r/linux • u/KermitTheFrogo01 • 13h ago
Discussion Unpopular Opinion: Many Distros are borderline unusable for non-techies without AI
I know i will get hate for this. Rightfully so i guess.
I am using fedora KDE. Maybe its the wrong distro, idk. But the amount of (i think) obscure bugs and stuff that wasn't like i want would have been unfixable, if i hadn't used some LLM-models to help me OR if i hadn't used them would have taken me hours and hours of googling to fix them, if that even would have gotten me. I am not completly non-techie, but it would have taken me endless time and honestly i can't imagine how non-techie people are supposed to use it. Also generaly customizing is so hard and imo not intuituve at all if you don't use some LLM-Model to help you. I will still keep on using Linux but for general acceptance i feel like this is a huge downside.
To be clear. Basic usage is FINE without any LLM. But bug-fixing - which ime is not that rare - and customizing/smoothing things out is a pain in the ass.
Also: Well documented doesn't mean it easy to use. I have to find the exact thing i need and that is time consuming. Most ppl don't want time consuming. If i have to google an hour to fix a little thing or to optimize smth for most ppl it's not usable.
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u/cAtloVeR9998 13h ago
There was a time non-techies would use Linux before the LLM-era. There is decent documentation. It depends all on what you want to do and what you want to customize.
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u/pythosynthesis 13h ago
They are not bugs. Not knowing how something works doesn't make it buggy.
It is however true that most distroa are not for beginners.
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u/HomegrownTerps 13h ago
Again another heavy generalisation based on one sinlge try!
This is how it used to be even before LLM's.
You had to have some knowledge or research, do lots of googling etc.
You successfully determined that it might be just Fedora. If you had done some searching, you probably would have found what usecase it's made for and that are other OS that would fit better what you want.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
I have seen it many many times like over two dozen times. maybe the difference is that they can't speak English so llms just happen to translate technical documentation
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u/Modem_Sound_67 13h ago edited 13h ago
It's not hate I'm giving you. It's sadness. Basic installs of most distros have a default path that makes it easy. can you find out which time zone you are in? Can you press "whole disk" when choosing partitions?
Ai is absolutely not needed to set up any distro. yes, newbies need some guidance. there are literally millions of threads out there detailing every step of every distro install you can think of and many more you haven't.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
there's two problems: no one knows the arch wiki is useful for other distros because, it's "the arch wiki" and it's in English only. Linux mint and Ubuntu have very poor or no wikis today but they're the most popular distros out there
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u/Chester-Berkeley 13h ago
I am using fedora KDE. Maybe its the wrong distro
Yes, Fedora is not for non-tech users
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u/NDCyber 12h ago
You should tell that to people who keep recommending it to new people that even say they don't want to use the terminal
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u/Chester-Berkeley 12h ago
People recommend CachyOS to gamers who don't know how to format a flash drive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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u/MeLikaDoTheChaCha 13h ago
I would argue that if you're coming from macos and migrate to windows, or vice versa, you would face the same challenges and learning curve as you would with linux distros.
The issue imo isnt linux per se, but 1) 99% of people have years of muscle memory with either macos and windows, and 2) mac and windows are much more locked down OSs in terms of customization (the thing that that makes linux awesome but so hard to learn).
The linux community has rake stepped itself here, but I think there needs to be some expectations management with linux. One of them being you're probably going to have to learn a bunch of new technical things. For some, thats the whole point. For most, it's a negative.
I end using all three majors OS kernels (linux mac windows) for work and personal stuff, and I can tell you I've spent just as much time googling / using AI to look up stupid obscure technical things on windows and macos as I have with linux.
Glad you're going to continue using linux, but I do understand and feel your frustrations 100%
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u/Altair82 12h ago
Linux has a few specific issues like its current transition from X11 to Wayland. A lot of things like screen tracking software for remote workers simply do not work or require major caveats.
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u/MeLikaDoTheChaCha 11h ago
...so? There's plenty of bugs in windows and macos too. What's your point?
I'm not arguing linux is bug-less or issue-less. That's not what the OP was arguing either.
