Even if they pick a distro and decide to install it, more often than not the install process is still overly convoluted even in just making installation media.
Going to a distro website and trying to find where to get it (ubuntu has a habit of leading with literally anything else other than regular desktop distro on their front page). Finding a download page, and having it just spit out an iso file, with no explanation on what to do with it, or 'how to install' link in sight (debian, it's very nice that there's a big download button, but like...then what. where's the explanation link. it's buried under other downloads, but that's not very intuitive). Getting to a 'how to install' page and having it be intimidatingly long, perhaps even needlessly. Sites, pages and explainers being laid out in confounding ways, and install process sometimes laid out in a bit of an overcomplicated way. (debian has an installation guide that's presented perhaps in the most intimidating way possible to a new unwitting user, and also buried under click on a click on a click. somehow writing the iso is not even among the first dozen of pages there. ubuntu mate gives you links to iso downloads, and yet the installation process is buried under 'faq' (again, not very intuitive or straightforward), that faq only has a bunch of oddly laid out 'making installation media' pages, and the rest of actual installation process is just somewhere else.)
That's before someone even gets to the actual install process. Somehow all of that stuff hasn't gotten more streamlined or user friendly. If you try to see how one would go about getting and installing any distro, you'd quickly see that it's very confusing and convoluted, way more than it has to be, or needs to be to appeal and be simple for new users.
There's glimmers of hope, like fedora which has its media writer, which is gonna hold your hand through the whole thing. Even that links out to github for a download, despite clicking on a seemingly specific 'windows/mac or linux' button. It's a little buried too, below iso downloads, when it really should be brought up more forward, and explain a little bit better on how it's gonna guide you thru the whole thing.
It really should be an app that's gonna guide you thru it, or a dead simple 1-2-3 step tutorial that's gonna guide you thru writing an image (download writer, download iso, write an image - laying it out more than that is just overcomplicating it really, at least in the initial quick install guide), with a clear, visible link to it - and yet somehow even this is too high of a bar for many distros to clear.
What has done a number on the ease of installing linux is how compact discs have just went away, because having a compact disc, burning it, or having it be just sent to users was making that step of the process simpler. Sure, writing to a USB is easy, but the expectation that everyone's just gonna have a spare usb is naive (and you're never gonna hear that you actually need to buy a usb stick in any of those guides lol), and there's just a little more opportunity to fuck up there (overwriting other disks, unless the writer app is laid out nicely and fail-proof). Distros might as well start selling usb sticks with installers on them. If someone's gonna be brand new to the whole thing and they're gonna have to buy a usb stick anyway, they might as well buy it from the distro with the distro on it already.
Some distros may want to get real about how a new user would even navigate their websites in order to get the thing. Like just trying to go thru that process themselves and see what's that experience like.
> There's glimmers of hope, like fedora which has its media writer, which is gonna hold your hand through the whole thing. Even that links out to github for a download, despite clicking on a seemingly specific 'windows/mac or linux' button. It's a little buried too, below iso downloads, when it really should be brought up more forward, and explain a little bit better on how it's gonna guide you thru the whole thing.
> It really should be an app that's gonna guide you thru it, or a dead simple 1-2-3 step tutorial that's gonna guide you thru writing an image (download writer, download iso, write an image - laying it out more than that is just overcomplicating it really, at least in the initial quick install guide), with a clear, visible link to it - and yet somehow even this is too high of a bar for many distros to clear.
Sorry, but this is just ridiculously nit-picky. How much more hand-holding do you need? Everything you want is literally there. Are you complaining that Fedora also addresses Linux users, at all?
Fact is, installing an operating system is a bit of an involved process. Realistically, people wouldn't even start with the docs, but some YouTube tutorial... But man... Fedora tries so hard! The site is ultra clean and on-point. Docs are friendly and very much 1-2-3 structured, they maintain a fucking media writer to do all the complicated shit like choosing a mirror and checking signatures, a simple installer where all complexity is hidden and you can just hit 'next'. What the hell do you want more?
MacOS and Windows don't even consider OS installation and only show you where you can find their OS preinstalled. Lol.
(I do have to agree with you on ubuntu.com tho. Haven't opened their site in a while and... jesus christ, what a mess!)
Fedora is the better example there. (i literally say that it's the glimmer of hope there lol.) It's an actual utility slash app that will do everything, and not just a file that's just thrown at you with no pointers.
(Though even fedora's download page could use a more clearer "How to install" link next to the iso links there. cause even clicking on Documentation there isn't gonna lead you to an installation tutorial or even let you easily find one there without digging. and even what's written where is either not that great or just doesn't exist lol. like, i would just straight up disagree on docs being friendly in regards to install process. though maybe that's not even necessary cause you're just gonna boot into the installer that'll take you through it. and again, it links out to github instead of actually downloading it right there, which only adds unnecessary confusion. how hard could it be to actually split links per platform? this is again the sort of thing where some people there might presume that 'users will just figure it out', that they will hunt out the correct file there on a page that looks nothing like previous one and is more geared towards devs, even though it could've been streamlined further. putting media writer higher up on the page is a nitpick, lack of a prominent installation guide is not, cause it's not linked to, and it also seemingly doesn't even exist. there's https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f36/install-guid... but not for a more recent version, i guess it just got lost in the shuffle.)
