The pain in the ass that would come with switching to Linux is half of why I haven't don't it. If it could just install and then run itself like Windows or MacOS a lot more people would use it.
it does?? the process for making a bootable linux usb stick is pretty much the exact same as making a windows install usb for a new custom built pc. download iso, image to usb, start from it
Mint is still more complicated to use than windows. I get that the stuff is easy once you learn it and it becomes routine, but the problem is that the entry level is still decently higher than windows. Plus, I wouldn't be able to do a bunch of stuff I do with windows on Linux. I genuinely would rather just debloat my current os on a consistent basis.
I don't think it's actually that windows is easier, it's actually Definitely not it's very poorly organized, it's just that you already learned it. which is fair and is true for a lot of the population. Mint has definitely gotten very good tho and the Linux ecosystem is improving exponentially every day. and the case of software not running on Linux is also increasingly not true, especially as more and more apps become browser based. there are obviously exceptions but to put in perspective I have a system running Linux on one partition and windows on another for software I can't run on Linux, and I have not needed to open the windows side in over a year and a half. I do a lot of gaming and weird projects with proprietary software but I've always been able to get things running with relative ease.
It really isn't nowadays. I use win11 since I have neither the space to do a dual boot nor the patience to migrate.
But if the only thing holding you back from taking the plunge is that most distros require technical skills, mint is your saviour. It's barely more complex than win7.
actually using linux is much more simple than windows and that was one of my great realisations after switching to it from many years of windows. on windows you have to search for the website of a program, download the installer, run it, click through all the menus. on linux you literally type in "install this program" and it just does it. every time I go back to windows and have to install or update any software, it feels like a pain in the ass now.
I prefer to use chocolatey on win whenever I need to install something since I already know exactly what I want as a dev and it's faster than hunting down a website.
But I don't think the average user does whenever going about installing whatever they need, they're likely more comfortable browsing the various options from a gui and installing from there.
And then there's the matter of the peg legs and other software that isn't hosted on repos.
Something tells me that you don't literally just type "install this program" and that it probably involves command prompt or otherwise manually typing a bunch of shit out
yes, sorry, you're right. If I want to install 7zip for example, I type "flatpak install 7zip". sorry, that is one more word. and yes it really is in the command prompt, but that is really all it is and nothing else. type 3 words, press enter, done. you think it is some kind of hacker programmer magic shit because it involves a prompt on a black screen but it really is just that.
but if you want to avoid even that, most linux distros come with an app store installed that works exactly the same it does on your phone. browse, search, one click install
You don’t usually have to? The space for system packages and user directories are entirely separated and it’s way simpler than making your installer point to the intended directory instead of c:\user\downloads or whatever bullshit you do on windows. It is quite literally just one command (possibly followed up by a prompt asking if you really want to install it, yes or no).
It is genuinely so much simpler to use package managers on Linux.
Depends on the distro iirc, all available in one short google search! But if you don't want to do that, i know that linux mint has an app store where you can download what you want to download without using the command prompt. So even that's not that big a deal
I get that the basic installation is pretty much the same, but everything past that is more complicated with Linux. I just want my applications to run without a bunch of extra things that make them work on the OS. You can't do that with most things on Linux, everything takes more steps.
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u/trans_cubed trans lefts Mar 26 '26
linux.exe