Haha, Don’t offer people windows 11 , even in jest. It’s clearly the opposite of “being excellent” to them ( rule 3).

Gotta love mods.

Who is this mythical average user I keep hearing about?

I’ve never had a problem forcing people at work - even those with very limited IT knowledge - to run things from cli in windows.

For years in one place I worked the IT support first line solution was to tell all users to force a gp update from the windows cli. They’d point to a nice little how to guide with screenshots and everything. I don’t know if any of the thousands of people working there were the all important average user either though, probably not.

Sounds like some deliberately obscure concentrations of power.

The fear bit is really problematic though as scared people are not ideal decision makers.

There’s been investment bubbles, overshooting and disingenuous rent seeking in many economies before. It was temporarily reduced in many western economies by various FDR type policies in the '30s-'60s. The '70s and '80s were just the banks wresting back their freedom to implement market “rationality”. And we get the benefits ever since.

People do keep voting for it though so it is hard to argue they’re not satisfied. Even the ones who protest vote don’t seem to see the “investment” markets as any part of the problem; or as important at all. That’s either some pretty effective demagoguery, or some dumb fucking electorate.

That is tolerable, so long as they don’t besmirch the “btw”.

They could also say summit like: " i am a colossal doric"

The “btw” is insincere if they didn’t do it manually, they should be prohibited from using it.

Arch’s tag to neatly summarise the aloof snobbery must be preserved. If archintall script users can say it; how long until “I use manjaro btw”, or “i use endeavouros btw”. At which point it just has no value - I don’t believe these people are genuinely considering themselves superior to other users - as reflected in several other comments here.

Archinstall script should be modified to install a keylogger that will bork the system if ever “arch btw” is detected.

It is probably just a video he’s making about how to self-host a 3GW nuclear power station, so that you can self-host a hundred million raspberry pi cluster.

All of the sweet, sweet gross domestic product statistics. Mmm I love GDPness.

I’m sure by windows 12 or 13 coprolite will be so good they will get rid of both control panel and command prompt/powershell. The best ui is no ui.

In any case, the users won’t want to mess with settings once the OS already knows which advert they want to see next.

yes

You have to be careful to get a phone and model supported by one of the projects. Check all compatibility and install instructions before buying a phone. And if you need a manufacturer supplied unlock code, make sure the manufacturer still gives them out . Some will discontinue that service after a few years.

For graphene os you need one of the gogle devices - i’ve never tried it but i think its the one most people like.

lineageos supports more devices usually older.

I recently got lineageos working on sony experia xa2 - very happy with it. But to get there i had to go try like 6 computers before one of them sucessfully sent the bootloader unlock code over the ADB. For some reason usb is temperamental when doing stuff like that

It is a lot easier on really old stuff like samsung galaxy s3 or s4 if you can tolerate something that old. Maybe you’ll lso end upon an old version of lineage.

Once you get the bootloader unlocked it is generally straightforward. but modern phones make that fist part awkward.

I backup my precious dick pics at several offsite locations by sending them to as many people as possible as often as possible.

8-

Personally I’d advise against linux then. even if it means a million downvotes here.

Windows or actually OSX (if you’re ok with mac hardware) or chromeos will work much better for people who don’t ever want to do any basic configuration of their system. All of those have their own issues of course, so it’s a tradeoff for the user to consider. If doing no basic config is the #1 requirement, then I think that rules out linux as the correct choice.

If a user would stay maybe 12-24 months behind the cutting edge then they might be ok with a rolling release. The one time I did get a latest gen Wifi/BT card, I had to migrate from Debian to Arch to get it working.

I belive the only way youll get that experince with linux is with defined hardware - laptops or steamdeck. Linux is never going to cover all possible bleeding edge hardware combinations in a custom PC with no user config effort.

Until or unless linux becmes bigger than MS, and all HW manufactures get theur linux drivers working before the device goes on sale, as a matter of course. Never gonna happpen unless MS actually goes bust or something. I can’t see linux ever competing in B2B market; do all linux distributers combined have the resources to smarm up to a million corpo procurement twats? I don’t think so.

