My family is a Linux family: both my parents and my wife use Linux, and so will the kids once they have their own computers. Apart from my Dad, they're all non-enthusiasts.
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My family is a Linux family: both my parents and my wife use Linux, and so will the kids once they have their own computers. Apart from my Dad, they're all non-enthusiasts.
Yet, none of them use a beginner-friendly distribution. My Wife, who's by far the least technologically inclined of them all, is a very happy and satisfied NixOS user. A distribution that's the exact opposite of beginner-friendly.
How is that possible? None of them maintain their systems. I do that for them. In the past two decades, what I learned from helping friends and family with their computers is that the vast majority of non-enthusiasts have absolutely no desire to install and maintain an operating system, or even programs. They're much happier if someone else does that for them.
Therefore, while I see value in distributions aimed at beginner enthusiasts, I see very little value in distributions aimed at non-enthusiasts.
I wrote a few more words about this topic on my blog too.
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@algernon hmm but then if they don't know how to do something in the computer (eg. view an encrypted pdf from their bank) it's on you to figure it out and help them, right?
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@wolf480pl Yes.
But that'd be on me anyway, no matter the OS they use, and regardless of whether they maintain it or not, because they don't want to figure that out themselves, and I'm the "techie".
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The point of a beginner friendly distro is that I don't have to maintain their systems. Both my partner and my parents are running Ubuntu and I never have to touch them. They are due for an upgrade so will be going to LMDE as I tested that for a few months recently and far prefer it to Ubuntu - and I may even be a bit anti-Ubuntu these days, hence preferring the Debian base.
But yeah, it picked up printers fine, samba shares etc. It "just worked".
I do not want to have to keep an eye on their machine.
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@eltheanine Yeah, I'd be happy if I didn't have to maintain systems for the family, too. But that requires them to be willing to do so, and no amount of friendlyness will persuade them to do so, when every fibre of their being is against it.
If you have family members who are willing to maintain their own systems, that's great. But I think they're more technically inclined than the average then, and thus a simple, general purpose distro (like Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora, or SuSE) will work just fine, and they do not require a special distro for non-enthusiasts - as your example shows, too.
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@algernon ouch, that sucks.
I'm glad I can just tell my family "I don't know" and they'll try asking someone else or figuring it out themselves.
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@wolf480pl It's not bad, really. Such questions happen once or twice a year tops, and because they're using a system I am familiar with, and have problems I already solved for myself, answering them is trivial.
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@algernon IME people in my family use computers very differently than I do... I don't have an example with a PC, but I do have one with smartphones: if someone asked me how to pay for parking with an app, I'd say "Don't. Use coins." because that's what I do. I don't think they'd be happy with that answer.
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@algernon sooo... there might be a market for managed Linux desktop environments?
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@wolf480pl Oh, yeah, there are certainly situations where I can't help them. We cry a little, then hug each other, and move on.
Not being able to solve every problem is an acceptable situation, even if unfortunate.
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@FiXato honestly, not sure. It's one thing to trust a family member or a close friend with maintaining one's system. It's a very different thing to trust a third-party with it.
I'd rather say there's a market for distributions that are easy to remotely manage for friends & family.
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yeah, that is fair.
But it does mean those distributions do have a purpose, but which you deemed to have little value. That was my point.
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@eltheanine I think there's a slight misunderstanding. I do not consider Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc to have little value. Quite the contrary! They're extremely valuable, because they're general purpose distributions that let me (and other enthusiasts) build systems our non-enthusiast friends and family are then happy to use.
What I find little value in are distributions that target non-enthusiasts. Debian, Fedora and the rest aren't in that category. Sure, they work towards making it easier for beginners to install and use them, but there's a huge difference between a beginner (one who is willing to learn how to install and maintain an operating system) and a non-enthusiast (who just wants to get stuff done and not care about maintaining their system).
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@algernon this is fine if you have the TIME to be sysadmin to your family. The great thing about mainline distros that have auto update mechanisms is that for the most part you don’t have to do anything. My kids have Ubuntu and I have security updates automatically installed, and I get an email whenever it happens.
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@Danathar But you get the email, not them, so you're maintaining it, just in an automated fashion.
So do I! Most of the work that goes into maintaining the family fleet is done by a tiny shell script running from cron (and also triggered when on security updates, received via various RSS feeds).
Also, like I said before: I have nothing against mainline distros. They're great, and they're amazing for people who are willing to maintain their own systems. They are useless for people who do not wish to do so.
My personal experience (based on over two decades of troubleshooting all kinds of things for friends and family) is that a whole lot of people don't want to maintain their systems in any shape or form. As such, trying to target them with non-enthusiast-tailored distros is ultimately a doomed endeavor.
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@algernon I don't think I get your point. An easy-to-maintain system isnt just easier for the user, it makes the maintainer's job easier when they're maintaining it for family. I for one would much sooner set up and look after a few installations of a general-purpose GNOME OS built along the lines suggested than something like Nix OS. The less that can break, the better.
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@petruchio An easier to maintain system, yes. But the moment the needs of my users go beyond what a non-enthusiast aimed distro like the proposed GNOME OS provides, it becomes useless. While I could install apps via flatpak, GNOME OS provides GNOME. I can't install XFCE (my Dad's DE of choice) or niri (Wife's preferred compositor) through flatpak, can I?
On top of that, for the family fleet, I have Wireguard set up, so I can remotely log in and do whatever I need to. I have backups set up via restic. I have plenty of automation set up through systemd user services (like, all the apps that need to start on login, conducted by a script to move them to their designated workspace, etc).
Would GNOME OS include all the tools necessary for me to accomplish that? Or would I need to add them myself, one way or another?
I just don't see what GNOME OS would provide for me as an admin. It wouldn't make it easier to maintain the system (99% of the maintenance I do for my parents is
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgradeonce in a while, and anix flake update && nixos-rebuild --flake switchfor my wife), it would lack half the tools my family needs, and would provide nothing over what they have now.The less that can break, the better, indeed. I accomplish that goal by tailoring the systems to each family member: they have what they need, along with some tooling to make remote maintenance and backups possible, and that's it. I can very easily do that with Debian, or NixOS, or any other general purpose distro.
A more limited, non-enthusiast oriented distro would lack a whole lot of things I make use of under the hood, while bringing nothing new to the table.
In other words: easy to use, general purpose system: yes! limited, non-enthusiast aimed system? no, thanks.
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@algernon I'm kinda jealous and yet it sounds so unrealistic for my family, I guess it's basically 3 people who need windows for one reason or another. Fortunately the administration effort is so low that I don't think I'd win any time (and I'm trialing moving my main PC to linux atm, but those games...)
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@wink yeah, we're lucky here, 'cos none needed windows (brother & sister do, Dad covers that, to the best of his abilities). It helps that out of the 4 of us, only Dad and I ever used windows, and we both switched to Linux (me in 1996, Dad in the early 2010s).
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@wink wrt games: lutris & proton are amazing. The Steam Deck dragged linux gaming forward a hundred years. Every single game I play via wine/proton, works better than they did natively: more stable, better fps.
There are a few that don't work, because they insist on installing a rootkitanticheat system that isn't available on linux. I just don't play those. Luckily, most of these I wouldn't play anyway.
