- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
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A big factor in Europe right now is a shifting relationship with the US.
Companies, governments, and individuals have some incentive to find alternatives to big US tech. For operating systems, Linux is really the only option.
I really hope that people will make the transition instead of just buying new… Linux is great - and more users will equal more support for it.
Indeed, it kills me how much perfectly hardware is constantly thrown out because Windows refuses to run on it.
Ok is what is the “META” answer to grandma’s laptop is going to get borked. Put this USB stick in her laptop and press next a bunch of times and she can keep using it. You have 5 lines of text to explain this solution.
I think the trick has to be that somebody who has a bit of technical skill sets the laptop up initially. I did this for my mom a while back, and once I set it up once, it just worked from there on. Non technical users tend to have a fairly small set of things they need to do like check email, browser the web, and play media. Once that’s working, they never need to change anything. In fact, they don’t want to change anything because they get used to the workflow, and they’re comfortable.
It would be great if people set up community centres where people can bring their old laptops, and somebody switches them over to Linux for them.
Ok, what I am hearing is Nixos but with an installer like this
Rufus ISO to usb stick stick usb stick into computer press magical button to boot usb <-- this should be the most difficult part of the process Screen appears, least amount of text possible Ask only the important questions, on a single screen
then one last big scary page “this will erase everything on your computer”
Check “I understand” then press"ERASE BUTTON" (or cancel and reboots)
then it reboots and everything your average grandmother needs right there a google button an office button and that’s pretty much it
Hmm, I’ll pitch this idea to a couple of Nixy lfriends, maybe we can hack something together. Also throw a Linux install party!
Cool, so we need two things, The most streamlined installer possible. “Grandma’s Universal Nix.Conf”
The installer should be written using 4th grade simple english, no jargon
In the top right corner there should be a language selector.
There should be only one page of questions.
The installer should work completely offline.
The installer should detect all peripherals and modify the nix file accordingly.
The second page should only be tge warning about erasing everything
The installer should detect if a nixos installation already exist. If it does, then offer the user to repair the bootloader
Optionally, the installer coukd detect a windows installation. Check the amount of free space left on the drive.
In this case instead of a wipe, offer to shrink the windows partition and install nixos in the liberated space. Install a bootloader setup for dual boot. Auto mount the ntfs partition and place a shortcut to the c:\user folder on the desktop.
I think we can be even simpler than that. Don’t ask any questions. Simply generate the
hardware-configuration.nixand have a singleconfiguration.nixthat is unchanged:- Some easy-to-use and simple DE. I’m thinking something like lxqt or xfce, maybe Pantheon - but that would be more familiar to Mac users than Windows. KDE seems way too complicated to just have it in configuration.nix without touching it, and it can sometimes break on updates.
- Chromium (with pre-installed ublock origin)
- Libreoffice
- Some flatpak store (so that people can install apps without touching
configuration.nix) - Make a simple “update” app that just pops up once in a couple weeks or so, prompts you to click a button and then runs
npins updateandnixos-rebuild boot, and finally annoys you until you reboot (it should also update to the next stable channel when that becomes available, and make that a big deal so that a user understands it might change some of their workflows) - Set up the bootloader so that if a generation “fails” (some script in the autostart of the DE doesn’t set a flag somewhere) on the next boot it boots a previous generation, kinda like Android’s A/B slot system but better. I don’t think systemd-boot allows this sort of thing, but I think it’s possible with a GRUB script
- Maybe add a shortcut to open tmate and copy the URL to clipboard, so that you can send it someone in the know and they can help you troubleshoot
- Finally, use impermanence to make sure everything outside
/home,/nix, and wherever flatpak are stored, is wiped on every reboot and recreated from the generation, so that “reboot it” is a viable troubleshooting strategy.
The numbers suggest that 2025 could be a turning point for Linux on desktop computers
Ah yes, the year of the Linux desktop
(in all seriousness, this is looking really good, my main hope from all this is that hardware manufacturers step up their FOSS drivers game)
When Linux hits 10%, you will see hardware ship with Linux drivers day one.
Most consumer hardware on earth does already (Android phones). The problem is those drivers are usually proprietary bullshit that’s very difficult to integrate with anything but OEMs kernel fork & Android version. Unfortunately I don’t really foresee that changing in the near future, hopefully if Linux becomes more mainstream, Linux phones become too and then we get some progress.
And for laptops/desktops, I think the situation is pretty good already as well. Many mainstream OEMs have an option with Linux pre-installed now, and the drivers there are mostly FOSS. I’m hoping that the problematic part vendors e.g. NVidia and Broadcom step up and provide sources for their drivers - otherwise they will continue to be a buggy mess that most people hate.
Nvidia recently started NVK for Turing and newer and even more recently it was made conformant going back to Maxwell, but that still doesn’t give me a lot of hope for everything between Maxwell 1 (so basically just the GTX 750/750Ti for desktop Maxwell 1 cards) and Turing after driver version 580.
Also, Nouveau works for Maxwell 1 and earlier but ymmv with that stack, and it’s still not like Mesa RADV and AMDGPU for Radeon cards going back to GCN1.
we already do
Agreed - and make those drivers open source and unrestricted
