If you’re already with Linux, this is not for you. This is for people who’re indecisive or been contemplating for long about whether to make that jump.
For me, it’s a matter of a few things. I’m on a Windows 10 version that guarantees me until 2032 of support. That means I would effectively skip Windows 11, like I already mostly have and potentially skip Windows 12 if that turns out to be a shitty choice. I’d be coming in right in time for whatever Microslop shits out for Win13.
Should Windows 13 suck, I think that’s a consideration. Another consideration is when Valve keeps dropping support for certain Windows versions of Steam. Because I know for a fact they will drop Windows 10 support entirely one day and then Windows 11. I believe it is really stupid that they do this.
By the time my Windows 10 version expires, I’d be getting older, which means I’ll probably care less and less about computer-related things. Going to Linux wouldn’t be a problem since I’d be doing barebones things like browsing and checking e-mail.
And I’d also hope that by 2032, Linux would have better development like easier access to proprietary drivers and software among other things.
All of the things I listed are examples from my personal experience that I ran into within the past 6 months. The sharing folder adventure happened just about two weeks ago. Don’t try to tell me that it’s all so easy now, I literally just went through hours of research and experimenting and samba settings and changing my disk’s fstab file just to get a folder to show up on my home network. “Oh well you should have done x or y or not used z” Well, frankly it doesn’t matter what the optimal workflow solution would be, what matters is this was my user experience. This was something I went through and was not some whacky fringe use case. Sharing a folder on a home network is not black magic or calling upon arcane demonic powers.
Now, I’m not going back at this point and I’m committed to Linux now, but pretending it’s all smooth sailing and so easy and polished is misleading. It’s certainly more usable than it ever has been but I think most people on Lemmy have no idea how hands off the average person is from their tech. It’s important to be honest about Linux’s shortcomings and prepare new users that they will probably gave to look up info or documentation for some tasks. You also can’t expect the average person to ever open Terminal without hyperventilating.
For most people, it is (and has been) that easy. If it works as intended, you can simply open your desktop explorer thing, click on network and have it show up. I know that because that has been my experience a couple of years ago and I was surprised at it just working so flawlessly. To be clear, I’m not denying your issues, I’m just pointing out that your experience is not automatically the average experience.
Of course there can be bugs and other issues which require troubleshooting, but that’s not specifically a linux issue.
The difference is that for non-techies, it’s harder to troubleshoot because advice you find is mostly written for techies, there is less info and there are a lot of different linux based operating systems.
For techies, it’s generally easier to troubleshoot because you can get more info out of the system (if you know how) and you generally have more power over the system.
I agree, you cannot generalize a personal experience and then universally apply it to every person as well as every linux based distribution, like “it’ll work flawlessly out of the box because that’s been my experience”. You also cannot generalize it over every linux based system. I have tried a lot of different distros with different hardware and my experience has varied a lot. I have had issues and bugs with ubuntu that just didn’t happen with arch based distros.
But again, it’s virtually never smooth sailing for everyone in every case. Windows users have to troubleshoot issues and bugs too.
My problem is people pointing out issues where you have to do this on Linux and pretending like Windows doesn’t have the same issues. People pretend like Windows is flawless, but it’s only because they forgot how much shit they has to deal with learning it. Yes, you’ll have to learn new things. You had to with Windows too. The Linux experience is easier.
The average person isn’t doing more than opening a web browser. They’ll be fine without ever touching the console, just as they were on Windows. The type of user who wants to do more probably also has edited registries in Windows, which is so much worse than anything you’ll do on Linux. Every person switching will have an easier time on Linux than they did on Windows. They might not remember the shit they did to get Windows working how they want, or the garbage they deal with constantly, but that’s just because they got accustomed to it. If you spend the time with Linux to get used to it then it’s easier. It does take time though, and no one is saying it doesn’t. So did (and does, as they constantly change things) Windows.