There’s a lot more to it than that. Which ISO do you download? How do you make the USB installable. What to do if the USB doesn’t boot when you restart the computer. Do you want to manually partition things? What the hell’s a partition?
There’s installing Linux, then there’s confidently installing Linux.
I use dnsmasq on my router (I use a small server-grade PC as a router). It’s both a DHCP server as well as a caching DNS. Next to that it also runs a TFTP server. TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) is a standard for simple file transfers mainly used for network booting.
If you tell a machine to boot from the network, it will basically request an IP through DHCP and with that DHCP response comes a list of available network boot options. Each option is contains the name of a file it can load from the TFTP server. If you select one of the options, it will download that file and execute it. That file will usually be a bootloader (like Grub) which will then take over the boot process.
I have set up a bunch of different network boot options, including a Debian installer, a small Linux rescue system and Memtest86+ . That way I can always network-boot any machine on my LAN to either install an OS or diagnose problems.
Most teachers (the ones educating the youth on tech!) can’t figure out how to play a YouTube video. Hell they can’t figure out how to take a photo on a phone or send a text. Installing Linux is difficult for the average person. The average tech savvy person, it’s easy. Related xkcd as always,
It is difficult for a huge portion of the population. Hell man, my neighbor came over the other day and asked me if I know how to copy stuff to a USB drive. He’s about my age, so it’s not like he’s ancient or anything, he just doesn’t know anything about computers like most people these days.
There’s “difficult” in the sense of a person’s reasonable ability to follow rather straightforward prompts, even if they don’t know what they mean. Linux installers are rather low difficulty here.
Then there’s “difficult” in the sense of how much a typical person will tolerate being rushed through a bunch of mystifying questions just to get through to the other side, particularly when an alternative option that doesn’t ask them at all is available. Linux is atrocious in that regard.
Really hot take: more choice is actively bad for people who don’t care. Which is far and away most of them. The kind of personality matrix that is attracted to Linux as-is tends to be the kind that wants everything configurable, and for the system to never assume anything, and let the user roll everything themselves. Most people are not like this and they don’t appreciate this “courtesy”. Giving them the option at all is the deterrent.
If you want to talk Linux installers that are on-par with the UX feel experience provided by macOS or Windows from a normie’s perspective, show me one that doesn’t ask anything of the user that doesn’t also appear in one of those installers. Not a single thing. If it does, that’s a speed bump that has no reason to be there. Because the person who is using it likely doesn’t have the answer, and if the correct course of action in that situation is, “It doesn’t matter, just use the default”, then why did it even ask? It should just do it.
I’m not suggesting we need to completely rob all installers of any choice, either. We can have a two-tier system, so people who actually know the answers to those questions can select the advanced install, and people who don’t care can select the streamlined install.
The dirty little secret about the mass market aversion to Linux is that people are genuinely not interested in or remotely curious about the inner workings of their computers. Those of us who like to immerse ourselves in it for fun are outliers. Any one of us who denies it has their head extremely far up their ass.
It’s similar to car mechanics. The vast majority of drivers don’t know or care how the machine works, they just want it to get them where they want to go. If it breaks, take it to the nerd who gives a shit. The more fiberglass cowls and covers you slap on top to hide the inner workings of the thing and automatic features you implement to abstract it all away from the user, the better, from their perspective. The damn car should just go.How it goes is not of any concern.
Linux needs to offer a similar experience if it wants mass market appeal any time soon. The alternative, trying to actually spark that curiosity in people to enjoy understanding how the machine works, is far too slow of a process to make any measurable movement of the needle of user adoption over time. Low barrier to entry isn’t good enough when zero barrier to entry exists and is already the standard.
It’s not just that they may not care. They may not know what they’re being asked or know what the consequences are for choosing either option. Then they sit there for 30 minutes searching the internet for what the question means.
honest question: have you ever tried to fresh install windows on a pc or laptop that didn’t have an OS (or a previous windows) installed?
I found it way more unintuitive than for example kubuntu installer in the past years.
have you ever tried to fresh install windows on a pc or laptop that didn’t have an OS
Thing is, most non-Linux users didn’t install their OS: It came with the machine.
Unfortunately, most have never installed an OS and so have no frame of reference of how difficult it should be. The majority just turn on the machine and the OS is already there, so for them, anything more complicated than that is already harder than what they expect.
