[throwawayhacka]

great article and I think shows the way forward. HN has a very technical userbase and overestimates linux as an desktop operating system. Desktop ubuntu installs are down year over year. If you're not a software engineer, getting linux working well (even ubuntu) and keeping it that way is pretty much impossible. Comparatively, W10 will boot on any hardware and take care of itself. even a mechanical or EE engineer without a lot of linux administration skill will struggle; Literally just talked to a friend going thru this yesterday.

Win10 running WSL2 with docker integrated is a better dev experience than running native linux - you can flip up new machines at will, from any distro and they're easy to manage and play nice with VSCode. I used to dual boot windows and ubuntu and have moved over to just running WSl2, as it minimizes the time I spend administering linux , patching and doing upgrades.

[4gotunameagain]

Since when are all the technically inclined people software "engineers"?

[throwawayhacka]

sure. you might be something else and have a lot of linux experience - I think most people who have this are either devs or some related profession, perhaps sysadmin or adjacent roles. Still, you're kidding yourself if you think the average EE or ME, hell pick any STEM field, knows what the hell is going on with linux (not that none do)

[mickotron]

My dad is not in the IT field or anything remotely similar (marine bio/fishing/navigation). Yet he has run gnu/linux as the OS for his primary machines for 10+ years. He has only the basic understanding at a high level but he surprises me with how he can "get by" and remain productive.