Linux, isn’t that Lucy’s brother - the kid who always has his blanket?
The main point is missing: WHY should I move to Linux?
I’m not being contrarian. I’m being serious. Most non-techies honestly wonder why anyone thinks they should do it.
And a second one: “Will it change the way I use all of my microsoft office software?”
And a third one: What about all my other windows based software? Will this make using it easier, or will it make it more complicated?
If you are going to sell someone a new car, or stereo, or toaster, you have to first show them why they want to make the change from what they already have.
This isn’t bad, but it’s still too techie. There is no way I’m going to teach people to make their own bootable flash drives as part of moving them to Linux unless it comes up in conversation as in, “Hey! How do you do that?” Otherwise, my goal in moving non-techies over to Linux is so they can surf the web and use Libre Office to write a letter or work with a spreadsheet on a system they cannot afford to replace or something I have lying about.
On a different subject, my keyboard no work.
I’m eventually switching everything to Apple products.
I like to use technology, not diagnose technology.
There, fixed it. I've been using Unix of one form or another since the late 1980s (work). I've been running Linux at home and at work for the last 14 years. Yet a few weeks back, the SSD in my home system started acting up (nearing end of life). I should mention that the SSD is used for the OS, and /home is mounted on a regular spinning drive... Simple swap for a new SSD and re-install, right?
Wrong. The same distro I've been using on my personal laptop and desktop, the one I've installed probably 6 or 8 times fooling around with it... Decided it didn't want to see the new SSD as a boot device. No amount of jacking around on the command line, nor fooling with GParted could make it do a simple install of bootable / on the SSD, and /home on the spinner...
I finally had to just do a "fresh" install of Linux onto the SSD - ignoring the spinning drive entirely. I felt stupid using all the beginner defaults... Then I went in and manually edited /etc/fstab to mount the spinner as /home.
I'm still a borederline Linux fanboy, but I will be the first to admit sometimes I just don't get it...
I really dislike the idea of allowing some company to alter my computing systems at will, without any idea of what they are doing, and why.
ShadowAce gave a pretty good list of the advantages.
| Versions | Pages | Percent | Hits | Percent | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | 8,172 | 44.9 % | 8,629 | 45 % | ||
 |
Windows XP | 1,324 | 7.2 % | 1,334 | 6.9 % |   |
 |
Windows Phone | 21 | 0.1 % | 21 | 0.1 % | |
 |
Windows NT | 39 | 0.2 % | 39 | 0.2 % | |
 |
Windows ME | 5 | 0 % | 5 | 0 % | |
 |
Windows Vista (LongHorn) | 82 | 0.4 % | 86 | 0.4 % | |
 |
Windows Mobile | 6 | 0 % | 6 | 0 % | |
 |
Windows 98 | 6 | 0 % | 6 | 0 % | |
 |
Windows 95 | 2 | 0 % | 2 | 0 % | |
 |
Windows 8.1 | 140 | 0.7 % | 156 | 0.8 % | |
 |
Windows 8 | 67 | 0.3 % | 72 | 0.3 % | |
 |
Windows 7 | 5,326 | 29.3 % | 5,471 | 28.5 % | |
 |
Windows 2003 | 30 | 0.1 % | 30 | 0.1 % | |
 |
Windows 2000 | 30 | 0.1 % | 31 | 0.1 % | |
 |
Windows 10 | 1,094 | 6 % | 1,370 | 7.1 % | |
| BSD | 12 | 0 % | 12 | 0 % | ||
 |
OpenBSD | 11 | 0 % | 11 | 0 % | |
 |
FreeBSD | 1 | 0 % | 1 | 0 % | |
| Linux | 2,846 | 15.6 % | 2,979 | 15.5 % | ||
 |
Ubuntu | 9 | 0 % | 10 | 0 % | |
 |
Centos | 1 | 0 % | 1 | 0 % | |
 |
Google Android | 1,852 | 10.1 % | 1,978 | 10.3 % | |
 |
GNU Linux (Unknown or unspecified distribution) | 984 | 5.4 % | 990 | 5.1 % | |
| Macintosh | 1,539 | 8.4 % | 1,623 | 8.4 % | ||
 |
Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks | 11 | 0 % | 15 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion | 1 | 0 % | 5 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion | 7 | 0 % | 7 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard | 13 | 0 % | 16 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard | 1 | 0 % | 1 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger | 1 | 0 % | 1 | 0 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.12 Sierra | 119 | 0.6 % | 133 | 0.6 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan | 112 | 0.6 % | 117 | 0.6 % | |
 |
Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite | 149 | 0.8 % | 160 | 0.8 % | |
 |
Mac OS X others | 1,124 | 6.1 % | 1,167 | 6 % | |
 |
Mac OS | 1 | 0 % | 1 | 0 % | |
| iOS | 2,178 | 11.9 % | 2,394 | 12.4 % | ||
 |
iOS (iPhone) | 1,968 | 10.8 % | 2,149 | 11.2 % | |
 |
iOS (iPad) | 210 | 1.1 % | 245 | 1.2 % | |
| Others | 3,419 | 18.8 % | 3,519 | 18.3 % | ||
 |
Unknown | 3,222 | 17.7 % | 3,289 | 17.1 % | |
 |
Unknown Unix system | 159 | 0.8 % | 192 | 1 % | |
 |
Sony PlayStation | 19 | 0.1 % | 19 | 0 % | |
 |
BlackBerry | 7 | 0 % | 7 | 0 % | |
 |
Nintendo Wii | 6 | 0 % | 6 | 0 % | |
 |
Java Mobile | 6 | 0 % | 6 | 0 % | |
I use both.
Linux for work, in embedded systems and for embedded systems. I do not try to do powerpoint, excel, word, email, web.
Windoze for when I do try to do powerpoint, excel, word, email, web.
How old of a machine can I install it on and will it operate old scanners and printers that HP/windows has decided to try to make junk out of. I have an old really good scanner that vista and higher does not want me to use.
It’s pretty easy to just put an ISO on a USB stick, then boot it and run it from the stick to get a feel and explore. I don’t know how much software they put on the image, though. Probably not much at all, but one can probably get a look at a desktop that way.
Live install images
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/
How do I write an ISO image under Windows?
https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#record-windows
Debian stretch — Installation Guide
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual
Linux Mint seems to be more popular with new users. It’s easier to install with more bells and whistles.
Ah, here we are.
6 Best Linux Distributions for Beginners in 2018
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/
Quick questions - quick answers appreciated.
1) How often do you need to end up on a command line to accomplish a necessary task?
2) For people with a need for standard web access, email, texting, word processing, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. what is the best shell?
3) With this command I think I could look at large file usage: “du -s * | sort -nr > $HOME/user_space_report.txt”
I assume this is case-sensitive?
4) Can you use Linux without command line necessities for #2 tasks?
I used to be a .Bat file expert, Quick Basic and assembly guy from the 80’s but along came GUI/Windows.
The Linux command line seems overly complex and unforgiving.
I wish they’d based the command line on the .Bat format but that’s just because it seems more straight-forward.
No rush - my only Linux experience was to make a boot-able thumbdrive to change some corrupted filenames with non-widows compatible characters to be accessible.
Lastly - sorry for the quick question suggestion at the beginning. ;-)
bfl