Say a friend is looking for a new system, and said person is not particularly savvy with technology, what system would you point them toward?
Say a friend is looking for a new system, and said person is not particularly savvy with technology, what system would you point them toward?
I’m a bit at a loss here with all these comments - can someone (for the sake of argument(s) & me giving further advice on such topics) give me some plastic examples what kind of issues bother average users of Windows, Linux, and macOS?
Like, is this like with rare(ish) cases, eg car accidents, where users don’t usually experience them regularly so it’s hard to argue which is best for which situation bcs every case is unique?
Bcs in the past couple of Windows iterations & “main” Linux distros (let’s say last 15 years?), afaik the average user doesn’t really have any questions on “how to use the system”, nor encounters breaking changes overnight.
Even more to the point, an average user will need tech support regardless of OS if any kind of problem occurs (and in most cases “a restart” will fix it anyway).
To my limited Windows exposure in the very last few years I would say the most common issue I got asked about was either “why did this new thing appear now” or a stuck Windows update (either from buggy colossal space gobbling (as a bug of a current update or collected temp files that never got cleaned), or unknown reasons as per MS statements).
(I have literally 0 W11 experience, the above were Window 10 issues.)
To my limited Linux exposure in the very last few years the only actual question I got to actually research to solve was a version stuck nVidia driver (multiple repo issue which I guess distro upgrade didn’t handle properly), which isn’t dissimilar to issues Windows had with graphic drivers decade(s?) ago (when the previous version didn’t fully unusual & it caused issues, sometimes even Windows update would bork a manual driver install, which is kinda like multiple repo issue).
(I also tech support a few family & friends with their techy needs, including PCs, but none of them are demanding users. They all “got switched” :) to Linux from Win XPs, Vista, and 7s, and since through various distros over the years, mostly Debian, are currently now like 5 years on Tumbleweed & the only question I remember in the last years, which I got multiple times, is why doesn’t the daily wallpaper tell them where the pic is from bcs they remember that at one point “it did” - idk, some Gnome default thing did that iirc. I got the same question from by coworker about her Windows daily wallpaper, bcs it doesn’t always display the info in lock screen.
Oh, and from my overall tech support to family most of the time is spent on passwords they have forgotten and ISPs dropping a connection for like 2 seconds once a year, bcs boomers.)
Years ago, I built my mother in law a computer. It had windows XP on it. Every weirdo and their kid who visited her would download another bit of malware/toolbars/whatever, and about once a month I would have to fix it. So I put Ubuntu on it, and it literally never had a problem again. I’d use Mint now, but if you’re doing some basic games and web browsing, Linux is fine. I game with my pc, which uses Linux Mint, and the only issue I had was getting the Nvidia graphics card working. It wasn’t really hard for someone who builds computers but it might be difficult for a “normal” user.