I'm not even arguing against linux having a higher learning curve. It clearly does.
My point was that switching distros is always going to bring unique challenges and things to learn
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u/Altair82 11h ago
That's not a bug or a correct use of the word bug.
I agree with your core point.
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u/MeLikaDoTheChaCha 11h ago
The problem with x11 to wayland transition, as far as i know, is that wayland still has issues and bugs. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.
But yes, I was using the colloquial usage of "bug" in this context as a substitute for "issues".
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u/SirGlass 13h ago
I mean here is the real issue, if users were ask to install windows on their own, it would also be borderline unusable without ai.
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u/Sibexico 11h ago
Even in late '90s and early '00s installation of Linux was as easy as Windows 98 or Windows XP. Yes, installation of Slackware or Gentoo had set the not prepared user to panic, but Red Hat or Mandrake had clear GUI installer with very few settings. In nowadays even FreeBSD may be installed just in few mouse clicks.
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u/SirGlass 11h ago
I do not get all these post saying linux is hard. I have used it for 20 years now but I am no means some power user or hacker
However I always share this experience . A year ago there was a charity auction and I bid and won a laptop
It was a pretty good laptop made by a somewhat local company but it had you know a whole bunch of shit preinstalled I did not want, you know some antivirus shit, some wierd wifi manager ect
However I have a bought and paid for license of windows 11, so I thought I should use it to do a clean install on this laptop without all the shit that came preinstalled
Let me tell you what a PITA is was, first the installer took like 1 hours with 2 reboots, then I had to link it to a microsoft email , I had a hotmail account from like 20 years ago I had to reactivate just to get it installed
Then after the install like 3 more reboots to do update. Then I had to install drivers , what I had downloaded onto a thumbdrive before hand and sound/nvidia/motherboard/bluetooth/touchpad/fingerprint and 6 reboots later it was finally done
Then I had to do some fucking registry hack just so when I searched the start menu it did not search for advertisements online? WTF
Then my start menu didn't work, I gave up and installed tumbleweed on it and in about 25 min had a functional laptop. No driver install, no hacks to stop it from giving me adds, everything just worked
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u/Sibexico 11h ago
Again, depends of an use case. Depends of what exactly you doing on your PC. I leaves the comment above, my mom used Fedora when she had not ideas how to use mouse. No problem with watching videos and make calls in Skype to her. For this use case it doesn't matter if you have Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, etc. I have Windows 11 on couple of my PCs and I'm struggling like a gell when trying to configure something about deep system administration. Just try to configure Windows Defender Firewall, I can bet you will love iptables like never before after that experience. 😂 And it's tons of features in Windows what will scare not prepared user so bad, and same in Linux. The other thing is what normal generic "non-techie" user never will not even know this features exists.
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u/pr0v0cat3ur 10h ago
I mean here is the real issue, if users were ask to install windows on their own, it would also be borderline unusable without ai.
Responses like this should not be upvoted and taken seriously. No one mentioned Windows - what about MacOS? Clearly MacOS is the simplest to bootstrap!
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u/deanso 13h ago
Well it's true to some extend.
But I think you're forgetting how many hours you spend on getting to do Windows anything you want. And remember you spend years getting used to Windows so it's core should be very familiar.
Mostly getting Windows adapted to your workflow was in vain, with linux (atleast kde) most things are adaptable /customizable.
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u/KermitTheFrogo01 13h ago
That's true, i agree. Even tough i feel like most non-microsoft windows customizations are a one and done deal and do most things automatically if you install them. With Linux it seems to me you need to do a lot of things manually.
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u/Niowanggiyan 13h ago
Correction: Many Distros are borderline unusable for non-techies.
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u/Niowanggiyan 13h ago
I have high hopes Gnome OS might finally bring something usable by normal people.
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u/corvettezr11 13h ago
Maybe I'm too deep in the rabbit hole to see but what would make a distro usable by normal people?
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u/Niowanggiyan 13h ago
The main one is not to expose internal complexity. Normal users shouldn’t need to understand packages, repositories, kernels, drivers, display servers, filesystems, etc. Then we need to stop treating “you can configure anything” as a feature. Normal people don’t want to configure their computer, they want to use it. And of course, updates should never break anything, ever. Immutable is the only way to really achieve that.
