duh, still a useful statistic IMO

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.

note if you sum up the linux distros here (excluding ChromeOS) you get 58,4% for personal use and 54,54% for professional use (of course keep in mind that there’s some godless bastards who dual boot 2 linux distros that could skew these statistics).

Also note how that implies Linux is the most popular OS for professional use.

Anyways, I wish these stats wouldn’t split Linux into distros, at least not by default. Linux distros are mostly the same and you’re still using (GNU*/)Linux splitting it makes it seem less popular tan it actually is.

*unless you’re using something like Alpine ig

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.

get them addicted to BattleBits Remastered, runs smoothly on Linux and is fun as shit.

Impressive, you look like a very skilled programmer, management has told me you are now tasked with building a hyper-realistic virtual simulation of a Large Hadron Collider including detailed simulations of the lives of the actual workers and their families, you have a week or you’re fired by the firing squad, no you’re not allowed to ask why we need it or who we are or why we chose you and it is especially forbidden to ask for more time (and no you can’t ask why that is either). See you in a week, have a nice day :).

I think the best course would be to tell him something along the lines of “I’m sorry these games didn’t work out well for you and the experience didn’t turn out to be good for you, there’s still the option to dual-boot or try a different distro if you want but I understand if you don’t. Just know that these issues aren’t specifically because of Linux but rather poor support from the game’s devs, or more likely their publishers, games (about 90% of them) work fine through steam or Lutris unless the devs implement anti-cheats without linux compatibility so hopefully in the future if you happen to play more steam games you’d consider giving Linux another chance.” nonetheless I’d still say he should go on windows, find out that his games will likely still run like shit on there on his own and if he complains about it maybe bring up Linux again, gently and appropriately of course.

I don’t have that bug (KDE 6)

I’m sure you can have a good experience on it just like you can have a good experience on Windows, etc. But first of all if we are recommending stuff then either Arch & derivates shouldn’t be recommended at all if it’s a newbie or one should recommend straight up Arch (if it’s not a newbie and needs Arch) and frankly if you want Arch made easy either going to OpenSUSE tumbleweed if the issue is stability or EndeavourOS/Arco if it’s the installation will probably net someone a better experience, so what’s the point of Manjaro anyways, and secondly none of that invalidates the bad practices by the manjaro team

please for the love of god do not use Manjaro and if you do forget about using the AUR, Manjaro claims to be more stable by waiting 1 week before adding Arch’s packages to their repo, this breaks the AUR packages you use which may need newer dependencies. They also often forgot to renew the security certificates of their website.

Arco is better but frankly all being Arch distros the differences are close to none.

I do use my OS but I also like to play with it, that’s one beauty of Linux: you can set it up and forget about it till the end of times or you can spend days tinkering with it if it provides you joy.

Thanks for letting me know this exists

I heard of Slackware, it never really convinced me personally but it seems cool and is the oldest one.

I don’t intend to be a developer. I do code a few things sometimes but that’s not the life path I’m oriented towards. That said you bring some good points. I am starting to believe NixOS may not be suitable for my uses sometimes, tho I did fix the SDDM issue, even though it involved changing my configuration in a way I didn’t find intuitive. I’m still evaluating what to do. Maybe is 24.05 proves to fix my issues and stays out of my way I’ll stay.

I should try matrix tbf yeah, just didn’t like having to use yet another platform that’s why I went to what I already have to use.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, you convinced me to try Fedora on a VM. And obviously there’s worse than RH, tho it is owned by IBM. All I’m saying is that since the fedora team is financially dependent on RH that is worrying to me. So is the Linux Foundation being dependent on corpos don’t get me wrong tho at least in this case it’smore than 1 corporation. I have nothing against people who don’t mind and still use fedora mind you, I just try to avoid/minimize corporations for what is reasonably possible.

Also just to be clear: I don’t think there’s an obvious incentive for RH to pull the plug on Fedora either, but I don’t trust them to not do something that is apparently stupid to us. For example, I thought Canonical adding ads and doing questionable stuff would be damaging to them too yet I see they’re doing it/trying to despite it being clearly a bad idea given who the main customers for Ubuntu are.

I heard of it, I don’t think it’s for me I don’t wanna have to deal with drivers and firmware stuff. I know nothing about lisp

my issues with debian are beyond just the outdated packages, I know of debian testing and sid I just don’t like some approaches debian has which are not for me. nothign against Debian tho it’s just not for me

I mean, after reading all your comments my position on Fedora has moderated, but in a comment you said they are financially dependent on RH. Now sure, right now RH doesn’t stand to gain from taking/screwing over Fedora and right now they don’t seem to want to but who’s to say one day they won’t try to? I don’t trust corporations for many reasons so having a distro that, while independent in the development decisions, is financially dependent on a corporation doesn’t sit too right for me. Sure maybe they will never do it but hey I’d rather avoid the off-chance it happens if there’s alternatives.

I will check it out in a VM alongside the others though.

You bring on some interesting points and I will definitely read your comments. Thank you.

Yeah the thing is I’m not the most rtfm or read the patch notes type guy. When I used Arch I just went balls-to-the-wall yolo but updated weekly. Updating less frequently seems like more of an hassle.

I don’t trust corporations in general, mainly I don’t want Red Hat (or any other corpo) to suddenly destroy my distro or do something I don’t agree with. I still remember the whole debacle some months ago. If it wasn’t for that I’d definitely give Fedora a shot but the fact they’re sponsored by RH (and their upstream) makes me question how independent they are from RH and how at risk they are from being taken over by RH.

As for use-case I think any distro can in some way fulfill my computing necessities and has most if not all the programs I need available in some way afaik, it’s mostly a matter of technicalities and other stuff that is fairly important to me personally but maybe not too relevant for most