I’m a life-long Windows user who nowdays has a MacBook as a daily driver and a gaming PC running Linux. I consider myself somewhat tech savvy but holy fuck Linux just makes me want to tear my head off. I just spent 45 minutes trying to install Standard Notes “the right way” and in the end I just gave up and downloaded it from the Ubuntu store instead. Error, you need to add this repository. Error, you need to enable this feature. Error, you need to install this tool first which you can use to install another tool and that tool helps you fix the issue preventing you to solve the first issue etc. I honestly can’t even imagine how you could make this any more difficult.
I guess Linux is like welding; it’s great when someone sets the welder up for you and you just press the trigger and start welding but you’re up for some absolute misery trying to figure that out on your own.
Also, a huge credit to chatGPT. I can just take picture of my terminal window and it gives me step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot most issues I’ve had. I’d be at complete loss without it.
With Windows I can just download an app and follow the instructions on the installer and more often than not it works without an issue. Even my grandmom can do that. With Mac it’s even easier.
The problem in my experience is that those apps are often quite bloated, require you to make an account, then run in the background slurping up telemetry data. (I’m looking at you, HP Smart)
And then if you run into a situation where the app stops working properly, if a reinstall doesn’t fix it you’re basically out of luck because the error logging and online documentation is functionally non-existent.
On windows, you have to go to the software’s website, find the download page, click download, run the installer exe, then click through the installation wizard.
On Linux, you can either install it in one command in the terminal, or install in one click from a gui. You almost certainly have a gui app store preinstalled unless you choose a minimal distro like Arch.
If you want to update software on Windows, you go through that whole process again. On Linux, you just do a system update.
I’m not really sure what part of that is easier on Windows
With Linux you just open the software manager and search for it with effectively 0 chance of your grandma downloading a virus.
The app store model is the Linux model. Linux just doesn’t have paid apps in said stores.
Apple changed to the app store model years ago and people preferred it. Hell my grandma uses Linux now