Some Linux distros aren't really doing as good as they could be at making things more accessible to a wider audience and less proficient users. And so the install base stays where it is. I don't think it's extremely nit picky to point out that just linking to an iso and expecting people to just figure it out without even clearly linking to a tutorial is not very accessible. And it really could be as simple as just actually having a link that says "How to install" or "Installation guide", and it's baffling when that stuff is buried. People could use trying to look at these things from a perspective of a new user who's not familiar with these things, and not just from someone who's in the know. Cause it's not actually intuitive or accessible having to dig around a website, trying to guess which of the links would take you there. (other downloads? documentation? support? none of these are an actual guide, and sometimes you won't even find a link to a guide there either.) There seems to be an assumption that just giving an iso file is enough, and that assumption is incorrect.
For example, Debian does kind of a bad job there cause it just throws an iso there and leaves you to poke at other links and guess, the installation guide there is buried under a bunch of clicks for some reason. Ubuntu is pretty good (though im still baffled why won't they feature their desktop version even more prominently on their front page. now that's an actual nitpick), and it actually outlines 'how to install' right there next to the download, and has an actual link to a more comprehensive tutorial too, that's laid out pretty nicely as well. (that's pretty much perfect really. though some other flavors of ubuntu might not be as great there.) Compare https://www.debian.org/releases/forky/amd64/ and https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop (both also first results from google on 'distro name how to install'). Debian's idea of a guide is kind of diabolical in comparison. It looks intimidating, it's plainly a pain in the ass to navigate, it's not laid out well whether you a new user or even if you know what's up, it's easier to just give up on that page and look elsewhere for something better formatted. But hey, maybe Debian isn't even really meant to be all that accessible or to be for the kinds of users that ubuntu might cater to. Or rather, it just won't be, if it's gonna be like that.
Windows is quite easy to install. They have a media writer too and their installer is pretty straightforward. It'll even do an in place upgrade that will just work. They clearly have considered OS installation, and have a couple of different tools available for it. They also still sell usb sticks with an installer on it.
To be honest, I don't think Debian and Fedora are even targeting total beginners and that's fine with me. I love Fedora, but I wouldn't recommend it as a first ever Linux distro.
But yeah, I have to take back my rage somewhat, since I realized the Fedora docs are not once mentioning what actually to do with a "boot medium". Granted the installer is pretty self-explanatory, it's a bit odd the rebooting hint is omitted.
I disagree on the GitHub thing. It's an easy way to maintain and safely distribute the binaries. It's likely a thing of maintenance capacity and I won't fault anyone for that. All this shit is free... And lots of it is work in progress.
Also quite frankly, if someone can't be bothered to pick the right binary for their OS, the whole process of installing a new OS is maybe a bit too advanced to do unsupervised. Let's be real, this level of curiosity and engagement is required to install and run Linux. I don't think it should be pushed onto anyone not up for the challenge. In my experience, that doesn't end well.
Again, all this shit is free. Fedora, although backed by Redhat, does not profit at all by anyone installing Fedora. They don't nudge you towards commercial products, don't collect or sell your data, no subscriptions, no ads... nothing (in contrast with Ubuntu, which actually does these things). Any voice of entitlement just hurts me a little, seeing how much they try.
So it wouldn't be incorrect to refer to Arch and Arch based distros as 'well, if you want to have fun with a broken system, otherwise avoid', just so it could be mentioned in a succinct way when talking about what distros one could try.
No, I don't think that's a fair way to put it. People regularly report having quite old Arch installs without stability issues. And people also regularly advice Linux newcomers not to pick Arch.
If you check their news section, it's a reasonable number of notes, 13 for last year. I think it's fair to say it seems to work well if you are willing to follow their procedure and already know what you're doing.
What does notepad have to do with web based apps? case in what point?
New Notepad in 11, with tabs and autosave (and dark mode), is so much better and more practical to use over old one, it just stays open all the time and become my main notetaking pick. It may take a beat to open a big file (1+ mb) with line wrapping, but it's pretty much just as fast as anything (and may be even faster than some other editors). It's just very easy to reach for and quite snappy.
There are some apps on Windows with actual gripes, but Notepad, Paint, Snipping tool, they're quite solid and have become everyday tools that eliminated the need to reach for some other third party apps.
I see you were fortunate enough to not use notepad aprox 5 months ago, when they were running the rich formatting preview. It was on by default, and would drop around 5% of the characters you type. Literally failing at the only thing it's supposed to do. I repro'd this on 2 out of 2 machines.
