage of good knowledge and decent confidence but then something new comes and I feel I’m ready for punishment again.

My first Valley of despair was Gentoo. 6 months of constantly compiling stuff and rarely using the computer for anything else. But a bit before that it was Fedora. In those early days, updates would continuously break my system.

In that first round I finally settled for Mint for years. After years of stable Linux Mint, I found my self with time and curious for Arch. And yes, that became the new l valley of despair. But eventually my stable instance.

But new things come and Wayland and new sound systems replaced what I had in my installation. Arch was again the valley of despair. And moved to Fedora, which is as stable as stable can be. I was traveling for the last two years so, no time to mess around.

Now back to arch trying to figure out the Wayland/Niri ecosystem. Let’s see where I land.

However, in my dual boots I always have a working installation I’m happy with and another which I mess up with.

Hahaha, we can always hope.

When OP says “layout” I think he means the old as windows 3.1 layout and workflow. It was good in the 90’s. Now it feels cumbersome and dated.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s the main selling point of Mint: Familiarity and stability. I settled on it for 19 years after I got tired of distro hoping. I’ve contributed financially to it every month for years.

However, it’s that cumbersome workflow which got me back into Gnome where I use only two extensions: transparent task bar and window autotile.

Gnome on a laptop flows naturally and out of the way.

Usually the problem is that new users go out of their way to fuck things up.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Most of us did that and that’s how we learned. But really, all mainstream distros are good out of the box unless you have an unusual hardware configuration. Specially now with flatpaks, appimages and Snaps.

Of course if you want to tweak and twist KDE or install extensions on Gnome or PPAs from who know where on Ubuntu or overuse the AUR in arch you need to know what you are doing.

However, it’s no different in Windows but for different reasons. The most common way to fuck windows up is to start installing software from non reputable sources. I think many of us have had to clean windows installations from friends and family when it becomes unusable.

You don’t mention the specifics of your hardware and that’s an important consideration.

I was a mint user for more than 10 years. It never crashed. It became my fail back when I moved to Fedora/Gnome. It’s very crashed, but my laptop (ThinkPad X1 carbon) supports Fedora out of the box.

People keep saying “a DE you can customize…” While I love KDE, the amount of configuration available means that’s it’s easy to screw things up.

I suggest Gnome because it has a modern workflow and it’s otherwise out of your way. Of course, you can install extensions. Just don’t go crazy because extensions may not be as stable as the core.

The GNOME workflow becomes natural after a few minutes.

I’ll need to try!

I have a finely tuned Xmonad/Xmobar but at some point I’ll need to switch to Wayland. This looks promising as a replacement.

All those “experts” lecturing you and they don’t even know about man in the middle attacks.

They don’t know that there are active bots searching for HTTP addresses to inject risky code or redirect to malicious sites.

You providing some feedback which may help OP is seen as criticism.

They had me u til “your dad installs it”

Removing the word “windows” in the last frame and also “your dad installs it for your dumb mom” to “your parents install a server. Maybe your mom does it or your dad does it. Maybe you can also help!”

Teaching “children” that technical tasks are for dady to do is so cringe.

Those two little changes and it becomes a readable story.