The best one I’ve ever heard is they like the Microsoft wallpapers. Yes i told them you can use them on linux too. But they argued with me that they wouldn’t be compatible.
Most people’s reasons in my experience demonstrate to me that they have a perception of Linux as it was 15+ years ago.
I discussed switching to Linux with a group of friends in a voice chat some time ago, most were fairly open to it, and one or two have switched since, but mainly their reasons were time constraints, not wanting to go through the process of backing up files, and finding alternative software.
One guy in particular brought up gaming, MS office, and some other particular software they used. I showed them protondb and every game they looked up was gold or higher, showed them libre office which they could not complain about since it generally works a lot nicer, and it turned out that other software was available as a .deb. After all of this, the reason they gave me was “but I like Windows”.
Fair enough I guess, though they couldn’t really produce the reason as to why.
Generally, people just don’t like any kind of change, even if it has the potential to make them a lot happier.
I think for the MS Office thing, it depends on what it’s being used for. If it’s just creating a fresh document or editing a simple existing docx, LibreOffice it totally fine; I’ve heavily exclusively used LibreOffice Writer during my time in college and been okay, as I’m either just writing in MLA or using a provided Word file that I can then just save as an ODT after initial conversion and export as a PDF when it comes time to turn it in.
However, from what I can tell, if you’re working in an organization that extensively uses MS Office, files may need to survive multiple openings and edits between multiple editors, and multiple cycles of translating between document representations can lead to degraded documents and just make your work life absolutely miserable. Thus, LibreOffice isn’t an option, though I hear there are more MS-compatible suites that are usable on Linux, though not all of them FOSS.
This is why I’ve so far left my mother alone about Linux; maybe if I saw some evidence that her workflow would be more amenable to LibreOffice than I think it is, I’d reconsider.
I just had the damnest experience with Office. Some institution required me to deliver a “doc” document with it’s respective PDF. I’m a Linux user, so there was gonna be some trouble. This document was viewed and edited by several instances, so I decided to use an online tool. Google Docs it was, but this was before the doc requirement. So, after the fact, my solution was similar: to just use the online version of Office, which I had access to through my job. Cool. Well, no. Delivered the document and the doc wasn’t consistent with the Office desktop they were using. Long story short I had to figure out their Office version and borrow a computer with the same Office desktop version they were using, pirated, of course.
My experience with LibreOffice is it works fine if you’re doing straightforward things by yourself. MLA formatted essay? “Twelve point double-spaced Times New Roman or you get a zero” and they never noticed my papers were Liberation Sans? Sure that works. “Pick a partner and make a 20 slide PowerPoint presentation” is a nightmare because sharing files back and forth between Powerpoint and Impress doesn’t work very well.
The more usable solution to that is Google Docs. I had a group project with four other guys, and we were all sat around a table typing in the same document at the same time on three different operating systems. Played perfectly well with Windows, Mac and Linux. Us Linux nerds who hate “the cloud” because “someone else’s computer” and Google because “
Don’tBe Evil” kind of lurch at that one, but it functions.
“but I like Windows”
I can’t imagine any better reason to use Windows than that.
but they don’t know the alternatives
like a child who only eats one type of food but never even touched othersI still can’t imagine any better reason.
because you haven’t tried the alternatives
tbf it is hard to try new things, especially initially
It’s my opinion that most people think of all the technology as it were 15 years ago. Apple was innovative, Google wasn’t evil, Windows worked well, and Linux was not as accessible as it is today.
I had two bouts with Linux in the distant past, and neither time did I think Linux was anything worth pursuing. Not that it was bad, I just didn’t see a benefit over the alternatives. In fact the alternatives had all the benefits in my mind.
When I switched a year ago, I was blown away how far it had come as far as being accessible. Now I can’t imagine using Windows as my primary OS ever again.
not wanting to go through the process of backing up files
This was a big thing when I was helping some people with Windows 10s EOL, A lot of folks just don’t have a 2nd drive to back stuff up onto.
As a compulsive data-hoarder the idea of having everything on a single drive with no backup plan, local or “cloud” based… Terrifying! You could write a horror movie about it.
I just quasi ran into storage issues. have 1 qnap with 16tb raid1… NTFS
I can’t for the life of me get it to connect to Linux, detects it being connected, won’t display as a drive.