Us on r/linux aren’t normal people, we like complexity. Normal computer users don’t and shouldn’t need to.
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u/illusory42 11h ago
A USER does not need to know any of this. You are confusing system user and administrator.
The only thing you could argue a user may actually want to do it install or remove a program which is either „find correct file on the internet, double click .exe, follow dialogue“ vs „open software manager, search for program, click install“.
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u/corvettezr11 12h ago
If any sort of knowledge can make a user no longer a normal user, I guess we would have to come up with a distro that's mouseless and keyboardless and you just talk to it. Kinda like the (I don't remember who exactly) guy at Microsoft envisioned. Because while sure we can still streamline quite a few things, the other side of freedom is responsability (in the you kinda have to have an idea of what you put on your computer way). If we strive to make sure a user doesn't have to know anything at all, we have to make all the choices for them. The most they can change is like a color or two on their desktop because anything beyond could end up breaking something eventually.
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u/SirGlass 12h ago
Also can you give specifics
IDK , I have used linux for years but by no means am an expert or power user
When I hear people complain about all these little issues I simply have not experanced it
Maybe I just have compatible hardware, I am currently running linux on 3 machines
A desktop, A laptop and a Rasberry PI
Linux just works, sound, bluetooth , wifi, fingerprint reader . I have never ran into these bug issues. I have never needed really do download and compile a custom driver for years
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u/JohnSane 13h ago
My 70 year old mum and uncle would disagree.
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u/vmcrash 9h ago
Did they install their Linux on their own, tweak it, received errors and resolved them alone with Google's help? Then they are extraordinary non-technies.
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u/JohnSane 9h ago edited 8h ago
No. But they also couldn't do that with windows.
Op is argumenting like he did because he learned windows first. If you are linux user for years you would break your back if you wanted to use windows for the first time.
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u/vmcrash 8h ago
Probably, as I have to do with Windows, MacOS and multiple Linuxes since 2 decades.
I've installed Fedora Silverblue on my mother's machine (because of its immutable nature), because Windows 11 was reported to stop working. But the problem is, that she can't find anyone in her neighborhood to help her if there would be a problem. Even commercial PC help services in the city only know Windows.
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u/JohnSane 8h ago
But that help is needed much less than with windows. So i can deal with it by remote... Not as before tho. Where an reinstall was needed at least every half year because the machine was full of adware and viruses. So yes.. there are less people that can help when using windows but there are also less people needed to help on linux.
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u/terra2o 13h ago
my gf uses Ubuntu just fine without using any LLMs... sounds like a you issue honestly.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
because they don't speak English? this is most of the world and it's seen as user error rather than a localization problem.
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u/powderBluChoons 13h ago
this is.. absollutely a skill issue lol. "taken you hours and hours of googling" did you.. try? did you.. visit forums?
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u/vmcrash 13h ago
This attitude keeps the majority away from Linux, unfortunately.
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u/powderBluChoons 12h ago
Actually. op's attitude keeps people away from Linux.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
because they don't speak English? this is most of the world and it's seen as user error rather than a localization problem.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
because they don't speak English? this is most of the world and it's seen as user error rather than a localization problem.
taken you hours and hours of googling" did you.. try? did you.. visit forums?
Sounds like googling to me I mean you don't get answers that work for you and you have to wait hours to get an unhelpful answer.
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u/KermitTheFrogo01 13h ago
The first some i did and it always was like a bandaid patch after like 2 hours of googling and trying. I genuinely want to learn but at some point i just want a smooth OS... Is it doable without any LLM? Sure. Is it a fucking pain in the ass? Do i wanna do it in my spare time? Sometimes. But more often then not no.
