I dislike the paradigm that there are “techy people/programmers” and “tech illiterates/non programmers”. Anyone can develop the skills to properly use unix interfaces given proper training; and I know that’s true because the whole world used to run (mostly) unix before corporate took over. Unix doesn’t need to be windowsified/macosified to get people to move over; people just need proper training to learn unix.
I don’t know any programming languages but can navigate around Linux, both TUI and GUI.
Why are so many Linux posts about “Why Linux” these days? We already use Linux. Isn’t there news on Linux anymore or what?
“Workflow”. There it is.
Linux used to be for nerds, programmers and tech people.
Now, it’s probably easier to use than Windows.
Defintiely! I recently bought a used Thinkpad and slapped Pop!_OS on it for my father-in-law. He’s 73 and he’s loving it! He proudly tells his friends that he is now “a part of a computer revolution”.
lmao, I wouldn’t call it a revolution. Simply different options, alternatives and/or values.
I have my Boomer dad using Linux Mint on his laptop, but he was still using Windows on his desktop PC.
Then it updated to Windows 11 and he HATES it and asked me for help to put Linux Mint on his desktop as well.
This is a real estate agent in his 70s who needs help making scans and downloading email attachments.
Yeah, I think Windows is becoming overly designed and optimized.
Leading to unnecessary complexities.
And 99% of computer use for most people is in a browser. No need for an overly complex OS, with constant stupid pop-ups to ruin that browser experience.
Always love to see article of non programmer people using Linux or Emacs!
Meanwhile I’m here still stuck in
vim
Linux, on the other hand, can easily boot up on a 10-year-old laptop with just 2GB of RAM, and work fine.
I’m not sure a modern day browser would be just fine with “only” 2GiB, unfortunately.
That’s what palemoon is for. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but if you don’t have the RAM to run
crysislibrewolf on high it’ll work.There’s Linux dists that can only requires less than 200 MB of RAM. Absolute Linux for an example, has a minimum system requirement of 64 MB RAM. Plenty of space left for memory hungry softwares like a browser.
Maybe with zRAM and a bit of swap it could run quite ok 🤷
4GB works. My kids use a T410 from 2010 with a SSD and it is a pleasant experience for daily use (browsing, YouTube, small Linux games)
As long as the drive the swap is on is an SSD, yeah absolutely
Im using a 4gb laptop with Xfce, and its definitely struggling sometimes. Even though it’s usable, I doubt 2gb would be enough
I used to have only 4GB in my old Linux HTPC, didn’t take much for it to choke when using the browser. Upgraded to 16GB and no issues since
I’ve tried Firefox limited to 1 GB for a laugh. It’s usable. It won’t do many tabs at the same time but it’s usable.
You can actually go lower than that but you’ll start to run into limitations with YouTube videos etc.
There are also other browsers out there that are more light-weight but perhaps not as feature-full as Firefox. Giving up extensions alone reduces a lot of complexity. If you fire up the package installer on any Linux distro and search for “browser” you’ll find a ton. There aren’t many engines but there are a lot of browsers.
Interesting. How do you limit RAM for an application?
With cgroups, it’s a standard kernel feature. You can limit RAM, CPU, network access, lots of things. It’s used in Docker, LXC, Kubernetes and lots of container solutions.
Cool, thank you!
Lynx 4 Life!
I have 3GB of RAM on my PC running Linux Mint, using LibreWolf, it works pretty great for me, I mean I can’t open 100 tabs, but 10-15 is possible
God I hate what the modern Internet does to my brain. I had to double check if that laptop is AI generated
It’s such an old laptop to feature in an article. I even opened the image URL to see if it’s one How to Geek just had on file they used. The photo was uploaded last year
I’m not sure if this is part of the “frequency illusion”, but I’ve noticed a lot more mainstream media talking about Linux as a viable alternative.
Probably because you associate more with lemmy, I think most lemmy users use linux
I highly doubt most do, just that the percentage of Linux users may be higher than on many other platforms.
The most used platform for Lemmy is likely still Windows or a mobile OS.
Yeah clearly Lemmy might have a lot of Linux users because Lemmy in itself is really niche. Way more than Linux.
I think Lemmy plays a part in it but also all the stuff with MS recently (and people getting tired of it).
I think most Lemmy users use Linux
I was thinking about this earlier today. I’d love to do a Lemmy wide survey to see how true this is or to what extent.
And recent fumbling of msft with recall
It’s not, I’ve been using Linux for 20 years and it’s been gradually getting more and more exposure on the main media. I think there was a huge push with Steam Machines and then another one with Proton, then every Windows screw up bumps it a little more. We’re probably going to get another bump in popularity in a short while when Windows 11 enables the new feature that will take screenshots of everything you do (credit cards, passwords, etc) and use an AI to search through them.
