So I’m building a new computer before the end of the year and lemmy is obviously pushing me towards Linux.
I am not computer savvy, I have a family member that will help me set up my PC, but I do not want to be calling/messaging them every day when I want to open a program.
Basically my question comes down to: can I operate a Linux PC these days without needing to troubleshoot or type code.
I use my computer about once a week for a few hours I would say, so any time spent troubleshooting is time wasted.
Thanks!
EDIT: since a lot of people are asking what programs I typically use, I’ll just list my most used programs.
Word, Excel, ect(I’m fine with alternatives)
Spotify
Gimp (would have been a make or break, so I’m glad it’s supported)
Brave browser (browser is a browser)
Steam
Discord
I would say that while I could figure out how the kernels work, I’m at a point with computers these days where I don’t have the time. My priorities fall with a seamless daily experience. If I have the time to figure something out I can, but ideally my day to day usage being unbotherd is what I’m after.
A lot of the comments so far have been helpful! I’m definitely going to give Linux a fair shot with my new build, probably start with Mint.
I assume you’re talking about Desktop Environments. Yes, of course. KDE and Gnome rival MacOS as far as usability goes. The better part is that other software development groups port their software over to Linux as well and make it as seamless as possible.
People run into confusion here when people flood the comments on user questions like this, so let me shut that down right now.
If you need something that is a straight Desktop Environment, get a distro with KDE or Gnome, and a known OS that will have a lot of user base getting questions and answers if you even run into any.
Fedora or Ubuntu. Don’t listen to anyone arguing for their preferred favorites.
Don’t listen to performance comments.
You want a solid, no issues, not needing to look for help kind of distro. It’s those two, no question, and they both have KDE and Gnome variants.
That’s really about it.
Fully agree with this. There will be a slight learning curve since it will be different from what your used to, but it’s friendly enough to figure out.
If you know the windows program you want to use just search something like “Linux alternative for x” (sometimes there is specific KDE or Gnome progs)
Only thing I might add would be potentially Bluefin. It is Fedora with Gnome, except Atomic. It markets itself as:
The best of both worlds: the reliability and ease of use of a Chromebook, with the power of a GNOME desktop.
It’s been fantastic for me with automatic updates and everything installed through flathub so you don’t bork your system with any misconfigured installs.
There’s also a KDE spin called Aurora: https://getaurora.dev
Also: should you wish for something with Fedora literally in the name, Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kionite are the upstream—published by the Fedora Project—versions of Bluefin that use GNOME and KDE, respectively.
Either could be an excellent choice should you wish for
Atomic
The whole system is updated in one go, and an update will not apply if anything goes wrong, meaning you will always have a working computer.
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Well this is literally Fedora, and I offered it for consideration, not a recommendation. This seems a tad hostile.
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I would maybe add Linux Mint to that list, but otherwise you’re spot on. Fedora and Ubuntu are the easiest and most robust systems for novice computer users.
Linux Mint is Ubuntu with specific changes.
That’s how all distros work. They exist so that you don’t have to make changes yourself.
Depends. If someone is gaming with new hardware, don’t use a distro that doesn’t update the kernel quickly and regularly.
Almost every problem with hardware on mint is solved by going through the process of updating the kernel or switching to a distro with up to date libraries.
It’s fine for a lot of people, but it doesn’t “just work” outside of the use case of only browsing the internet and word documents.
This is coming from someone who used mint for 4 years. There was about a dozen times where the software on the software center was so out of date that it simply didn’t work and I had to resort often to using random ppa’s which often broke other things. Definitely not user friendly.
That being said, Cinnamon is probably one of the most user friendly DEs for people switching from window. It is very nice.
Fair points. I’ve only ever taken Mint for a quick spin and that was a decade ago. I just see it constantly recommended as one of the most user-friendly distros, thus the maybe recommendation.
Personally, I’m all in on Fedora Atomic for my hosts and (mostly) Arch in my containers.
Linux the lifestyle will mean slowly embracing more open or otherwise ethical software. Slowly ween yourself off the Discord, the Spotify, the Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft LinkedIn, Microsoft npm, Microsoft GitHub.
For some reason we tend to give Steam a pass for convenience & investing as much as it has into the Linux ecosystem (even if it is selfishly & largely to avoid Microsoft lock-in/competition).
Bro just told me to ween myself off my job and friend group
Your friends should value your privacy too & your job shouldn’t be trusting their secrets to Microsoft either.
It’s entirely possible to use, enjoy, and benefit from Linux while also using proprietary software. Your attitude only hurts the reputation and adoption of Linux by perpetuating the notion that you’re either all-in or else you’re out. Your idea of “Linux the lifestyle” is a fantasy.
