Time for a discordant voice in this festival of consensus. Installing Debian is like climbing a mountain for anyone who is not an experienced Linux user. If you don’t believe that, go try doing it while attempting very hard to imagine that you are a non-techie Windows user. You will not succeed.
Yes, other distros do manage this better. And yes, that is a problem, because, once up and running with the right defaults, Debian is just fine for non-techie users. Debian could quite easily be the FOSS alternative to Windows for ordinary people who care about privacy and freedom but don’t have advanced technical skills. Instead they are stuck, de facto, with slightly-compromised alternatives like Ubuntu and Fedora.
So happy birthday to Debian, and congratulations. But I think we should all be more mindful of the bigger picture here: desktop personal computing is in a steep secular decline among everyone except techies and a few other groups of professionals. We need to think better about how to make all of this sustainable. The lowest-hanging fruit is an easy-peasy installation funnel, and Debian is failing at that.
UPDATE: People are misunderstanding the substance of my criticism, which admittedly was not very obvious. For a normie Windows user, the difficulty of getting Linux installed comes before the installer, it’s the problem of making a boot medium. Debian’s approach is to say “Here’s a list of ISO files, bye!”. That will not cut it for anyone but experienced Linux users. Some people here are saying “Tough luck to them”. I think that’s a shame.
UPDATE 2: What do people here hope to achieve by downvoting sincerely expressed opinions? There is no misinformation in my contributions to this thread, it’s just my viewpoint, which I took time to express as best I could. Would you really prefer it if everyone had the same opinion, i.e. yours? Would that not make for a boring “discussion”? I don’t get it. Personally I never, ever downvote anyone for expressing their opinion sincerely, no matter how much I disagree. I have not downvoted anyone in this discussion, indeed I have upvoted lots of them. I really hoped Lemmy would be more civilized than that Other Place, that it might have more of the FOSS spirit of exchange and tolerance. Disappointing. Have a nice day anyway.
Yes, once you have the install medium, i.e. today a bootable USB, it is just a question of clicking to accept defaults. So, back then, unless you got a CD-Rom delivered to you by mail, you must have done much more than “press the spacebar”. I also managed to install Linux back then as a noob, but it was not a easy process, I only managed it because I was very motivated.
Sure, but an ordinary user does not have to install Windows since it is already there. This is Linux’s burden. IMO a lot of techies in this discussion are underestimating it.
Have people installed Debian since Debian 12? The installer is very straight forward, and Debian 12 also comes with all the firmware modules to make things “just work” for people.
I would like to know exactly what Debian does wrong other than a blanket statement of “it’s hard”.
Hmm? I’m sorry, I’m not following because all distributions follow the same format here, which is that you flash an ISO to a USB stick (or other removable media).
What? I installed Debian last week, and I think it took something like 4 clicks, and setting my username and passwords. I installed it because I couldn’t get Ubuntu or OpenSuse to install (guessing because I have a 3090 GPU paired with an old intel 4770k/Z97 chipset).
By quoting hardware specs like that you’re only proving my point. Ordinary people don’t talk like that. And the only way it took 4 clicks is if you already had the bootable USB. Come on, try to imagine what all this must be like to someone who doesn’t understand computers like you. They also have a right to the freedom and privacy that Debian provides.
100% THIS. Ex-Windows, came for those reasons, tried those distros, didn’t like those compromises, went to Debian, everything was so hard I settled on Arch.
Another thing: I get the reasons why not, but I would love if Debian SID was more arch-like to use it as a daily driver. Docker is unsupported on it, for example. It makes sense, because of it’s purpose. But personally, I would love to always have the latest kernel, packages, and on the most popular base, and also because I would love to wear the flag of THE bastion community distro.
I get your point - but here’s the thing: your average Windows user doesn’t even know how to install Windows. And for a good subset of them, even installing a browser extension is a challenge.
About downvoting, as far as I can tell Lemmy’s default sort order is Hot, so most recent. But I usually switch it to Top, so by points. IMO downvoting to disagree is a complete anti-pattern. Effectively what you’re doing is silencing someone as a lazy alternative to expressing your disagreement with them. Literal cancel culture. They knew this 20 years ago, hence Slashdot abandoning downvotes in favor of words like “Interesting”, “Funny”, “Irrelevant” etc. But that was too complicated for the R-site, so here we are.
Time for a discordant voice in this festival of consensus. Installing Debian is like climbing a mountain for anyone who is not an experienced Linux user. If you don’t believe that, go try doing it while attempting very hard to imagine that you are a non-techie Windows user. You will not succeed.