I stupidly installed bazzite, which is stupidly restrictive (so I’ve learned) on fstab… found out after I had to boot into grub to edit fstab back since it wouldnt let me edit the file since bazzite revoked me root access? ok… that was the deal breaker for me (with bazzite, not Linux)
Okay hear me out… When you say all those words in a sentence, I have honestly no idea what you are saying. But furthermore it looks like it didn’t work (or so I think). That is the reason why people (me included) don’t dare to switch
It looks like a hassle, it takes time to learn, people don’t want to back up 2 their files (I know, I don’t get that either), they don’t want to think about “bazzite” or “fstab”, partition the drive for dual boot or search hours looking for a solution.
The people with no or limited knowledge about computers want to open their laptop, start edge or chrome (I know I know) and watch cat movies on Instagram.
I really wanna make the jump, but the unknown with all possible hassle is holding me back.
And apparently mint is super easy, but it will take time and courage!
Really it depends what you use your computer for. If you’re a casual user, and all you do is browse the web, watch videos, and play games, the transition is no worse than moving from Windows to Mac. There are some small quirks to get used to, but anybody should be able to figure out 90% of it in a matter of minutes.
Well, except you don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars for the Apple thing. That’s a steep transition to me.
When you say all those words in a sentence, I have honestly no idea what you are saying.
ya know. I’ve read this a lot directed at me… I clearly have a communication issue. I’ll reread everything and try to figure myself out .
I understand your words but I also get this. Guess we are the same 🙃
People like to recommend immutable distros like bazzite because in theory they’re much harder to break, but in reality they are a niche community and are nowhere ready for primetime for casual users
can confirm. I can understand how to make things work as I need it to in Linux, but I figured I’d try bazzote because people were saying how great it is. knowing how to manipulate Linux how I want, and using bazzite because very annoying because of the restrictions which I didn’t read about before hand. I wasn’t blaming Linux as a whole, just bazzitr specifically for trying to protect me. essentially they let me break it, but wouldn’t let me fix it.
It surprises me that there are users like that that haven’t yet gone through some kind of major data loss event. Or maybe they’ve only used a computer for a couple years…
Edit: not those with archives, those with a single disc of course.
If you ever talk to someone who’s worked in a place offering data recovery. They’ve probably met a lot of people who’ve gone through exactly that.
After all of this, the reason they gave me was “but I like Windows”.
This is the response I normally get as well, which infuriates me to no end, because it isn’t an actual reason, it is ultimately their decision, and I feel like they are making a mistake out of laziness or perceived comfort.
for alot of people their relationship with windows is like that of an abusive partner. which is why you see alot of the same excuses pop up
One friend told me that he likes the Windows 11 ui.
You should dress up KDE to look like Windows 11 just to prove a point.
-
“I could install linux, but what am I gonna do on Linux?” (Note: Some people just think OS is an amusement park)
-
“I could install linux but then I have to type commands into a terminal?”
-
Mostly I can’t be bothered, or Roblox won’t run, or some stereotypes about Linux being difficult.
“It’s old tech”
Devil’s advocate here. When people complain about phone calls, or going out in public, or being social, I think “it’s not hard.” I know for some people it is a massive hassle.
Apply that same sentiment to having to learn an OS that is irrelevant to your job or seems difficult or you’re not interested in.
the dumbest reason was that they hate penquins, but the one you can’t argue with is that they don’t need to because it does all they need it to do
If the next words out of that foxes mouth arnt a tirade of absolute unfiltered hate towards gnome. Then we goanna have problems. And I think Its time for a nice new fox fur scarf.
The gnomes just want a quiet, peaceful life in the safety of your garden. They are friends.
Guh-nome, on the other hand…
KDE or stay away :P
“I wanna try out this FreeBSD thing.”
“Never used Linux,” They say, typing on a chromebook or android phone, before picking up their steamdeck.
while browsing the web (hosted on linux).
Not to interject, but when people talk about using “Linux” they’re generally referring to desktop Linux (usually GNU/Linux). ChromeOS and SteamOS are Linux distros of a sort under the hood, but they’re also highly curated experiences. Android technically uses the Linux kernel but architecturally it’s so drastically different from basically any other system using it that it’s quite misleading to call it “Linux” in the colloquial sense.
“I don’t want to learn something new”
How tf am I supposed to respond to that?
If it came pre-installed on laptop majority wouldn’t mind.
That’s really the crux of it. M$ bought in back in the 80s and people are too damn lazy to change their defaults.