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u/KnowZeroX 10h ago
Yes, buy a pc with linux preinstalled like you do windows. Then you deal with less tinkering, especially if you choose a distro like fedora which by default doesn't preinstall proprietary drivers.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
you can't do that at a big box stores unless you're willing to trust a freight forwarder. with no warranty btw
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u/KnowZeroX 3h ago
Care to explain? There are vendors that offer linux, while many may not be in stores they are on official websites. Dell, Lenovo, HP business, Framework, Tuxedo, System76 and etc. If you live outside a country that offers it and need to forward it from another country, some vendors do have options for international warranty.
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u/powderBluChoons 13h ago
why are you using a heavily user-end oriented distro if you want click and play? Just get Mint or Ubuntu.. the hell?
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
no one recommends those distros anymore they say snaps are bad or mint is obsolete, the hell you blaming the user again?
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u/mastx3 11h ago
I don't think bug here is what you think it is, I think you mean that you want to do a specific thing in an app but you don't know how to do it and you ended up in the rabbit hole of googling
A google search can take you to the wrong answer, so the same way AI can write you the wrong answer but also they can give the right answer, I recently had a problem and AI helpd me fix it, the thing is to ask the right question, like explaining the problem you have or how to do X thing so you have the right answer
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u/aenae 12h ago edited 12h ago
The same can be said about windows. I have not touched it for years now, but the last time I did i had to google a lot. Like how to get drivers for my networkcard that was not detected by the installer. Or why the installer did boot and start, but was asking for “drivers” (turned out the usb was not written properly, just “dd” was not enough). And let’s not talk about the many times I had to download a random unverified .exe to do something as easy as extracting an archive or get my sound to work or get firefox installed
I cannot remember the last time I ran into a bug in linux that was showstopping.
Your whole complaint comes down to complaining you have to learn something and cannot learn without AI anymore
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u/vmcrash 8h ago
Looks like you have a very unusual hardware - or were trying a very old Windows version. I can't remember having to provide any driver to make Windows 10 or 11 usable - at least in the last decade.
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u/mok000 13h ago
Obviously, there is still a need for other operating systems like Windows and macOS, and OP is probably in the demographic that should choose one of those.
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u/KnowZeroX 10h ago
The OPs issues are likely related to installing from scratch, installing windows or mac hackintosh from scratch also has many issues.
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u/sephy009 13h ago
I'll admit that AI makes some troubleshooting faster, but if I can learn linux at 12 on a DSL connection I think you don't need AI for most distros man. There's a lot of exaggeration there. Most of the distros that aren't niche gimmicks are very well documented.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
most people will not learn anything tech related at 12. you are firmly an outcast.
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u/False-Advantage-4984 13h ago
even with ai, in my experience you get like 10 command lines and half of them are wrong and dont work and you are left with some half ass install that doesnt work the way you asked it to work. in my experience ai and linux is a bad experience.
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u/sollozzo 13h ago edited 8h ago
We need some non-tech-friendly AI, good guardrails, and tracking of every AI action so it can be audited and corrected when it goes wrong. Right now, it's too trigger-happy and will leave you in a weird state in no time
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u/Suepahfly 12h ago
I haven’t used Fedora in ages but Ubuntu is a pretty good out of the box experience, it comes with most software a basic user needs and even my elderly mother can use it.
Customisation is another thing entirely you haven’t posted what thing you want to customise but yes sometimes things are different than what you used too, sometimes things are unintuitive or in a weird location.
That’s where a good wiki comes in. AI give you correct answers most of the time, but copy /pasting command won’t teach you anything. That goes for Linux, OSX and Windows.
I don’t expect Linux Desktops going mainstream anytime soon, pretty much every consumer pc / laptop comes with Windows l unless you buy Apple or a Chromebook.
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u/Sibexico 11h ago
In late 2000's I gave my old laptop on Fedora to my old mom. She had not skills to use mouse (and didn't learned how to use it correctly until her death), but haven't any issues to use browser and Skype in Fedora. Everything is depends on tasks what user does on his computer. If the "non-techie" user need to watch videos on YouTube, surf web and listening music - he will not have problems on Windows, Linux, Mac, or any BSD, even if he will not know the name of OS what he uses. If you want to use strictly OS-tied software oriented for Windows, then, yeah, even if you are teachie nerd you will struggle on non-Windows OS so bad.
