As a complete noob who installed Mint about two weeks ago, I have Thoughts™. This is a good start, I think., and I’m really glad to see it, but it still makes some assumptions and misses a couple of things I came across that I think would be helpful.

I’ll try to find some time tomorrow to pull together some edits and suggestions to share, rather than a bunch of comments here.

How’s best to share them back?

Interesting. Will have a look on the snazzy package manager and give it a go. Ta.

Sorry, not actually used any Linux office packages yet. Briefly used office365 online, which was, as you’d expect, more or less the same experience as windows / Mac.

Have had a look around and there are, apparently, as many opinions about which Linux office suit is best as there are possible usage situations or different office suits… 🥲

In my newbie experience, the answer is: No.

There are still random snags and blocks to things you will probably expect or want to be able to do.

That being said, it’s sooooo much better than is was. If those snags are minor and not irritating for you, you’ll be able to work around them, I think.

And the wider community can be friendly and helpful, though not always empathetic / fully understanding of the lack of Linux knowledge you might be starting from, (again) in my experience.

Haven’t tried to print anything yet either…printers always seem to Bork on nearly every OS…

Edit: first installed Linux mint this week on a dell XPS laptop.

Lol, really does read in chatGPTs “voice”…

I agree, and that 80% was surprisingly pleasant and smooth experience, compared to my last stab at Linux, about 10 years ago. At least this time I didn’t git any driver issues.

But, that last 20% can be kind of a big deal if you need anything from within in…

I’d like to have the time to learn how to use Linux properly, but between a full time job (unrelated to an OS), young family, and other commitments it’s just not a priority.

I had a play out of interest, and it’s pretty good, but still not 100% usable “out of the box” for me. And how to do that remaining 20% is completely out of many Linux-naive users experience (using the terminal / command line). 20 clicks is easier, as all I’m doing is confirming yes or no on something, that I’m usually given enough information and context to be able to evaluate.

And I suspect that’s true of many many others. Which was the point of my original reply (which I’d hoped to be more humorous than insulting to people, but c’est la vie…).

To try and put it in another context:

It’s really nice to be offered a lift somewhere I need to get to, but if I get kicked out the car and have to walk the remaining 20% of the way, then next time maybe I’ll just get the bus/train/taxi. It might cost more, but at least I know I won’t have to worry if I’ll get there or not.

Also, as a new user, I didn’t know why I was seeing multiple versions of the same packages to install (flatpak etc). Googling to see which is best leads to the inevitable answer of “It depends”, which a new user might not be able to answer…

(I’m not so much speaking to you directly, and I know this is a meme post, but I’m more thinking about the handful of people in the community who seem to always reply along the lines of “people should switch to Linux, because [reason here]. And, yes, people need to learn how to x”, without demonstrating any understanding of nuance around other people’s competing priorities / skills / abilities.)

Aaaaanyway, gonna go Google “Linux 101” lessons…

Urgh. Wish this were true, but nope.

Still needs waaay more effort just to do (some) simple stuff a normal person might just expect to work.

Just installed Mint on a laptop to replace W10. Went really smoothly, and was quite impressed.

Thought I’d try a bit of emulation with Yuzu. Wanted to use a Switch pro controller. Plug and play? Nope. Tried Xbox one controller instead. Neat. Works. I can live with that.

But then thought I’d try a bit of Xbox game stream. No controller works with browser. Try obvious things to fix.

Looked for answers and they’re all like, someone going: oh, you just need to clone the controllerwaffelen driver from git, then just compile the installer using the command sudo apt get- monkeyshyte wtf -make then run the installer from the folder using cmake- getfuckednoob.

I don’t know what any of this is. Tried following instructions.

And, frankly, I cannot be fucked to spend four hours finding out / troubleshooting for something I would have thought was fairly coomon.

It’s not a deal breaker, it’s just another bit of faff and fuckaboutiness that puts me off. And, I suspect would others even less tech minded.

Psychedelics, by David Nutt. Probably the most recent and evidence-based on the topic.