Maybe they fixed it, maybe they haven't. I both turned off formatting and am using vscode for notes now.
ahh, it might have been spellcheck then. I turned off all that stuff. In the heat of the moment, maybe I was a bit too angry to do proper root cause analysis :P
I've been a Notepad++ user for about 20 years. It's a pain to use it in Win11 as they force their crappy notepad on context menus and such. It's still usable (with some registry changes) but annoying that they're doogfooding their own an keep on changing settings on updates. I'm only using Win11 at work, I'm done with Windows and MS otherwise.
Perhaps it would be preferable at least to not mix civilian health data or regular business data, with mass surveillance data, and with military industrial complex and kill chain data. It would make sense to have an interest in keeping different kinds of personal data in separate places and not have it thrown around companies with quite different interests or collected together within some company that's involved in quite different industries. So why does it not make sense to apologists of this company?
It doesn't matter whether they do or not, the desire to keep separate things separate could be there as is. It might as well not be any of that but just about the kinds of things some companies are involved in.
Again, kind of amusing how that immediately devolves into "are you making an accusation".
For all practical purposes this already exists and that's because practically speaking it has to. Obviously a health system can't deploy infinity money to save the life of every person who is sick.
Well yeah, US healthcare system is already pretty close to just being an AI kill chain as is. Maybe they could make some cool ads about how they're ruthlessly optimizing that as well, with a little more of a mask off kind of sociopathic approach that they do.
It still starts very fast, even with quite large files and line wrapping. (pretty much on par with lite-xl, though lite-xl did get much faster with some recent version. prior to it though, it was easier and faster to launch notepad)
It's this completely unfounded barrage of making shit up about energy consumption without any tether to reality that makes the whole thing with complaining about energy use seem just like a competition on who makes up the most ridiculous most hand-wringing analogy.
This "but it's too hard to implement" excuse never made sense to me. So it's doable to make a system like this, to have smart people working on it, hire and poach other smart people, to have payments systems, tracking systems, personal data collection, request filtering and content awareness, all that jazz, but somehow all of that grinds to a halt the moment a question like this arises? and it's been a problem for years, yet some of the smartest people are just unable to approach it, let alone solve it? Does it not seem idiotic to see them serve 'most advanced' products over and over, and then pretend like this question is "too complex" for them to solve? Shouldn't they be smart enough to rise up to that level of "complexity" anyway?
Seems more like selective, intentional ignoring of the problem to me. It's just because if they start to pay up, everyone will want to get paid, and paying other people is something that companies like this systematically try to avoid as much as possible.
Going to a distro website and trying to find where to get it (ubuntu has a habit of leading with literally anything else other than regular desktop distro on their front page). Finding a download page, and having it just spit out an iso file, with no explanation on what to do with it, or 'how to install' link in sight (debian, it's very nice that there's a big download button, but like...then what. where's the explanation link. it's buried under other downloads, but that's not very intuitive). Getting to a 'how to install' page and having it be intimidatingly long, perhaps even needlessly. Sites, pages and explainers being laid out in confounding ways, and install process sometimes laid out in a bit of an overcomplicated way. (debian has an installation guide that's presented perhaps in the most intimidating way possible to a new unwitting user, and also buried under click on a click on a click. somehow writing the iso is not even among the first dozen of pages there. ubuntu mate gives you links to iso downloads, and yet the installation process is buried under 'faq' (again, not very intuitive or straightforward), that faq only has a bunch of oddly laid out 'making installation media' pages, and the rest of actual installation process is just somewhere else.)
That's before someone even gets to the actual install process. Somehow all of that stuff hasn't gotten more streamlined or user friendly. If you try to see how one would go about getting and installing any distro, you'd quickly see that it's very confusing and convoluted, way more than it has to be, or needs to be to appeal and be simple for new users.
There's glimmers of hope, like fedora which has its media writer, which is gonna hold your hand through the whole thing. Even that links out to github for a download, despite clicking on a seemingly specific 'windows/mac or linux' button. It's a little buried too, below iso downloads, when it really should be brought up more forward, and explain a little bit better on how it's gonna guide you thru the whole thing.
It really should be an app that's gonna guide you thru it, or a dead simple 1-2-3 step tutorial that's gonna guide you thru writing an image (download writer, download iso, write an image - laying it out more than that is just overcomplicating it really, at least in the initial quick install guide), with a clear, visible link to it - and yet somehow even this is too high of a bar for many distros to clear.
What has done a number on the ease of installing linux is how compact discs have just went away, because having a compact disc, burning it, or having it be just sent to users was making that step of the process simpler. Sure, writing to a USB is easy, but the expectation that everyone's just gonna have a spare usb is naive (and you're never gonna hear that you actually need to buy a usb stick in any of those guides lol), and there's just a little more opportunity to fuck up there (overwriting other disks, unless the writer app is laid out nicely and fail-proof). Distros might as well start selling usb sticks with installers on them. If someone's gonna be brand new to the whole thing and they're gonna have to buy a usb stick anyway, they might as well buy it from the distro with the distro on it already.
Some distros may want to get real about how a new user would even navigate their websites in order to get the thing. Like just trying to go thru that process themselves and see what's that experience like.
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