[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Of course, but I think that your portrayal of the regular user is not of a regular user at all.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Someone mentions a problem with the Linux Desktop and immediately the excuse is "normal user doesn't do that".

[trash_panda]

I see what you mean. And this is the problems with this subject and why most of the times these discussions end up nowhere.

We end up discussing on what this hypothetical "regular user" does with biased examples from our own experience. The ones who really have a basic idea of what regular users do are the big players like Apple, Google and Microsoft; from all the telemetry they collect.

I'm certainly not condescending "regular users", on the contrary; I understand why a lot of people don't want to deal with technology and I defend the fact that systems should be easy to use. From your comments I think you're trying to portray us as if we think that regular users are stupid. Which is certainly not the case.

My point is that most people don't base their purchase decisions on technical grounds. Mostly because of money and sometimes status factors.

Again, all these coming from my personal experience; I haven't taken the time to search for an actual statistical study on user preferences. I know I've installed Linux on a lot of people's home/personal computer without them knowing what happened and are happy to this day.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Condescension doesn't mean you think they're stupid (though it is clear that many do), it means you look down on them, which is what it sounds like whenever anyone says "they just need this and that and they don't care about the other things". The implication being that they are not sophisticated individuals who may actually aspire to use their computer as more than a web kiosk if it wasn't treating them like a child. Many of them probably won't, and that's fine, but doesn't mean we should be designing things only for them.