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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@algernon But what proportion of people have a Linux "IT guy" in the family? 0.5% or less?
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@rspfau Probably less.
But does it matter? Even if there was a distro aimed at non-enthusiasts, the people who do not want to install, nor maintain any operating system (which, in my experience, is the vast majority of them), they'd still stuck with whatever came with their computers, or use something they have an "IT person" for.
What the Linux distro provides makes no difference. Hence my opinion that aiming at non-enthusiasts is a doomed endeavor.
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@algernon
As long as its easy and obvious how to do things like setting up a printer, adjusting mouse settings, etc. There's complete idiots, people that can get by if things are obvious and straightforward, and then the enthusiasts...a spectrum of users. I'm sorta new to linux but not an IT type guy...but I prefer doing things for myself. The easier the better.What are some other distros aiming toward the idiot side of the spectrum that you'd consider unnecessary?
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@rspfau GNOME OS, as proposed here.
BTW, I'm not talking about people who can't maintain their systems. I'm talking about people who don't want to. Many of them could, but they simply do not want to. It doesn't matter how easy you make it, if they won't even try. And it is perfectly fine if they don't, noone should be forced to do sysadmin work (however easy) against their will.
My point is that rather than putting effort into an OS hardly anyone will use (because those who are willing to maintain an OS, can already choose from the myriad of general purpose distributions, and those who aren't, simply won't, no matter how easy it would be), putting the same effort into making the existing distributions easier to admin remotely would be a far bigger win.
For example, in case of GNOME, setting a GNOME desktop up for someone else, remotely, is a pain in the ass, partly because most settings are in dconf or gsettings, which are considerably harder to pre-configure than dropping a config file somewhere. They're also underdocumented: I often found myself just monitoring dconf/gsettings changes, and configuring via a GUI to figure out the necessary dconf keys, and that's not very practical. That, or grepping the sources.
A man page, or any kind of offline viewable document listing the dconf keys for the settings of a particular GNOME app would go a long way towards making its initial setup and maintenance easier.
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So, a friend of mine grew up like that. Linux on her laptop, all through her teenage years, maintained by her uncle. When she needed some app, the uncle would come by and install something similar (that actually worked on Linux). When she went to university, she had no idea how shit worked so she bought a windows laptop because for that one she could actually get help and do things herself.
Switching to proprietary software was an empowering experience for her.
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@guenther Luckily, for our kids, I'm closeby, and both of them are interested in knowing how things work. So if they end up wanting to maintain their own OS, I will teach them how to.
If not, I will teach them how to find Linux help if I am not around.
My point is: if someone does not want to maintain their own system, the best thing I can do for them, is to maintain one for them. One I am familiar with. If they end up wanting to know the details, I'll teach them. If they end up wanting something else - that's ok too, but then I can't help. I'll try my best to point them to places they can get help from, but Linux is the only thing I know.