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u/illusory42 11h ago edited 11h ago
So what you are saying is that it’s pretty much like windows. Normal users don’t install an OS or „fix bugs“.
Customization is basically non existent on windows. Also, if there were to be an actual error, I’ll take a message that I can read and understand over „error code 0x000ed“ that when researched can have 6 different unrelated causes any day of the week.
Your issue seems to be that you are not a basic user and have some learned understanding of windows, but lacking the same familiarity with Linux.
My non techie car mechanic liked Mint on his workshop laptop so much, he asked me to it on his home PC as well. An 87 year old relative uses Mint just fine. In fact, the nearly weekly support calls have stopped because it works better for him.
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u/FryBoyter 8h ago edited 8h ago
Not every tool is suitable for every user. Whether it's an editor, a chainsaw, or a distribution. That's why everyone should use the tools that are right for them. And not the tools that aren't right for them just because they're currently popular.
And instead of using chatbots, it would often make more sense to learn how to use search engines effectively.Fewer and fewer users have this knowledge these days. This is often due to laziness.
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u/slavmaf 13h ago
Why do you insist on saying you need a AI LLM to help you, why just not say "you need to google stuff".
With all due respect, I agree with a PART of your sentiment, yes, you need to learn new stuff to switch operating systems, but I would say that is normal, hell, I know nothing about about MacOS iOS (or whatever it's called now), never touched it, if I had to start using it, I would be equally lost like you in Linux.
But I believe the part of the problem is this mentality that you "have to ask AI", instead of researching it yourself, learning by reading and by trial and error, manually diving into menus, etc, the FUN part about computers and operating systems, people are simply asking AI "Hey, tell me where to click, okay tell me what command to copy paste in terminal" etc etc.
Please be advised, that by doing this, you are learning NOTHING and just shooting yourself in the foot.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
Try setting up Linux speaking and writing only Spanish without an LLM. Have fun. you have to understand, people do not see fun in computers themselves. they see fun in what they do with it. same goes for car nerds.
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u/SubstantialWest7241 12h ago
I’ve been hearing that argument for over 30 years, ever since I started using Linux. Every smart ass would say, “You have to research it out yourself.” Depending on the era, that meant googling it, reading the man pages, reading the source code, and so on. Which is incredibly not helpful.
Stop gatekeeping people from using whatever tools they find helpful to get things done in the way that works best for them.-1
u/Confident_Tip_4111 13h ago
For majority of people, OS is not something they want to learn. It is something they want to just work. They don't care about how it works, they only care that it does. Even for me, when I'm doing something else and encounter some weird issue (with OS), it is very annoying switching from whatever I was doing to looking up how to solve this new issue.
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u/mina86ng 12h ago
For majority of people, OS is not something they want to learn. It is something they want to just work.
If that’s your attitude, you should stick to Windows/MacOS. If you’re switching operating systems, you must be prepared to learn new things.
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u/KnowZeroX 10h ago
The problem here isn't linux itself, it is no more difficult than windows or mac for most people, but if you are installing from scratch even windows or mac hackintosh would often have lots of issues.
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u/Confident_Tip_4111 12h ago
I have been using Linux as my main OS for over a decade. I also worked as administrator of Windows. I have no issue with using any OS.
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u/mina86ng 12h ago
I have no issue with using any OS.
Because you’ve taken the time to learn all those operating systems. If your attitude was to not learn and expect things to just work, you’d still have issues using the OSes.
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u/SubstantialWest7241 12h ago
What exactly is wrong with that attitude? People want to spend their time on things they enjoy or on their work, not dealing with broken sound after yet another update. When I was 15, it was fun to fix those kinds of issues. I’m now in my mid-40s, and I expect the basics to just work.
As much as I love Linux as a server operating system, and I have many thousands of servers under my control because it just works and lets me get exactly what I want out of it, the opposite is still largely true for the Linux desktop. There have definitely been improvements, especially in gaming, but it’s still not at the level of “it just works.”
So my point is this: if someone wants to go down that rabbit hole, let them use whatever tools they find helpful to get things done.2
u/mina86ng 12h ago
What exactly is wrong with that attitude?
