Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fainpul 361 days ago
People are also struggling with Windows (any version). Especially installing programs (clicking through wizards, answering lots of questions they don't understand) and installing device drivers (how to even know what to do, to the get a device working? where to find drivers?) are often too much for non-technical users on Windows. Both of these are much easier (or unnecessary) on most Linux distros. No matter which OS they use, they will sometimes have to ask someone more knowledgable to solve some problems.
1 comments
baal80spam 361 days ago
> installing device drivers

This is not an issue for many, many years now.

> Both of these are much easier (or unnecessary) on most Linux distros.

Oh, now I know you are joking.

link
kgwxd 361 days ago
The situation is very hit or miss, I assume the downvoters don't have many problems because they're probably smart about the machines they try to put linux on.

Just this month, I put Linux Mint on an old dell laptop, and a custom built PC with a 1080 ti in it.

The laptop worked perfect, wifi worked out of the box, and it ran much smoother than it did with Windows 10.

The desktop was a pain because none of the 3 usb wifi devices I already had, worked out of the box. I started down the path of following some guides that got 2 of them "working" with the same steps, but they both behaved horribly. I gave up and ordered a device known to work with Linux for $50 because it just wasn't worth my time. It's connection speed is even faster than it runs on my windows machine, but there are frequent "blips" in the connection. Gah! Nothing is more demotivating than having trouble loading the web page trying to show you how to fix your networking issues.

The video card seems to work fine but none of the games I want to play via steam work nearly as smooth as I hoped, and they're old games, the newest one just turned 10 yo. I love what Steam is doing, and I'm sure I could get a lot of the games working pretty good with some more effort, but it's not the cakewalk it's often hyped up to be. I decided to just use it for old emulators, and stick to my Windows machine for other games.

On top of all that, it feels just about as "slow" as it did with Windows for basic operations. Again, I'm sure I could do some optimizing and get it blazing fast, but I don't have the time for that when I've already got things generally working fine on other machines.

link