deleted by creator

Maybe instead of expecting everything else to always get dumbed down, people should try to step up just a little and learn something?

The thing about the “race to the bottom” of making things idiot proof/accessible is that the universe is more than happy to keep providing better idiots.

I have the opposite experience. Last time I tried Linux for daily desktop use was ten years ago and it was so fickle and cumbersome that I went back to Windows and terminals and x-server on virtual machines for my dev needs. A few weeks ago I got a new convertible laptop, hated Windows 11 with passion enough to do the plunge again, prepared to be cursing that shit ain’t up to shit. But… It just worked. Hardware support out of the box. Some quirks obviously but nothing deal breaking. I’m used to containerization on servers and I’ll be damned but Flatpaks are effing awesome. Even Windows games run perfectly. It. Just. Works. I’m almost expecting the entire thing to literally blow up in my face with shards of hope and OLED panel because, you know, Linux desktop experiences of the past. Fingers crossed. Maybe this is the future after all.

Edit: Fedora KDE on a HP Envy x360 15"

I just spent 45 minutes trying to install Standard Notes “the right way”

I’m curious what you mean by the “right” way, from a website? Linux does things differently at a fundamental level, that I won’t deny. But I’ll also say, if you’re interested in Linux, you have to be willing to learn.

I’m not an expert, but as I understand it most Linux distributions rely on repositories, and expect you to install most of your software from there for both security and compatibility reasons. Those errors were telling you what additional things needed to be downloaded before what you selected would work. And I guess I’m confused on that point. You said it pointed you to what you needed, did things not work after the downloads completed? I know Linux Mint does this, and it’s considered to be very user friendly. To use your analogy, if you turn the welder on and it says you need fuel, “please download this exact type” that should resolve the issue.

I know it’s hard expecting everything in Linux to function exactly like Windows, but that’s not how it works and that’s by design. Regardless, as Windows adopts more spyware, ads, and anti-user features into their products I think Linux is the far better (free and open-source) choice and it’s definitely worth learning… Good luck!

Standard notes is available as appimage from their website, as a snap on ubuntu and also as flatpak on flathub. How did you install or run it? Also, please don’t equate ubuntu with linux, unless you had troubles installing it on other distros as well. It scares away other people trying to move to good gnu+linux distros (like linux mint, fedora, etc).

I recall having issues like that when I tried to do things the wrong way. The forum posts just tell you wow to do something, but they rarely question if it’s the sensible thing to do in the first place. If Standard Notes isn’t in my repositories or if I can’t find a flatpack for it, I would just ditch the whole idea and switch to whatever note app is easily available. If something is not easily available, I just ignore those apps completely. Going through hours of trickery and hackery to build a wobbly tower that will collapse next week is not worth it.

It’s 2005 and Grandma just got a new computer. She doesn’t know what it’s for but needs to tell the neighborhood all about it.

This isn’t an unpopular opinion, just ignorance. You’re used to other systems. Different systems are different, even among the various Linux distributions. Having used mostly Linux and Windows, I too briefly had some culture shock using OSX. Complaining here is like rocking in a rocking chair, it may feel good but it’s not going to get you anywhere.

True

Ignorance isn’t a opinion and Linux is more plug and play than windows for 99%of things.

I installed Manjaro to test a year or so ago. Only issue I had was my USB wifi adapter, that took some time to get working. Otherwise the OS install was very smooth.