Linux is excellent if it will do all the tasks you require, the only way to find out is to give it a go. I ran Mint for over 12 months but gave up in the end, the software I required was just better in Windows. I still keep an eye on the Linux scene and I will probably try one again in the future, Linux wont change but my needs will. The basic package bundled with the Linux distro of your choice will suite 90% of PC users. To my mind Linux is better for your parents and grand parents than Windows, they will find it a lot harder to cock up
Hmm.. I'd rather be stupid and well-fed than a starving gourmet. MacDonald's is not gourmet food, but it is food nevertheless. You guys do have a point though - I've been using Windows since Windows 3.11. The proficiency in Windows that I now enjoy came about over several decades. I should not expect to jump into Linux and expect to be anywhere NEAR as proficient. I understand that, but I also understand that I'm not going to like feeling like a newbie again.
McDonald's does not provide food, they never did and they never will. It is processed garbage, don't touch it and never eat it .... puuuuuaaaaa
@eemuler: Sounds like a great idea. Would love to get the seasoned Linux people here involved as well.
What has to do a good spaghetti dishes with a starving gourmet, anyway? You can cook them at home no need to go to the restaurant, and even less to go on a super high end, elitist one.
As if you earn $1000 every second. Linux is just as efficient, if not more efficient than Windows, once you spend a few a couple of hours everyday for a few months, and willing to learn. That's all it takes to get started with a popular distro such as Ubuntu or Mint. It won't waste any of your time once you know how to use it. It's the same as Windows, they are both just tools. It's your mind and skills that make a difference.
You used Debian Testing minimal for a few days and then talk about the whole Linux distros? What about you use Windows PE for a few days and tell me you can not even install an antivirus software on that "Windows", and therefore Windows is not user friendly? Yeah, Ubuntu is bloated with a typical install size of less than 5GB, and the unbloated Windows with a install size of more than 15 GB? For newbies, using a popular and user friendly distro is a must for your to get started with Linux. Ubuntu and Mint are the best options. If you choose a minimal install of some TESTING distro, you should know what you are doing.
A valid point there. I've worked with PE and embedded versions of Windows and they can be quite a pain. That said, there are so many Linux distros out there - and some have several flavours - that it is hard for a beginner to pick one without expert advice. Can you suggest one that will make for an easier learning curve for people coming from Windows? I'm downloading Zorin-OS core right now but I'm open to other ideas. Something with decent hardware driver support - I'll be installing this on a laptop.
I am not a linux expert but only have been using Ubuntu for a few year. I find Mint/Ubuntu to be the most user-friendly. There are many many tutorials, videos about the installation and polishing of Ubuntu/Mint so whenever you come across a problem, you google it and most likely you'll find an answer that will solve your problem. That's been my experience over the years away. I see that Zorin-OS is also based on Ubuntu/Debian so it might be good for you to try it out. If you feel like you'd like to try a different distro later, I'd recommend Mint. It's the de-facto distro for newbies. My experience with the hardware support of Ubuntu has been pretty good. Almost never met a driver problem on a dozen desktop/laptops. You can try out the Live CD of these distros to see if you have any driver problems before installing it. It's another good thing about Linux
@eemuler I've been maintaining a respin of Ubuntu Mate for aprox 2 years, the latest is based on 15.04 release, it has plenty of software and I use to install for friends and relatives who want to safe browse internet and check emails... very user friendly, live cd/usb ISO. Also has openvpn out of the box. If you want to try let me know, not sure if I can self-advertise here... BTW, it is hosted @sourceforge as free software
yeah i can tell, cause no one in their right mind would install ubuntu to protect their privacy, ubuntu is like win10 of linux, there is a little package called zeitgeist that's a dependency for unity, but i'm sure you know nothing about it, anyways ubuntu is not the only distro that wants to take away your privacy, so is debian and many other distros, but if you know about linux, you would also know that NSA has it's own code running in linux kernel since 2003, good luck protecting your privacy with that, and you might think well i go BSD, well guess who funds major BSD developers? oh you don't know ? well it's a small entity called DARPA i'm sure they want to uphold your 4th amendment right
I knew exactly what i was doing, i am currently running it and it works absolutely fine. Please read my post again. I stated that everything is by far a lot more work than on windows, nothing more. I screwed around for weeks on my raspberry with Raspbian, later with Alpine Linux (can recommend). Thats not my first encounter with linux (you would have understood it if you read my post more clearly, see "selective perception"). Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB N is completey unbloated, the system itself is just a lot bigger than linux distros. Bloat is additional stuff which gets installed on top of the system and Ubuntu has a lot mor bloat than this windows version. Also Debian testing branch is not that TESTING you would expect, it's running more stable than 90% of the other desktop distros.
take a look at the ReactOS on distrowatch its not linux but similar to windows, just in development stage at the mo but it looks promising.
So what do you think is faster ? or googling it, going to the website, downloading the exe, opening it, clicking next->next->next->next ? I don't really understand what is difficult about it either, sudo is the command that gives you temporary root privileges, then you have apt-get which is the default installation program, and you pass a parameter to it, install, which means you want to install something. If you want to uninstall something, it would be sudo apt-get remove or sudo apt-get purge, depending whether you want to keep the configuration files. Then you have the installation program name, which in this case is network-manager-openvpn, and this even makes a lot of sense, since you are installing a network manager, so your program name starts with network-manager. If you had a network manager called "something", it would be: sudo apt-get install network-manager-something. This is very simple, very efficient and very secure, since this software is kept in the repository where all software is checked for malicious behavior, so you will not get, let's say a Bing toolbar with it.
Thanks. I'm going to take you up on that. Please PM me the links to download. Access to an expert is a terrific plus point.