Huh. I still use proprietary software too—& I’ll make purchases for copyrighted music. But I have moved away from as much of it as I can when I had the opportunity or convenience to do so. Some proprietary software is basically irreplaceable & not built by megacorporations siphoning our private data. But things like chat apps? Music players? Code forges? There are tons of replacements…
I will recommend you Fedora Budgie Edition. You will never need to open terminal on it and interface is more user friendly.
No more tricky than windows these days. Nice thing is there’s a lack of commercial BS - spyware, ads, unwanted apps etc. And pretty much no matter how old your computer gets, you can still run brand new linux on it.
In depends on how dumb the user is. If you want to see drive
C:\and don’t want to learn why there’s no such a thing, forget about Linux (and any other OS except the only one you are familiar with). If you are ready to learn new concepts and just don’t want to remember numerous commands, that’s OK, just pick up a distro with advanced DE and graphical admin tools.Steam ⇒ No Ubuntu
For Word/Excel alternatives, I would suggest LibreOffice fresh. So, go with one that gives recent versions of it [1].
can I operate a Linux PC these days without needing to troubleshoot or type code.
That will vary greatly depending upon your Hardware selection. I was lucky enough to manage a good enough setup (adding extra effort to check Motherboard components) for Linux support and still have a few problems. [I am unable to get CPU fan speed (tachometer reading).]
I like Endeavour OS, but it being rolling on Arch, means, it is for someone who is happy with troubleshooting and bug reporting.
I had tried Open SUSE for a bit (back then, I hardy knew Linux) and liked that too.
Debian probably won’t work either, because, even though it is something you probably won’t need to troubleshoot for years, once setup, Steam will make it hard for you and Discord, well, no idea. I removed it after declining the new TOS.
I hated the problems with older versions, which seem to be greatly reduced in the newer ones ↩︎
Why Steam -> no ubuntu? EDIT: Ah, i see. I didnt have that problem because i always used pop os
Maybe this article would be a good indicator.
By default, Ubuntu will give the Snap version, which Steam devs don’t like to support.
And installing another version will probably require some configuration and terminal stuff, so I’d suggest going with something that plays well with Valve.This is true. And it’s also why I always recommend downloading steam through their website. They distribute their own Deb directly, and it auto updates.
Flatpak version is also okay but if you want to use a secondary disk then you need to know how to use portals (or the Flatpak configuration tool that I can’t remember the name of).
Flatseal is the tool.
(Another benefit to using the flatpak version of Steam is that Steam leaks rather substantial chunks of /dev/shm memory. The flatpak automatically cleans that up. God knows why Valve hasn’t fixed this yet.)
There’s one case when you can’t avoid using command line. If you ask someone on Internet to help you, he will say you to type some commands. No window clicking, no screenshots will help. All GUIs are different, but CLI is (almost) always the same, and its output is well searchable. That’s why you see numerous command line listings in each topic discussing problems and could decide it’s impossible to use Linux without coding.
I bet the others already gave a lot of good advice, but there is one thing I wand to emphasize. The way in which you install software matters more on Linux than on any other operating system. You are meant to install it through your distros package manager, which you will most likely use through the software management GUI of your distro. Do not download any executables from websites directly, unless you are absolutely sure that:
- They are made to work on your distro
- They come from a trustworthy source
- You have complete and up to date instructions on how to install them
Sometimes you might need to add additional repositories to your package manager, the same rules apply there. You might also run into things called Flatpaks and Snaps, these are universal package formats and another great option for installing software. Flatpaks work out of the box in a lot of distros. Number one rule there is to stick to things that are marked as verified, unless you have a good reason to trust them. These universal formats might be integrated in the GUI software manager too, this varies across distros.
If you follow those rules and keep your system updated, I don’t expect you will have much trouble with Linux.
You can absolutely get by by, and have a great experience with GNOME + the app store.
Its a reason its default on so many distros.
Linux Mint is pretty user friendly. I’m also not a fan of typing code, but so far the only thing I’ve HAD to use terminal for came with really easy instructions and the commands were listed out (like a recipe) so all I had to do was copy/paste and things worked out just fine.
The 1 issue I ran into was upgrading from LM 21.3 to 22. I had to go back to 21.3 because 22 couldn’t connect to wifi (I’m guessing because my machine is old) but 21.3 works perfect. My other machine is a lot newer and just about to the end of its warranty period, so once that’s up I plan to switch that one to Linux as well.
Really, you already use gimp, but not linux?
It’s what I got to use in highschool computer class, I’m a sucker for what I know.
Everyone is saying yes.
They are wrong.
You will absolutely have to troubleshoot in order to figure out how to do what you want to do.
Linux is different than windows or macos and you’re gonna have to gain an understanding (however dumbed down you might describe it) of those differences in order to use the computer.
If you can get over that hump of understanding then I think you’ll be fine.
So you are saying that dumbs can’t read? Because hey, that is all it takes to troubleshoot a problem on linux.