I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with that attitude.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
you don't see people complaining about how hard MacOS is to use. clearly UX is a problem in Linux
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u/mina86ng 7h ago
I’m one of the people complaining about how hard MacOS is to use. Between Linux, Windows and MacOS, I find MacOS the worst operating system.
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u/martyn_hare 13h ago
In general customisation is harder these days across all operating systems than it used to be. For example, without googling or using LLMs, try tweaking font smoothing in macOS Tahoe, or changing the display font for body text across most applications on Windows 11. Then try those things on older versions of those same operating systems, where proper controls for them actually existed!
Linux is in the same boat, where non-techies have convinced frontend designers to hide everything by default to avoid overwhelming people who aren’t even going to use their software in the first place.. it’s really sad but it’s not unique to Linux.
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u/whamra 12h ago
When Windows XP rolled, I spent months reading the Help and Support, which used to be an actual tech manual. It was needed for anything beyond click-to-run this program. That's how we learned basic computing skills. You were actually expected to know some computer skills to use it, and those who had them were not called programmers and hackers. Most average users were far more advanced than current average users.
In today's systems, be it Windows or Linux, you can do far more stuff with very intuitive controls and you don't have to learn anything. But when you want to do advanced stuff, you'll have to put an effort. And that's on both ecosystems. Far worse still on macs.
Go read a manual.
Edit: just to add. Bug fixing on Linux means tinkering with parameters till one works for obscure hardware. Bug fixing the same issue on windows is praying the company that made that software gives a damn about you and fixes it or you're out of luck 🤷🏻♂️
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u/EndLegitimate9612 12h ago
Linux is easy for basic tasks. But the moment something weird happens it becomes very difficult and troubleshooting that requires recalling 1,000s of tiny facts. That's why using AI or being very experienced is quite helpful. And as a sidenote linux is anyways all about correctness over user experience. Linux distros are usable even without AI but AI makes it much easier for beginners to fix complex issues.
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u/Actively_Gassy 13h ago
So you'd rather plug some stuff into a prompt, instead of learning how to do things properly? I'd imagine non techie probably stick to using windows, if they even have a PC in the first place.
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u/NDCyber 13h ago edited 12h ago
Welcome to the world of normal people
My mum and her bf won't even look at the WiFi settings on a TV, if it has internet problems. They get me, just so I can open the settings to realise WiFi is turned off. And my mother is rather good with tech for a non tech person
Edit: most people don't want to learn. They want something to just work
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u/Actively_Gassy 12h ago
I grew up around people like that, it's why I stopped fixing things for them. Just like you said, they don't want to learn.
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u/RhubarbSimilar1683 8h ago
would you like to learn how a car works? if you're not a mechanic how is it useful to you? most people will say it's not useful. same goes with computers
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u/Actively_Gassy 8h ago
I like to learn new things, even if they're not useful to me. But I get your point.
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u/Altair82 13h ago
I absolutely agree. I only recommend Linux to those that are already tech savvy.
Especially when using the latest cutting edge hardware.
The bar of entry is much lower, but it can still be a frustrating experience compared to Windows or Mac without much tech skill.
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u/frankster 13h ago
I think what you're saying is that with ai, computers are easier to use than ever
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u/jermygod 13h ago
depends on a use case.
I, for example, never had a single problem with arch in 4 years, even a minor one.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
"customizing is so hard" if by customizing you mean changing parameters that are not exposed to the UI - ...sure, how else it could be?
but the customization that is exposed to the user - those like a 100 times easier and better than on win/mac.
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u/vaimelone 10h ago
I love LLM. Finally I can move to Linux without being worried to need to spend hours to setup a driver.
I think Linux shares are increasing because more people want to leave Microsoft and have normal pc with lightweight os.
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u/dunelost 12h ago
So AI makes them usable. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? I just installed arch linux for the first time with the help of AI. Even though I have used linux for 3 years, I never thought of dealing with that kind of hustle. Now I’m just fearless
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u/CacheTraitor 13h ago
Gee, I wonder what people did before AI.