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I think the issue is Linux users think user friendly means 100% freedom to adjust and configure as desired (the system is friendly to users), and most other people think user friendly means a single obvious green path to getting things done.
These are not strictly incompatible, theyβre just difficult to balance.
I think KDE does it well? "simple by default, powerful when needed" works a charm on their applications
KDE was a nightmare for my wife since it has the configuration right in the desktop bars and dialogs. Misclicks and drags meant she was making changes she didn't want to. GNOME was a better choice, 100% simple and no surprises.
I like Gnome too, and I think their settings done via terminal is genius. I know Apple has it too. I have no idea who invented this first, but I love it. The pro user can tune the things they like, but an average user donβt need that many configuration options.
There can't be single obvious green path for a lot of complex things and most of the things that we do on computers actually are complex like that. I would think that user friendliness is more of an indicator of a sane default behaviour or something that people already are taught to expect. Balancing that is even harder i think.
Recently been playing around with Mint. For the most part it's user friendly. Where it falls apart is it's not intuitive, it took me hours of googling to try to figure out how to add windows specific drivers (because the manufacturer didn't create Linux drivers) for a Bluetooth mouse so I could program the mouse buttons. There were community created drivers on GitHub but no direct way to get them, I would have had to download and configure several support files before I could even try to install. I eventually gave up and just bought another mouse.
Most people would have given up in the first 5min and tossed their PC out and kept the mouse.
It's not that Linux doesn't work, it's that it takes work to get it to work.
If Linux worked in the sense of clear step by step instructions and the developers/legacy users didn't expect everyone to be experts or expect everyone to spend hours trying to figure out world peace just to perform a mundane task, then it would probably replace windows pretty quickly.
Windows pretends itβs friendly, but in reality itβs just there to sell you Copilot 365 subscriptions.
OneDrive secretly changing all of my save paths to OneDrive and not adding the cloud symbol to show that it's beed saving my files to Microsoft servers, even when OneDrive sync is turned off.
I wish I could drop Microsoft completely.
Before you know it, it'll start not letting you save anything because the cloud account you told it not to use is full
I feel like I've seen this exact complaint around the internet before...
You still have to configure OneDrive yourself for any of that to happen.
I once knew someone who became an insurance salesman.
When hanging around, after a while all conversations drifted towards stuff he could insure against.
This is what using windows feels like
It really doesn't. I mean I hate windows to the point of having it in my signature on my email, but let's not perfect this is true. If your going to say what's bad about it, tell the truth so people know. It's not trying to sell you anything, it just sucks as an operation system, has more holes in it then swiss cheese, and it's so convoluted that their own devs have to compete against each other.
there's literally adverts in the start menu now
Somehow you got downvoted even while there's the occasional full-screen startup spam:
"WANNA SUBSCRIBE TO OFFICE?
ENABLE DEEPER AD DATA TARGETING?! (you can't disable ads)"
Options:
{YES PLZ (here monee)}
/
{I'm so dumb I clearly don't know what I'm missing by refusing your products and services. Remind me very soon.}
too many secret windows fans that are butthurt in here
BRO!
Bro.
Weβre forming a squad! Almost a team!
where did you find this π
It was a gift, over 20 years ago. I married her
I don't know about marrying a coup, but to each their own i guess.
yes... very user friendly...
proceeds to copy-paste random commands from internet strangers
Huh, a statement that's not been true for at least a decade
It still haunts the OS though, especially as Windows used to be actually good back then.
Let's not kid ourselves. Anybody who thinks that Linux is as user-friendly to the average user as eg. Windows or macOS is completely out of touch with how helpless the average user is
When I was college back in 2009 I was dual booting Ubuntu and Windows Vista on a gateway laptop. I never fiddled with Ubuntu at all. The things that worked out of the box worked reliability and I never bothered fighting with things that didn't work like the stylus.
The reason why I didn't make the switch back then was not the OS or the drivers. It was the lack of support for the software I needed for school, like Matlab and orcad pspice. Things have improved substantially since then between first party support (Matlab started supporting Linux with R2016a) and wine/proton letting windows applications run mostly normally without their developers needing to make any changes to support the OS.
IMO the thing that's most in the way of adoption these days is the lack of mainstream OEM support. Until the masses can easily buy a computer with Linux pre-installed and the driver niggles sorted they're not going to switch.
The distros that tout themselves as user-friendly come with pretty much everything an average, non-power-user would need pre-installed ootb: Internet browser, file browser, media player, app store, and some sort of settings app/menu to fiddle with basic things like screen resolution, input devices, audio settings, etc.
Has your experience been different? Is there some specific distro or some specific missing/confusing feature you're talking about?
I'm not speaking from personal experience as such because I've been using Linux since the late 90's, but I do know a bunch of people who haven't had great experiences with Linux, mainly due to eg wanting to run games β which is fairly easy nowadays thanks to Proton but it's still not as stupid simple as just installing a game in Windows β or driver problems (esp graphics)
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I definitely recognize that gaming isn't 100% perfect on Linux yet, and graphics drivers can still be a pain. I think both of those statements hold true on Windows though, and I don't think I'd consider a gamer an "average" PC user. PC gaming is a niche hobby. A large niche maybe, but it's not the main thing people use a PC for. So I think it's a little unfair to point to gaming-related issues when trying to claim that Linux isn't user-friendly.
I wouldn't call gaming a niche hobby at all β I know plenty of people who aren't "technically-minded" in any way but who still play games on their computers and not just on mobile devices or consoles. 54% of Europeans aged 6-64 played games according to a 2024 poll, 43% of them on a PC β that's a huge chunk of the population.
Same survey:
71% play on smartphones or tablets (vs 68% in 2023) 59% play on consoles (vs 56% in 2023) 43% play on PC (vs 46% in 2023)
I know there's overlap, people who play multiple devices, but even with that, 43% is smaller than the other numbers
I'm not sure what your point is? 43% of 54% is still 23% of the population β is a quarter of Europeans aged 6-64 "a niche"?
By definition, yes, as in "not the majority"
So your argument is that because less than 51% of the population uses computers for gaming, it's "unfair" to point to problems people have with Linux and games?
Looks like the numbers are similar for the US: 64% of the population plays games, 45% of them using PCs: https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Essential-Facts-Booklet-05-30-25-RGB.pdf
Hehe. It's funny because it's true.
I had this picture 20 years ago, it still is epic.
Linux is like the Internet or even computers in general.
As I always say: "It's for anyone! But it's best not for everyone."
Hey, that's my coffee mug!