Thus, even your grandmother can “do google” nowadays.
Dude, your wrong. Not what OP was asking about.
Desktop light usage only. DFQOH and don’t come back.
DFQOH
I can’t work out what this an acronym for. Please help!
They are wrong.
The sad truth. Enough said. Linux is still not there, as much as we’d like to pretend it is. And it’s especially not there for dumb users.
Dumb user here. I completely disagree with this.
I was using Ubuntu for a few years, now I’m on Fedora. I don’t really know how to do anything. For my needs it’s just very easy.
Maybe my needs just aren’t sophisticated enough for me to encounter all those problems I’m supposed to be having. But I’ve been using it for years and my experience is that it really just works.
While there’s a little bit of getting acclimated to slightly different programs for the same tasks, I kind of imagine sophisticated needs primarily comes down to hardware. A company making some sort of computer hardware doohickey might design and test and provide support for something with Windows/Mac in mind, and maybe for other operating systems they’re not cooperative with documenting support, under the mindset that it would reveal trade secrets or decrease shareholder value in some other way. Linux support then comes from other means like reverse engineering. This could mean that it will take time before all the kinks are ironed out, or if the product was short-lived the linux community might not care enough to have someone volunteer to keep up with support. Common, time-tested hardware will have good support. Plugging in some old printer that was discontinued shortly after launch will be more of a crapshoot.
Yeah. I’ve double checked that my last few laptops worked well with Linux before buying them. But I don’t buy very flashy technology, so it was never really any question.
My printer is from Brother, and it’s just plug and play. At work it’s all web print and has been since I started working for pay, really.
I’m just speculating on reasons behind why people might feel it’s still not user-friendly. It was a pretty easy transition for me too, and that was years ago.
Yeah, I think you’re right, and I think that’s exactly why it’s a blind spot for me.
On several occasions I’ve also lent an old laptop to friends when theirs broke, and all of them ended up using Linux for months no questions asked. They later went back to Windows because of the Word grammar check, but other than that it just worked for them.
But of course, if you can’t get your drivers to work it’ll be a completely different experience.
Another dumb user here Been using Arch for a year now, things just works without much tinkering… mostly
If you’re ok Arch I guess it at least signals a willingness to learn! I would never dare to go there haha.
I consider myself a reasonably tech literate user and tried to set up dual boot on my pc using a whole separate ssd just for Linux to be safe. Installing it went fine but GRUB wouldn’t let me boot into windows, somehow the instalation nuked my windows boot partition and no amount of repairing would work, I had to completely reinstall Windows and now I’m seriously worried of trying Linux again.
That sucks. I’ve done that a lot of times by either not understanding what I was doing or fat fingering some decision.
If you do decide to try again, tag me and I’ll set up a vm environment similar to yours and walk you through any confusing steps.
I’ve got to agree with this. I love Linux and have run it on my servers for years. That said, I’ve got Mint on my laptop and tried to print an image over wifi at a friend’s place and could not for the life of me get it to print properly.
For the most part things do just work, but there are a lot more “obscure” scenarios that are handled correctly in windows but not Linux.
I also find that when things go wrong on Linux, they are harder to fix. I’ve had several times I’ve had to deal with circular dependency hell to get something to install properly. I did eventually get those problems resolved, but it was often a single person having a tangential problem that hinted me to how to solve it.
Edit: I think if your usage patterns are straight forward enough, it is by far and away the better choice. If you do the same stuff all the time, it’ll pretty much never break, which is not something I could say about windows. So for OP, it sounds like it would be a good fit.
Yea it is user friendly. If you’re using your computer once a week presumably its for things like web browsing or working with documents - these are very easy and straight forward to do in linux.
The other big benefit is the cost - linux is free and you’ll save £120 on a basic version of Windows which can be used to get get a better PC or just saved.
Add to that no advertising, much more private and entirely yours to do what you like with. And if you don’t like it you can easily install Windows instead, so its zero risk to try Linux.
Linux vs. Windows doesn’t generally affect the cost unless you’re building the machine yourself, or buying from a Linux specific vendor like Framework (which are generally more expensive than what you’ll find at Best Buy anyways). The major PC manufacturers are going to have Windows pre-installed whether you want it or not.
Well since your building a computer your more tech savvy then most people. I have been using Linux for about 20 years now. If you pick something like Linux Mint or others make sure you have a solid /home partition and migrate to what’s ever distro you like most. It allows you to move around and not lose your data.
Worst case you do some distro hopping for a little bit and then install Windows and there is nothing wrong with that. I have a windows laptop for the very reason that Windows works best with certain apps just like I use a Mac for video editing
If you mean “dumb friendly” by “An exact Windows clone”… there are plenty of “Windowslike” Linux distros out there.
If you mean “user friendly” by “Easy to understand by any user”… then yes, (any) Linux distro is user friendly as is.
