I hope this doesn't start a flame war, or a continuation of the 'linux versus windows' holy war, in which I am an avowed atheist. My question is serious, I want to know if linux is suitable for average Windows users as a desktop operating system. And I am hoping for an honest answer, no zealotry please - I have already seen far too many demonstrably absurd claims made by anti-Windows zealots.

By 'average Windows users', I mean people who will never do any coding, will never tweak a conf file, will never use a command line interface. People who expect the operating system to be 100 percent gui plug-and-play regardless of the hardware - just install the drivers and go.

I have seen some Linux distros promoted as just as easy to use as Windows in this context - but when problems arise, and questions are asked about how to fix them, the solution often involves exactly the sort of technical complexity that these users will never undertake. I have also seen quite a lot of intellectual elitism and contempt for those who are not interested in complex solutions involving obscure system settings, or even - gasp - coding a diy solution.

That's fine if Linux is clearly labelled as being for the technically inclined (aka geeks) but if Linux is being promoted as a desktop operating system to non-geeks, isn't it contradictory to expect those users to engage in complex system tasks?

So - should experienced linux users be more tolerant of the 'technically challenged', or should people just accept that average Windows users are better off staying with Windows?

It requires more work then windows to operate in general to install things and such you actually need to learn terminal commands but it is not only for geeks or my 5 year old is a geek (I am forcing her to use linux on my laptop to play on a computer since windows runs like crap on it).

I can tell you I find it 100x more stable then windows from my experiences with it. If people do not want to play with config files or learn terminal commands and such Linux won't be the OS for them. Ubuntu is close to 100% plug and play if not 100% but you still need to know basic commands to do some things in it.

I personally use both Windows and Linux depending what I am doing that day, I personally find it to be a matter of what you like. I enjoy being forced to learn new things to use my OS, if another user does not I see no reason not to be tolerant with them over it since it is all a matter of taste.

Hi,

This isn't really a newbie question and these forums aren't really meant for discussion but I would suggest this would have been a better place Linux - General.

This question the answer would be no, Linux is not as easy as Windows or even as easy as Mac (I find Windows easier then mac, so sue me). There are a couple of fundamental reasons behind this.

First off, there is very little digression in windows, there is a few variations of the same base OS every 3~4 years. Linux you see many many more versions for many many different reasons, purposes and preferences. This makes things from a software development point of view slightly hard. Say you are writing a package to handle networking, in Fedora/RHEL/CentOS you have to go off to /ect/sysconfig/network-scripts/ and pull out relevant networking script files, on the other hand in debian/Ubuntu you have to go /ect/networking/interfaces what contains the networking details in a single file. So from a developers point of view Linux is simply harder to develop for to get every version of linux to work with applications when things they need are handled differently.

Secondly comes the support from the commercial sector, Windows is simply larger, it has more users so if you are a company making a software package, it makes most sense to aim your focus at Windows, if you are a hardware developer, you will get the windows drivers and windows support handled first. Linux support comes secondary. This mixed with the first point means that hardware developers either leave linux support to later on, have poor linux support or simply no linux support at all. For those that do supply linux drivers/etc then if there is a problem with the hardware or driver most of the linux community will simply just not be familiar with the problem at all.

Third comes the interface, It's still on most distributions KDE or Gnome and in my honest opinion, in the face of windows, these both look relatively bland and bulky in comparison, it's still an impressive feat that these GUIs exist but unfortunately to compete with windows would take far more then even those feats.

Fourth comes mixed in with the generally complicated ways some things need to be installed in has not won many over, however this point almost does not need to exist anymore with the package managers and the GUIs handling a lot of things on the user behalf.

And lastly comes the open-source availability. Most open source applications are available in linux and windows but not all closed source applications are available in linux, most are in windows however. This means windows just by virtue of how Bill Gates preached the benefits of closed source in funding developers has given Microsoft a huge advantage. Linux isn't without closed source applications but linux experts tend to less favor them, even when they are better implementations, Debian attempts to have nothing closed source at all or past it's own control, where in my opinion Opera has pretty much always been better then say Firefox/iceweasel, bur Opera is available for download anyway, this is just an example of what I mean.

