I saw plenty of efforts that aim to create a Linux distribution for non-enthusiasts, for people who just want to use their computers, and not care about the details - A Desktop for All on the GNOME blog, most recently. While I commend the effort, my own experience is that these efforts are futile, and start off from a fundamentally wrong premise: that people are willing (let alone wanting) to manage their own operating systems.
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My family is using Linux because that’s the system I can maintain for them. Apart from my Dad, they never installed Linux, and never will. They don’t install software, they don’t upgrade, they don’t change settings either. All of that is something I do for them. And to do so effectively, I need a distribution I am familiar with, one that is also flexible enough to fine-tune for every member of the family, because they prefer fundamentally different things!
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The common pattern between all these three is that neither of them maintains their own systems. I do. As such, how beginner friendly the distribution is, is meaningless. The users of the system don’t care, they’ll never see those parts. They’ll have a preconfigured system maintained by someone else, and that’s exactly what they want. To make this work, I’m using distributions I am familiar with. For my parents, that’s Debian, because I was a Debian person when their systems were installed. For my Wife, it is NixOS, because I’m a NixOS person now. For the Twins, it will likely be NixOS too.
Installing Linux is definitely not something, the average computer user ever wants to do. The same goes for Windows. Unfortunately you can’t just buy a Linux computer at your local electronics store. Until that changes, Linux will remain in a niche.
Yup. No-one (non techie) needs a specific Linux distro. They’re all easy to use for normie activities once installed.
One big issue with retail computers coming with Linux is the kickbacks from the Windows ecosystem.
Things like AV trials and MS Office. I don’t know if they break even or make a profit on all the bloatware from a Windows based sale.
A regular reminder that ChromeOS is Linux. It’s Linux you can buy from a bricks and mortar store, preconfigured for the average low-knowledge user, and with minimal to no maintenance overhead.
We enthusiasts obviously mostly hate it, but we’re not its target audience. Its target audience (non-techies who mostly just like to use their phones) get on great with it.
People need to accept that any Linux distro made for mass market is going to look more or less like ChromeOS. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as traditional distros also continue to exist. But people need to get out of their heads that the “year of Linux on the desktop” looks like Ubuntu or Fedora or Mint. What it looks like is ChromeOS.
Who hates ChromeOS? Never heard someone say that
I don’t like it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it. It’s not flexible enough for what I - and my family - needs from an operating system.
Even if you could, it would change nearly nothing. The average computer user doesn’t want to maintain their system either. They want a system they don’t need to care about, or at worst, a system their friends & family can help with. Thus, the best way for a Linux enthusiast to help their family use Linux is to install and maintain it for them. For that, you need a general purpose distro you’re familiar with, one that’s easy to maintain remotely.
In other words, distros that target the average computer user are futile, because the target audience is not interested in neither installing, nor maintaining their systems.
(And this is what the linked blog post is about, in more words.)