[65]

Every time I make this statement about Linux not being beginner friendly on Hacker News, there's always a reply about how so very pain free and easy it is.

If Linus Torvalds of all people is complaining about how much of a pain in the ass Debian can be to install, it's going to be a pain in the ass. Hell, Mint had countless issues I had to monkey patch and would break if I looked at it funny.

You cannot expect a beginner user to touch a command line or even think about desktop environments. We're computer nerds here but sometimes the expectation that booting from an ISO or making disk partitions is easy for the average person grossly overestimates the average person's desire to debug and fight with their computer.

Seriously, ask your Grandma to install Debian on her Windows computer by herself and see what happens.

[cess11]

I don't get the impression that you actually help people migrate to Linux.

When I do, I give them a flash drive and if necessary help them change the boot order, then they just answer what they understand and accept defaults on the rest. This typically works well and they are surprised that when install is done, it's really done, no messing about with license keys and downloading install binaries and whatnot.