Both OS are hard if you don’t know how to use them.
Both OS are easy if you know how to use them.
Linux’s problem is fragmentation. There’s not a single OS that many people are familiar with like Windows. Instead there’s hundreds of different distros that all function in a variety of different ways. Even if a person learns to do something on Mint or Ubuntu, they will be completely lost trying to do the same thing on Fedora or Arch.
And out of those “hundreds” only a handful of them are actually popular and progressing innovation…
As someone who’s distro hopped across a wide verity of distros, the fundamentals are more less the same across all of them. Just go with a popular distro with good documentation and you’ll be fine. If you’ve learned enough from mint to feel comfortable tackling Arch Linux, then the documention (e.g. ArchWiki) will be your strongest asset.
Good documentation is great to have. Here’s the thing though. If you need documentation to use an OS… That just proves that it really is harder for people to use.
Mint and Windows both share the ability to pick it up and use it for the majority of what most people do. Arch is like the textbook example of having to learn a bunch in order to use Linux.
I think Arch is meant for people who want to learn the software - so that you can also choose, control, customize, diagnose, and fix the software!
That said, archwiki is still a great resource on other distros for when something does go wrong, or when it’s not obvious how to do something, particularly when messing with experimental or server stuff.
The Arch wiki is one of the main reasons I use Arch/Arch based Distros. Its so insanely good and after you learned some of the basic stuff and what certain terms mean its a very good resource for doing stuff.
Problem is is that is that too many people insist on doing things the Windows way and they get frustrated because of it. For example, instead of going to the software center, they choose to download their programs from a website, even though that’s not how you’re supposed to do it most of the time. They’ll also spend hours trying to get Windows only programs to run, when there are alternatives available that work just as well.
I still don’t fully know how to install rpm files lmao, that’s how I learned about Apt back on linux mint, don’t remember what I was trying to install as it was like 15 years ago. Deb files were nice because they did work like a windows user would expect.
Let’s use Tor Browser as an example since that’s one of the programs that typically gets installed with a tarball. Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the tarball, you’ll want to navigate to the extracted files. You can do this in the terminal using CD commands, but I think it’s easier and a little more intuitive to just use your file manager and navigate to the folder that way. Once you’re in the correct folder, you’ll want to right click on an empty space and select “open and terminal.” Now you’ll have a terminal open and it will already be in the correct directory. From here you’ll want to run the “start-tor-browser.desktop” script. To do this, simply type ./start-tor-browser.desktop and you’ll be able to follow along from there.
Running programs from a Tar image typically involves running a script. You just have to change the name of the script to match whatever they have in the directory. Auto complete is your friend here. You don’t have to actually type the entire name of the script, you only need to type the first few letters and then hit tab.
One thing Linux needs to do is change the perception of how hard everything is compared to Windows. Some things are extremely less difficult on Linux.
Both OS are hard if you don’t know how to use them.
Both OS are easy if you know how to use them.
Linux’s problem is fragmentation. There’s not a single OS that many people are familiar with like Windows. Instead there’s hundreds of different distros that all function in a variety of different ways. Even if a person learns to do something on Mint or Ubuntu, they will be completely lost trying to do the same thing on Fedora or Arch.
And out of those “hundreds” only a handful of them are actually popular and progressing innovation…
As someone who’s distro hopped across a wide verity of distros, the fundamentals are more less the same across all of them. Just go with a popular distro with good documentation and you’ll be fine. If you’ve learned enough from mint to feel comfortable tackling Arch Linux, then the documention (e.g. ArchWiki) will be your strongest asset.
Good documentation is great to have. Here’s the thing though. If you need documentation to use an OS… That just proves that it really is harder for people to use.
Mint and Windows both share the ability to pick it up and use it for the majority of what most people do. Arch is like the textbook example of having to learn a bunch in order to use Linux.
I think Arch is meant for people who want to learn the software - so that you can also choose, control, customize, diagnose, and fix the software!
That said, archwiki is still a great resource on other distros for when something does go wrong, or when it’s not obvious how to do something, particularly when messing with experimental or server stuff.
The Arch wiki is one of the main reasons I use Arch/Arch based Distros. Its so insanely good and after you learned some of the basic stuff and what certain terms mean its a very good resource for doing stuff.
Problem is is that is that too many people insist on doing things the Windows way and they get frustrated because of it. For example, instead of going to the software center, they choose to download their programs from a website, even though that’s not how you’re supposed to do it most of the time. They’ll also spend hours trying to get Windows only programs to run, when there are alternatives available that work just as well.
That’s absolutely true. I made the same mistakes and I got absolutely mad.
I still don’t fully know how to install rpm files lmao, that’s how I learned about Apt back on linux mint, don’t remember what I was trying to install as it was like 15 years ago. Deb files were nice because they did work like a windows user would expect.
I don’t even know what rpm files are xD. I personally havent figured out how to make use of a tar.gz file.
A tar file is similar to a ZIP file. The easiest way to uncompress them is by using your file manager and right clicking.
I know, but since Programms often ship as tar.gz I still have no fucking clue on how to finally install a Programm from it.
Let’s use Tor Browser as an example since that’s one of the programs that typically gets installed with a tarball. Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the tarball, you’ll want to navigate to the extracted files. You can do this in the terminal using CD commands, but I think it’s easier and a little more intuitive to just use your file manager and navigate to the folder that way. Once you’re in the correct folder, you’ll want to right click on an empty space and select “open and terminal.” Now you’ll have a terminal open and it will already be in the correct directory. From here you’ll want to run the “start-tor-browser.desktop” script. To do this, simply type ./start-tor-browser.desktop and you’ll be able to follow along from there.
Running programs from a Tar image typically involves running a script. You just have to change the name of the script to match whatever they have in the directory. Auto complete is your friend here. You don’t have to actually type the entire name of the script, you only need to type the first few letters and then hit tab.
Thx