Yes, other distros do manage this better. And yes, that is a problem, because, once up and running with the right defaults, Debian is just fine for non-techie users. Debian could quite easily be the FOSS alternative to Windows for ordinary people who care about privacy and freedom but don’t have advanced technical skills. Instead they are stuck, de facto, with slightly-compromised alternatives like Ubuntu and Fedora.
So happy birthday to Debian, and congratulations. But I think we should all be more mindful of the bigger picture here: desktop personal computing is in a steep secular decline among everyone except techies and a few other groups of professionals. We need to think better about how to make all of this sustainable. The lowest-hanging fruit is an easy-peasy installation funnel, and Debian is failing at that.
UPDATE: People are misunderstanding the substance of my criticism, which admittedly was not very obvious. For a normie Windows user, the difficulty of getting Linux installed comes before the installer, it’s the problem of making a boot medium. Debian’s approach is to say “Here’s a list of ISO files, bye!”. That will not cut it for anyone but experienced Linux users. Some people here are saying “Tough luck to them”. I think that’s a shame.
UPDATE 2: What do people here hope to achieve by downvoting sincerely expressed opinions? There is no misinformation in my contributions to this thread, it’s just my viewpoint, which I took time to express as best I could. Would you really prefer it if everyone had the same opinion, i.e. yours? Would that not make for a boring “discussion”? I don’t get it. Personally I never, ever downvote anyone for expressing their opinion sincerely, no matter how much I disagree. I have not downvoted anyone in this discussion, indeed I have upvoted lots of them. I really hoped Lemmy would be more civilized than that Other Place, that it might have more of the FOSS spirit of exchange and tolerance. Disappointing. Have a nice day anyway.
I remember installing Debian in 2008 as a complete linux noob and only pressing the space bar to install it. Has the procesd changed in the meantime?
Yes, once you have the install medium, i.e. today a bootable USB, it is just a question of clicking to accept defaults. So, back then, unless you got a CD-Rom delivered to you by mail, you must have done much more than “press the spacebar”. I also managed to install Linux back then as a noob, but it was not a easy process, I only managed it because I was very motivated.
So, exactly the same as windows.
Can you even order windows on a CD anymore?
Sure, but an ordinary user does not have to install Windows since it is already there. This is Linux’s burden. IMO a lot of techies in this discussion are underestimating it.
Who is going to pay Dell, HP, Acer, etc to install Linux?
Just because MS can throw billions at these OEMs doesn’t make that “Linux’s burden”.
See also Dell & Lenovo sell laptops with Ubuntu.
Have people installed Debian since Debian 12? The installer is very straight forward, and Debian 12 also comes with all the firmware modules to make things “just work” for people.
I would like to know exactly what Debian does wrong other than a blanket statement of “it’s hard”.
Mainly what is hard is getting the boot medium set up. It could be so much easier, as other distros prove.
Hmm? I’m sorry, I’m not following because all distributions follow the same format here, which is that you flash an ISO to a USB stick (or other removable media).
This is, in fact, how it also works for Windows.
What? I installed Debian last week, and I think it took something like 4 clicks, and setting my username and passwords. I installed it because I couldn’t get Ubuntu or OpenSuse to install (guessing because I have a 3090 GPU paired with an old intel 4770k/Z97 chipset).
By quoting hardware specs like that you’re only proving my point. Ordinary people don’t talk like that. And the only way it took 4 clicks is if you already had the bootable USB. Come on, try to imagine what all this must be like to someone who doesn’t understand computers like you. They also have a right to the freedom and privacy that Debian provides.
I’d rather install Arch. It’s crazy.
This happened to me, literally. Ex-Windows user, tried Debian, settled on Arch.
100% THIS. Ex-Windows, came for those reasons, tried those distros, didn’t like those compromises, went to Debian, everything was so hard I settled on Arch.
Another thing: I get the reasons why not, but I would love if Debian SID was more arch-like to use it as a daily driver. Docker is unsupported on it, for example. It makes sense, because of it’s purpose. But personally, I would love to always have the latest kernel, packages, and on the most popular base, and also because I would love to wear the flag of THE bastion community distro.
I get your point - but here’s the thing: your average Windows user doesn’t even know how to install Windows. And for a good subset of them, even installing a browser extension is a challenge.
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About downvoting, as far as I can tell Lemmy’s default sort order is Hot, so most recent. But I usually switch it to Top, so by points. IMO downvoting to disagree is a complete anti-pattern. Effectively what you’re doing is silencing someone as a lazy alternative to expressing your disagreement with them. Literal cancel culture. They knew this 20 years ago, hence Slashdot abandoning downvotes in favor of words like “Interesting”, “Funny”, “Irrelevant” etc. But that was too complicated for the R-site, so here we are.
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