Also, hardware compatibility. There is no easy way to know how compatible a given machine is. If the common user installs Linux and runs into compatibility problems immediately, then that will make them think Windows is better, because it doesn’t have those issues.
For Linux to reach mass adoption it needs to come pre-installed on machines or else it’s just too much to ask from the masses. Also, never underestimate tech illiteracy.
It is true that Windows is harder to install than Linux, but most don’t install Windows: It came with the machine.
I haven’t. I suppose that’s a large chunk of where the advantage comes from, isn’t it? New computers are expected to just come with the OS on them already. The entire process of installing an OS no matter whose you use is a completely alien concept to most people, and anyone who thinks it’s “not that hard for the average person” is daft.
Are OEM Linux installs even a thing? For like, ““real”” hardware, from ““real”” (read: mainstream enough to buy on a shelf at Best Buy) manufacturers? Those are what we need to be steering people to, IMO, if we ever want Linux to be competitive with Windows and macOS for an average person.
I hope I’m not moving the goalposts too far here, but I do want to stress that if at any point in this process a consumer has to go out of their way to get the Linux experience, it will never compete. Every lowering of the barrier is progress, but there is a critical mass point we clearly haven’t reached yet.
Yes but also if I told my wife to try “install Linux”, she’d be lost before finding out where to start. Not that she’s dumb, but because she has no practical knowledge (or any interest to learn) to do anything outside her browser or few apps there that she needs or wants. If there’s something that needs to be done on the computer, she asks me because it’s my area of expertise.
But on the other hand, I’m not thinking for a shit about medical questions. As a medical doctor she can answer my stupid questions on that topic.
Most of your comment is about changing os in general and not Linux particularly. It’s certainly a factor but you have to admit some of them like Mint is dead easy for anyone who can out some effort. Download Linux Mint, install a burner like Rufus, select iso and click burn, boot into it from BIOS and just clock threw most of them with default settings which is good enough for someone who is not tech savvy. The only time I had trouble installing Linux was with nixos GUI installer which had a broken setting but never had any issues with Mint, fedora or Debian.
From where? Which download? Where should I save it? Where did I save it?
install a burner like Rufus
What’s a burner? What’s rufus? How am I supposed to know what any of this means?
select iso and click burn
What does iso mean? You mean the file from earlier? Where did I save that? Why do I click burn? I don’t want to start a fire. I’m not burning a disc!
boot into it from bios
Now you want me to kick my computer with a boot? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, that seems wrong. The fuck is a bios? How do I get there? What do I do once I’m in there?
I’m obviously exaggerating but holy shit you have to realize that even being able to begin to understand your shorthand instructions through context clues requires a level of domain knowledge far beyond the average user.
You do realise you can just look up every single one of that qn? And you proceeded to completely ignore the main point that this isn’t an issue with Linux but switching OS in general. Not my problem if you completely miss the point and choose to ask question about the obviously simplified steps made to show how easy it is when you actually spend some effort.
Also there are thousands and millions of articles explaining exactly this step by step that anyone literate can follow. You don’t need to understand what it is or how it works, simply following the instructions from an article with photos and that will do. You cannot fuck up an Linux Mint installation if you just use your eyes and read without messing with defaults.
Yes, I’m well aware. I didn’t ignore your point just because I used your own streamlined instructions for my stupid joke about how clueless the average user is.
You’re correct that the complexity of installing an OS isn’t Linux specific, and that certain Linux distros are significantly easier to set up than say, Windows.
But just because the instructions are straightforward if you already have some familiarity with computers, or are driven enough to look up shit and learn, doesn’t make them accessible to the average joe. That’s the point I was making.
I did tech support for my school in my youth. I’ve tutored and led lectures for a freshman intro to programming course (two separate semesters). I have roughly 5 years of corporate internal IT under my belt, and over 4 (and counting) years of sysadmin/engineering.
In all that time, at the absolute most generous estimate, maybe half of the people/end users would have been capable of installing even a simple to install OS like Mint. Yes, including the new Computer Science majors. Less than that would be willing to put forth the effort (to learn the terminology, search and read to clarify confusion, etc).
I mean correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like getting an ISO on a flash drive is pretty basic computer skills, something that even if you’ve never heard of before would be easy to do as long as you aren’t too computer illiterate. And at least for my distro of choice (i use fedora btw) they have a media writer tool thats just an easy exe file that will automatically download and install the ISO to your selected flash drive.