“it’s not for desktop use”
Why you out there telling people to install it? Those who want it will find it. This isn’t an evangelical mission.
Yeah like, holy shit the pseudo religious bullshit here is getting annoying. I like Linux, I am supremely unlikely to ever even touch a windows system again (minus the occasional time where I might have to for work when accessing client systems) but this weird cult behavior is aggravating.
Do you have just a few minutes to chat about our lord and saviour Richard Stallman?
Can’t, whenever Stallman comes up I have to think back to the time where he while on stage, pulled something off his foot and ate it.
Eat of this toenail, for it is my flesh. Do this in remembrance of me.
Zomg, I just lol’d so loud at this.
This. I don’t mind what other use, nor I feel the need to be annoying AF telling them what they should do.
Isn’t it?
The arguments of preference and convenience are falling by the wayside as megacorporations take more and more control over not just your hardware but your behavioral patterns by dictating what you can install and how it functions. They suck up all your personal, private data for AI training without your consent.
I get it, shit sucks. It really does, but we have to remember who is to blame here and it’s not each other. There has to be some urgency here because this is a battle and we, the consumers, the ordinary people, are surely losing. It’s not about being holier than thou, it’s about lifting each other up.
If Linux gets popular the mega corps will just follow them there and then you’ll be asking them to uninstall Dell os or at least remove the Linux recall (powered by bing) that it comes bundled with. Just look at the modern state of android.
Android is the way it is because Google is close sourcing more and more of what makes Android useful as a mobile OS. It would be infinitely harder for some megacorp to do the same thing for a desktop OS.
My grandfather’s reason for it. “It will be too different from my current system”
… the only thing he does is the web browser, and bookworm deluxe which i have confirmed does work via wine. I was recommending him install an OS called q4os, which I have on my laptop, I showed him the side by side comparison of q4os vs windows. For a point of reference this is what q4os looks like
I think he is too scared of change.
I still don’t know how Wine works and I’m a Linux advocate.
It translates Windows API calls to X and POSIX API calls. Theoretically it comes with a performance hit but as benchmarks have shown that is usually not the case as both Wine and the entire system as a whole are more efficient than Windows. Wine will fail whenever an application requests an API call that is not implemented yet, sometimes copying DLLs from Windows helps, sometimes…
yea but he wouldn’t need to handle that, I do all his setup, he just has to click the shortcut that opens the game just like he does currently.
I’m still not great with Wine myself, but sit down for an afternoon and try out Bottles. https://www.howtogeek.com/running-windows-apps-on-linux-with-bottles/
I’m on Arch and even the wiki just recommends using the Flatpak. It’s pretty obvious once you get the hang of it, each Bottle is just it’s own little, specific Windows configuration. Try running through the example on that site and installing Notepad++ (or something else of your choice) and you’ll probably have an a-ha! moment.
It’s pretty simple actually. Mine runs the program as it would normally and whenever the program reaches out to say “create this file” or “load this font” for example Wine will grab that call and translate it into a Linux OS command. As long as the program gets all their Windows API calls and windows specific files requests satisfied it will happily continue.
This is why ARM support is such a hassle for wine since the processor is with a different architecture so the compiled binary needs to be translated as well with all the nuances.
I have never managed to get any exe to start with wine and god i have tried. I have no idea why it never works but a menu comes up and i can choose a lot of stuff, nothing in there works so i have just given up. Putting things and run through steam is stupid but works so i just run everything through steam 😂 Wish I didn’t have to.
Wine has some compatibility differences between its versions — I’ve had to downgrade it before because the newer version didn’t work with the app I wanted. So, if you’re ever in the mood to try again, you could check out an older version, and perhaps try launching a simpler app like notepad which is iirc supplied with Wine.
Also, Wine launched from the command line, with the exe as the parameter, usually prints a lot of stuff some of which may say what libraries weren’t found, and
winetricksallows installing those libraries easily (if it’s still around, I haven’t done this in a while). Typically something like ‘MS C++ redistributables’ or the .NET framework is necessary.Being in this same boat with wine, and my ever-growing hate of Windows is what made me stay in Linux and never look back. I’ve been using everything linux-native for the last 9 years, and not once have I thought of using Windows again.
I do, however play games in Linux, ever since my wife got me a steam deck for my birthday 😁
That’s on you
my parents were open to try it, and theyre still happy they didnt have to buy a new win11 laptop
