> I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm forging ahead, donating to open source software and hardware projects, filing bug reports, and generally bringing the Mac spirit to Linux. "It just works."
IMO it would go a long way if we taught computer literacy and specifically Linux literacy to everyone in school. Microsoft and Google have all the school contracts and they bring people up on systems that "just work" (actually they have paid system administrators). If we taught people from a young age to use Linux and handle problems, then the small problems that often come up with open source need not be barriers to adoption. Even if every regular person can't always solve every linux problem, if they were familiar enough to use it and had at least one expert friend, they'd be fine.
That's not to say we shouldn't strive to make Linux "just work" for most people, but we can attack the problem from other angles as well.
I agree more tech literacy is needed. The learning curve for Linux seems so steep. For what it's worth, I took UNIX classes in high school, and know how to get around.
But Linux is just far more than I can handle, even just to install apps and configure settings. For example just trying to get my mouse not to stutter, I dig and find a solution. I copy and paste it into the terminal. It doesn't work and I try 3 different solutions. I'm curious about solutions but it wears my curiosity out pretty fast. I need to get work done.
In the sense that computers are like cars, I'm okay not knowing how exactly it works under the hood.
Yes this kind of thing is frustrating. And I may be very wrong, but I have been wondering, what if this is what open source is always going to be like. I am 100% pro open source and I think everything (cars, trucks, washing machines, factory machines) should be open source. But I guess if we got to that point, where the people producing the computers and the people writing the code were all on the same side, maybe things wouldn't break so often.
Also FWIW I have learned, even though I run debian, to check the Arch Wiki for tips on problems like that. One more place to check in addition to stack overflow.
Ya I wonder as well. To me it seems like Linux will always need a gooey center of tinkerers and builders. But it needs to establish mutual respect with people who can't use the CLI but need to get work done. Open source is important to the success of Earth.
Agree. And the grumpy user-hostile developer archetype is a real problem. I’ve been very pleased with the diversity movements inside of for example Debian. My end notion is a world where no one strictly must work for survival, and in such a case there would be lots of volunteers to keep the systems running. But for now it’a tricky to attract devs to non paid work.
IMO it would go a long way if we taught computer literacy and specifically Linux literacy to everyone in school. Microsoft and Google have all the school contracts and they bring people up on systems that "just work" (actually they have paid system administrators). If we taught people from a young age to use Linux and handle problems, then the small problems that often come up with open source need not be barriers to adoption. Even if every regular person can't always solve every linux problem, if they were familiar enough to use it and had at least one expert friend, they'd be fine.
That's not to say we shouldn't strive to make Linux "just work" for most people, but we can attack the problem from other angles as well.