Also when I was a windows user I still would get the windows ISO and flash it to a thumbstick and use that to install windows. Is that not fairly common on Windows too? I’ve installed Windows on a few PCs for friends and family over the years, and I’ve also always used an ISO on a flash drive.
After writing this I read your last sentence again and realized that your point is pretty much agreeing with me, most people could install Linux but they probably wouldn’t be confident the first time around. I dunno I’m really high and just sort of rambling, have a good day.
I mean correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like getting an ISO on a flash drive is pretty basic computer skills, something that even if you’ve never heard of before would be easy to do as long as you aren’t too computer illiterate.
That last bit is doing a ton of lifting here.
Having worked for a company’s internal tech support, I highly doubt that even half of the employees I supported would be capable of that, and that’s only because that half were good enough with computers that they never had to call in for help, so I don’t know their skill level.
Knowing what an ISO even is already puts you above the average user by a significant margin.
True. I guess my thoughts on the average tech literacy of any given individual might be biased because almost everyone I’ve grown up with and been friends with have decent knowledge of computing and what I consider basic stuff like iso’s and flashing them.
But thinking of the group of individuals I work with right now I suppose 40 - 50% would struggle or atleast need to read a web page or two on how to do it
Most people could for sure: but in the same way that most people could do the motorcycle maintenance I do regularly.
Remove spark plugs to inspect, change the brake pads, change the oil and replace the oil filter, top up the brake fluid, heck: even just get the chain tension correct. None of it’s even physically difficult, but most people are terrified of breaking something, or otherwise so unfamiliar with the basic tools required that “torque to spec” sounds more like a spell than instruction.
The last time I installed Linux mint, something went screwy with the partition, so I had to run a couple updates in Linux and then a couple command line arguments to get it to show the grub on startup. That process was easy, but someone unfamiliar would hardly know what to search for, and would likely be as uncomfortable for many folks as it would be to get a stripped bolt out of the engine case. Not rocket surgery, but intimidating the first time, and possibly the point at which they get a professional involved.
There’s a lot more to it than that. Which ISO do you download? How do you make the USB installable. What to do if the USB doesn’t boot when you restart the computer. Do you want to manually partition things? What the hell’s a partition?
There’s installing Linux, then there’s confidently installing Linux.
ISO? USB? What kind of amateur hour is this?
I just have a BOOTP server running on my LAN that allows me to netboot any x86 machine straight into the Debian installer.
I fell asleep halfway through your comment
Interesting. How do you host that?
I use dnsmasq on my router (I use a small server-grade PC as a router). It’s both a DHCP server as well as a caching DNS. Next to that it also runs a TFTP server. TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) is a standard for simple file transfers mainly used for network booting.
If you tell a machine to boot from the network, it will basically request an IP through DHCP and with that DHCP response comes a list of available network boot options. Each option is contains the name of a file it can load from the TFTP server. If you select one of the options, it will download that file and execute it. That file will usually be a bootloader (like Grub) which will then take over the boot process.
I have set up a bunch of different network boot options, including a Debian installer, a small Linux rescue system and Memtest86+ . That way I can always network-boot any machine on my LAN to either install an OS or diagnose problems.
Yeah, we really need to stop taking about it as if it is difficult.
I think most folk’s apprehension comes not from the difficulty but because a certain type of person wants people to think that it is difficult.
Most teachers (the ones educating the youth on tech!) can’t figure out how to play a YouTube video. Hell they can’t figure out how to take a photo on a phone or send a text. Installing Linux is difficult for the average person. The average tech savvy person, it’s easy. Related xkcd as always,
It is difficult for a huge portion of the population. Hell man, my neighbor came over the other day and asked me if I know how to copy stuff to a USB drive. He’s about my age, so it’s not like he’s ancient or anything, he just doesn’t know anything about computers like most people these days.
There’s “difficult” in the sense of a person’s reasonable ability to follow rather straightforward prompts, even if they don’t know what they mean. Linux installers are rather low difficulty here.
Then there’s “difficult” in the sense of how much a typical person will tolerate being rushed through a bunch of mystifying questions just to get through to the other side, particularly when an alternative option that doesn’t ask them at all is available. Linux is atrocious in that regard.
Really hot take: more choice is actively bad for people who don’t care. Which is far and away most of them. The kind of personality matrix that is attracted to Linux as-is tends to be the kind that wants everything configurable, and for the system to never assume anything, and let the user roll everything themselves. Most people are not like this and they don’t appreciate this “courtesy”. Giving them the option at all is the deterrent.
