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, they’re 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.
That’s stupid. We do not design cars such that it’s impossible to crash if someone starts yanking on the wheel randomly.
Expecting an OS to do as much is … just beyond pathetic.
Except GNOME did exactly that. Sh can’t accidentally alter anything. Some people just have a hard time with computers and expected UI. Ever tried watching a good grampa deal with printer install and windows popups…you have to simplify things for less tch savvy people. Just like cars now have auto ebrake and lane assist
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.