I see you have only two different answers so far. which is just not playing the game. i’ll give you another two; there are at least 15 “best lightweight linux distro”. For your use, I’d pick any one at random, try it out on a bootable usb.

Personslly, I’d try stock debian and choose LXQT for a lightweight desktop.

puppylinux also deserves a mention, I always have a bootble PL usb lying around somewhere. Its reliable , fast for a usb, very good potato-compatibility, has loads of useful programmes and utilitiea already in there. I’ve never actually installed it permanently though. Scared of making a commitment to slackware that I don’t understand.

I’d avoid Damn Small and Tiny Core though - unless you really need them. Cool as they are they are well out of mainstream.

You can try the android netflix app via Waydroid(with widevine).

Maybe not as resilient/convenient/stable as a browser, but i think you can set up waydroid app as a single icon.

Of course then you’re just swapping MS for gooogle.

Windows: I refuse to shut down because of a, b , c

Me: But I already clos. . .

Windows: No you didnt’t, stop lying!

Me : Well, I pressed the X and the window dissappeared.

Windows: Lol, noob. Did you never even heard of a task managers?

That’s not something that I’d think is any of my business to want or not want.

I can’t really answer the last question, I’d need to know a lot more about all thendifferent things these microsoft users are doing; what’re the alternatives; and, how disruptive might the transition be. On balance, given the uncertainties, I’d have to say probably not.

I mean if i stopped using Microsoft entirely (i.e. at work) I’d have to find a new job, probably one I’m less experienced at. And likely I’d end up working for a bigger bunch of scumbags. Likely no net gain and a load of botheration in the meanwhile.

Also i might miss the regular BSOD inspired tea breaks . . .

Haha market cap, market share , they’re still all about selling stuff so dont really apply./ Market share is normally measured in share of revenue in most industries.

There are lots of webpages, tutorials, youtubes and stuff like that for these people already. I’m sure they can also pay companies like canonical for more dedicated support if that’s what they need.

If you want to welcome people, go ahead and do it, nothing stopping you. Create the webpage or forum or youtube channel, distribution, or write the book whatever is missing. Just make sure to moderate it to remove CLI based answers and block users like me.

“I” exist and I’m sure I’m never going to be part of your “we”. The current situation of linux home user base seems just fine to me without pandering to a load of windows users. I think you should work on your desired subculture and keep me out if it. Leave me out of it - i can stay over here under my bridge in linuxmemes wearing my new programming socks.

For the home market maybe you can look at valve and steamdeck or something as an example of an acessible linux sub-culture. Valve doesn’t maintain and support that for free though. It’d be interesting to know how many full time employees they have on steamdeck OS just for the one device (and maybe a few gaming perpherals) and one GUI. Then expand that to all esoteric hardware and all GUIs . . .
I guess chromeOS and a few forks of that is another similar example - i think that’s still linux kernel based - some limitations on hardware i think.

What I’d actually like to see is B2B growth (for user ) - but I don’t think linux will ever be bought by employers like mine - I know how the procurement department operates - and I can’t see that changing. There are plenty of people who don’t need my support trying business sales, redhat, canonical, suse etc and more power to them - but microsoft didn’t get big in B2B by being usable, nor by nor having “no CLI”, nor by having a supportive community to home users. They just packaged it in a way that ticked all the boxes for the corpo procurement types - though most B2B customers do need their own dedicated user support.

It’s open source, they can just make their own distro.

Laptops run off batteries a lot of the time - so compromising outright performance - full instruction set - for battery life will be attractive for many laptop users who use it on the go.

I’m no apple fanatic, I’d never get one, but I do see the appeal of those apple laptops.

I’m sure x86 could get closer on the performance to battery tradeoff if they wanted to; but I bet they’d be looking to price up at the apple level for that.