If you want to talk Linux installers that are on-par with the UX feel experience provided by macOS or Windows from a normie’s perspective, show me one that doesn’t ask anything of the user that doesn’t also appear in one of those installers. Not a single thing. If it does, that’s a speed bump that has no reason to be there. Because the person who is using it likely doesn’t have the answer, and if the correct course of action in that situation is, “It doesn’t matter, just use the default”, then why did it even ask? It should just do it.
I’m not suggesting we need to completely rob all installers of any choice, either. We can have a two-tier system, so people who actually know the answers to those questions can select the advanced install, and people who don’t care can select the streamlined install.
The dirty little secret about the mass market aversion to Linux is that people are genuinely not interested in or remotely curious about the inner workings of their computers. Those of us who like to immerse ourselves in it for fun are outliers. Any one of us who denies it has their head extremely far up their ass.
It’s similar to car mechanics. The vast majority of drivers don’t know or care how the machine works, they just want it to get them where they want to go. If it breaks, take it to the nerd who gives a shit. The more fiberglass cowls and covers you slap on top to hide the inner workings of the thing and automatic features you implement to abstract it all away from the user, the better, from their perspective. The damn car should just go. How it goes is not of any concern.
Linux needs to offer a similar experience if it wants mass market appeal any time soon. The alternative, trying to actually spark that curiosity in people to enjoy understanding how the machine works, is far too slow of a process to make any measurable movement of the needle of user adoption over time. Low barrier to entry isn’t good enough when zero barrier to entry exists and is already the standard.
It’s not just that they may not care. They may not know what they’re being asked or know what the consequences are for choosing either option. Then they sit there for 30 minutes searching the internet for what the question means.
honest question: have you ever tried to fresh install windows on a pc or laptop that didn’t have an OS (or a previous windows) installed? I found it way more unintuitive than for example kubuntu installer in the past years.
Thing is, most non-Linux users didn’t install their OS: It came with the machine.
Unfortunately, most have never installed an OS and so have no frame of reference of how difficult it should be. The majority just turn on the machine and the OS is already there, so for them, anything more complicated than that is already harder than what they expect.
Also, hardware compatibility. There is no easy way to know how compatible a given machine is. If the common user installs Linux and runs into compatibility problems immediately, then that will make them think Windows is better, because it doesn’t have those issues.
For Linux to reach mass adoption it needs to come pre-installed on machines or else it’s just too much to ask from the masses. Also, never underestimate tech illiteracy.
It is true that Windows is harder to install than Linux, but most don’t install Windows: It came with the machine.
I haven’t. I suppose that’s a large chunk of where the advantage comes from, isn’t it? New computers are expected to just come with the OS on them already. The entire process of installing an OS no matter whose you use is a completely alien concept to most people, and anyone who thinks it’s “not that hard for the average person” is daft.
Are OEM Linux installs even a thing? For like, ““real”” hardware, from ““real”” (read: mainstream enough to buy on a shelf at Best Buy) manufacturers? Those are what we need to be steering people to, IMO, if we ever want Linux to be competitive with Windows and macOS for an average person.
System76 sells OEM Linux computers, but they don’t sell them in Best Buy, to my knowledge.
It’s a start!
I hope I’m not moving the goalposts too far here, but I do want to stress that if at any point in this process a consumer has to go out of their way to get the Linux experience, it will never compete. Every lowering of the barrier is progress, but there is a critical mass point we clearly haven’t reached yet.
You can get most Dell laptops shipped with Ubuntu, but I don’t think that’s available at a brick and mortar retailer.
Yes but also if I told my wife to try “install Linux”, she’d be lost before finding out where to start. Not that she’s dumb, but because she has no practical knowledge (or any interest to learn) to do anything outside her browser or few apps there that she needs or wants. If there’s something that needs to be done on the computer, she asks me because it’s my area of expertise.
But on the other hand, I’m not thinking for a shit about medical questions. As a medical doctor she can answer my stupid questions on that topic.
For some tinkerer yeah sure it’s easy as pie
Whoosh.
95% of people can’t figure out “what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
Most of your comment is about changing os in general and not Linux particularly. It’s certainly a factor but you have to admit some of them like Mint is dead easy for anyone who can out some effort. Download Linux Mint, install a burner like Rufus, select iso and click burn, boot into it from BIOS and just clock threw most of them with default settings which is good enough for someone who is not tech savvy. The only time I had trouble installing Linux was with nixos GUI installer which had a broken setting but never had any issues with Mint, fedora or Debian.
