Mastodawn

What's the most common complaint I've heard about Linux?

Not the installation process.
Not finding a distro.
Not getting programs to work.
Not troubleshooting.
Not hardware compatibility.

The most common complaint about Linux I've seen is this:
For a normal computer user, asking for help is just about impossible.

They ask a simple question and:
People respond "Did you Google it?"
People complain that the question wasn't asked "correctly".
People respond "RTFM"
People get mad??? at them for making an easy mistake.

We can't expect normal people to know to, or even know how to deal with any of that stuff.

Search engines these days are awful, manuals are hard to read for most people (especially stuff like ArchWiki), and normal people make mistakes we think are easily avoidable.

The solution to making Linux more popular is not ruthless promotion. The solution is to actually help the people who are trying to use it.

#Linux

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Slacker🌈Jan 30

@Linux_in_a_Bit While I agree with all that, it is then again equally annoying when those "noobs" either want to go directly into customizing/theming/"ricing" (hate that word) within the first 24 hours they are using their distro and are frustrated when this involves more than "double-clicking" an *.exe. on the other hand a lot of people REALLY try hard to find ways to make everything as close as possible to win7/10/11 as possible which will also fail in the long run

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RealGene ☣️

@Slacker @Linux_in_a_Bit
Ok, here's my latest: Debian Trixie XFCE, I
recently relocated it, and now use my TV as the monitor. Now, whenever I switch the TV to the HDMI input the computer is attached to, the Display Settings dialog pops up for a "new monitor" (which it actually misidentifies, but selects the 'correct' default resolution).

IMHO, the dialog should time out and close, but since it won't, I select accept/ok to dismiss it, but it recurs the next time the TV input is selected.

Good luck searching for that, let alone solve it (I do have something to try, but am often stymied when the solution is several years old, and that setting no longer exists, or has been subsumed into systemd, or whatever).