I’ve definitely seen more video content of people trying Linux or moving over completely after that announcement from MS.
I started using Linux prior starting programming…
But knowing some programming languages will not help much maintaining a linux distribution, tho
The problem solving though?
Hmm, maybe, but I would say understanding normal behaviour of bash commands and what drivers are does not directly involve knowing about coding.
I personally use windows (I play a lot of different games with friends, and setting all of them up in Linux is a lot of work) and I hate it.
However my mum only uses her laptop for browsing and zoom calls, so I installed Linux mint on that and it’s been going great, there are soooo much less issues than with modern windows.
Really? I have migrated to Fedora Linux and have had 0 issues playing games. Literally just installed steam then heroic launcher for my games on GOG and Epic. I did have a little issue get ea games to load but that was as my as blocker blocked ea games from fetching the librsry. Which in fair EA faorness EA sucks and should be vlocked.
2007 was YOTLD for me. Yours, dear Windows-using reader, is 2024, if you want it to be.
Why is it that people think Linux distros are for programmers or tech people only? This is the reason why we don’t get many people on Linux distros.
Because installing a different operating system than the one that came pre installed is a non zero amount of effort.
I think this here is probably one of the larger reasons. A large portion of users barely know the difference between a browser and a search engine, let alone the operating system they are using, and nor do they care. People just use whatever their computer comes with out of the box. Most people probably couldn’t tell you the difference between Windows 11 and a Linux distro customized to look exactly the same.
Because they live with old news and don’t update tech news knowledge as often as tech savy people do.
I’m a video producer and writer, I only use linux.
Ooh, does Linux have good open source video editing? I remember back in the day that was tricky. (Or I am misremembering.)
Not open source but DaVinci Resolve is the best editor around and supports Linux.
I do video editing myself in Linux and Kdenlive does pretty much everything I need. The UI is a bit odd to learn but I’d imagine any new editing software is gonna have a learning curve of some sort.
I’m also not a programmer but here’s why Linux is my daily driver:
I like it.
I have no formal tech background, but I’m pretty damn good with it. And I like Arch and Debian with XFCE.
Gnome is so much more cozy than windows
Removed by mod
KDE Plasma is so much more snappy and functional than Windows. Linux has lots of good options.
cinnamon is so uhh default in Linux Mint and i like it
I feel like Linux would be easier to pick up and use for a non power user starting from scratch like my mother-in-law. It’s so much easier to download programs with the package manager and settings are so much easier to navigate
And to use the computer without being bombarded by ads
Helped my SO fix Sims 4 on her W11 laptop recently; lock screen ads, start menu ads, pre-installed bloatware begging for money
I even asked how she deals with all of that and she basically said “I dunno it just does that, if you can make it stop that’d be nice ig but just get Sims to worl for now”
Needless to say I got Sims 4 to work (removing cachedir did the trick) AND uninstalled the bloatware and turned off ad-related settings
I’d honestly have proposed (if they don’t need programs that only run on windows) “we could put linux on it and that should fix these issues” and put Linux Mint or Fedora on it (better if you choose not them unless they really want to deal with all the choices, most likely they won’t wnt to tho) and just tell them the basics of how to install software and stuff.
I have jokingly mentioned I’d fix it by just installing Linux
I wonder when that stops being a joke
I’d say now’s the time, by now I mean as soon as it’s appropriate.
I was once asked if I could crack a password of a windows PC in an office cause the guy who used to work there no longer remembers it and they wanted to reuse the old PC. I asked if they need to recover any data, if they used any software that would be incompatible with Linux (not like this but directly mentioning software and asked for a list of stuff they use) and then told them it would simply be easier to install Linux on the thing, not only it’s easier but since it’s an old machine running windows 7 it’s also more secure and the computer will perform well.
During the installation we found out that the computer is glorified junk, took ages to even attempt to format the disk to ext4. Still got to install Linux Mint on another one of their computers tho, big success.
It’ll come back.
I find it amazing that so many distros with volunteers manage to curate a vast software ecosystem, reasonably successfully and yet some of the largest companies on the planet, worth more than $1T each cannot manage to find the resources to do it efficiently.
Imagine firing up a cmd or ps prompt in Windows and tying in: msiexec install adobe-hipster-app and it just works.
Have you tried Chocolatey? https://chocolatey.org/. It’s a package manager for Windows and works great, much like brew for Mac. Or, if you prefer portable installation of programs without requiring admin, try Scoop (https://scoop.sh/). Of course, I’d rather use paru or yay on Arch, but I’m glad these options exist.
I find it hilarious that Microsoft even suggests these tools on their own GitHub page for the Windows Terminal.