From where? Which download? Where should I save it? Where did I save it?
What’s a burner? What’s rufus? How am I supposed to know what any of this means?
What does iso mean? You mean the file from earlier? Where did I save that? Why do I click burn? I don’t want to start a fire. I’m not burning a disc!
Now you want me to kick my computer with a boot? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, that seems wrong. The fuck is a bios? How do I get there? What do I do once I’m in there?
I’m obviously exaggerating but holy shit you have to realize that even being able to begin to understand your shorthand instructions through context clues requires a level of domain knowledge far beyond the average user.
You do realise you can just look up every single one of that qn? And you proceeded to completely ignore the main point that this isn’t an issue with Linux but switching OS in general. Not my problem if you completely miss the point and choose to ask question about the obviously simplified steps made to show how easy it is when you actually spend some effort.
Also there are thousands and millions of articles explaining exactly this step by step that anyone literate can follow. You don’t need to understand what it is or how it works, simply following the instructions from an article with photos and that will do. You cannot fuck up an Linux Mint installation if you just use your eyes and read without messing with defaults.
Yes, I’m well aware. I didn’t ignore your point just because I used your own streamlined instructions for my stupid joke about how clueless the average user is.
You’re correct that the complexity of installing an OS isn’t Linux specific, and that certain Linux distros are significantly easier to set up than say, Windows.
But just because the instructions are straightforward if you already have some familiarity with computers, or are driven enough to look up shit and learn, doesn’t make them accessible to the average joe. That’s the point I was making.
I did tech support for my school in my youth. I’ve tutored and led lectures for a freshman intro to programming course (two separate semesters). I have roughly 5 years of corporate internal IT under my belt, and over 4 (and counting) years of sysadmin/engineering.
In all that time, at the absolute most generous estimate, maybe half of the people/end users would have been capable of installing even a simple to install OS like Mint. Yes, including the new Computer Science majors. Less than that would be willing to put forth the effort (to learn the terminology, search and read to clarify confusion, etc).
well, duh. you gotta pick a download that’s under about 4.3 gb, burn that iso image to disc, boot to that… then click ‘install’.
I mean correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like getting an ISO on a flash drive is pretty basic computer skills, something that even if you’ve never heard of before would be easy to do as long as you aren’t too computer illiterate. And at least for my distro of choice (i use fedora btw) they have a media writer tool thats just an easy exe file that will automatically download and install the ISO to your selected flash drive.
Also when I was a windows user I still would get the windows ISO and flash it to a thumbstick and use that to install windows. Is that not fairly common on Windows too? I’ve installed Windows on a few PCs for friends and family over the years, and I’ve also always used an ISO on a flash drive.
After writing this I read your last sentence again and realized that your point is pretty much agreeing with me, most people could install Linux but they probably wouldn’t be confident the first time around. I dunno I’m really high and just sort of rambling, have a good day.
That last bit is doing a ton of lifting here.
Having worked for a company’s internal tech support, I highly doubt that even half of the employees I supported would be capable of that, and that’s only because that half were good enough with computers that they never had to call in for help, so I don’t know their skill level.
Knowing what an ISO even is already puts you above the average user by a significant margin.
True. I guess my thoughts on the average tech literacy of any given individual might be biased because almost everyone I’ve grown up with and been friends with have decent knowledge of computing and what I consider basic stuff like iso’s and flashing them.
But thinking of the group of individuals I work with right now I suppose 40 - 50% would struggle or atleast need to read a web page or two on how to do it
Most people could for sure: but in the same way that most people could do the motorcycle maintenance I do regularly.
Remove spark plugs to inspect, change the brake pads, change the oil and replace the oil filter, top up the brake fluid, heck: even just get the chain tension correct. None of it’s even physically difficult, but most people are terrified of breaking something, or otherwise so unfamiliar with the basic tools required that “torque to spec” sounds more like a spell than instruction.
The last time I installed Linux mint, something went screwy with the partition, so I had to run a couple updates in Linux and then a couple command line arguments to get it to show the grub on startup. That process was easy, but someone unfamiliar would hardly know what to search for, and would likely be as uncomfortable for many folks as it would be to get a stripped bolt out of the engine case. Not rocket surgery, but intimidating the first time, and possibly the point at which they get a professional involved.
Good comparison!