However these are reasons why Linux is not up to scratch with Windows usability wise, these are not reasons in themselves reason people shouldn't use Linux. The Open-Source Methodology does lead to some great advances and helps the industry in a lot of ways. Linux has become more user-friendly and is the cheapest and easy solution around. Also some suppliers have been starting to use cut-down and simplified versions of Linux in certain cases where it is clearly easier then even windows, for example Asus's Express Gate (based on Splash top I believe), is a very easy to use Distribution, but it only gives you very limited applications on the flip side (it's designed for low end netbooks but is included in very high end premium boards too, as I found out the surprised way).

In my personal conclusion. Windows is still better for the average user and will for the time being continue to dominate the market. However as long as Linux and Windows have both been going, I think the gap just continues to get smaller and in the future Linux very well might over take Windows, but I don't think it will be any time in the next couple of years, not while there are still very varied ways of doing the same thing between distributions and not as long as the GUIs do not evolve on a significant level to combat the usability of windows.

Actually, even with MS you sometimes have to load drivers from the net. It's not practical to make an OS 100% plug-n-play out of the box.
There are some distros (Ubuntu, Mint etc) that claim to be at about the same level as MS for 'instant-on' usability.
I'm sure you'll get some more informed opinions later.
While it's possible to secure MS systems, for the avg user Linux would probably be more secure simply because most viruses are Ms specific.
No OS is 100% secure.
Personally I'll, stick with Linux. I've used it exclusively at home for 8 yrs(?) and longer than that as dual boot with MS.

I did think about this, but I am a Linux newbie myself, still trying to reconcile the hype with the reality, and I think this is an issue newbies should be aware of.

I set up linux for 3 of my friends who can be classified as 'average' windows users. They don't want to use windows any more. They are quite happy with Ubuntu/Fedora. Ok, I know their computer literacy is relatively low and they wouldn't probably be able to set it up properly (but then again they wouldn't be able to install/set up windows either).
It was funny when one of them got another laptop with her mobile phone contract and she phoned me to ask when I could come over to install Ubuntu on it as windows was driving her mad. It's all a matter of habits.

I'd say it's not for geeks only, but I'm afraid in most cases a geek would have to set it up first.

double post for some reason - disregard

Answer No.

A command line fix is no different to one of those "oh, you need to go into the registry" type fixes. Linux requires a little bit of thinking, initially, but once set up you won't have to think too hard to use it. You just need to get over the C:, D: partition thinking and everything is easy - /home/user is like My Documents and so on.

If you spend the day installing Windows and the drivers and the programs and the updates, generally you don't have to do much more. It's the same with Linux, it just takes a lot less time!

The average Windows user will never do that either.

Cute. Not helpful, but cute.

Exactly, the only reason why people *think* windows is easier is because they get windows preinstalled on their newly bought machines. If something breaks down, they always call
some more knowledgeable friend anyway.

The only genuine reason why windows might be easier than linux is when you buy some non-standard hardware which ships with windows/mac drivers. In windows you'll just load a driver from a CD, in linux you might be able to get it work after some CLI magic. A few years ago it took me 2 months to get my Tascam audio/midi interface to work with linux (on windows it was a question of 10 minutes). Obviously it doesn't say anything about those two operating systems. It just reflects the fact that the M-Audio company doesn't provide linux drivers.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you on this point. As has been pointed out, there is much greater hardware support in Windows - regardless of the reason - and it's often much easier installing new hardware into Windows. Usually it's just a matter of inserting the driver cd and letting the installation program run. I have spent days trying to get some hardware to work in Linux and eventually gave up, despite following a variety of suggestions involving modifications to configuration files. I'm not getting into the reasons behind the lack of hardware support, because the average Windows user doesn't care - they just want it to work, but the bottom line is that it usually is much easier in Windows.

I totally agree, but it ONLY applies to some non-standard hardware. When it comes to some common hardware, in windows you need to get a driver CD and install the drivers, in linux the drivers are loaded automatically. How many times I installed linux and found that my printer/wifi card is recognised out of the box. In Windows, you'd still have to get a CD or download the drivers from a manufacturer's website. Nvidia - in ubuntu you just click on the button to enable restricted drivers. In windows you need to load a cd or download it from the nvidia site.