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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux
The choice of a distro makes huge - crucial - difference. It dictates the possibilities, limitations and future evolution of every ecosystem it's supposed to support.
Wrong choice = a disaster.
That's absurd. So installing a distro as a n00b and you happen to pick one because you've heard of it before only to find out it's not the one you should have used. That's not some obscure one that no one's heard either.
You understand how frustrating that can be for a new user, right? I see all the Linux people have downvoted the hell out of me, and that's fine, but Linux has a massive user-friendliness issue if you seemingly have to pick the right one, or your fucked. I'm sure the Germans didn't take that selection lightly, and now someone is claiming that it's because of that choice that the switch over failed.
Can this OS be any more user UNfriendly? It's to the point of being user-hostile.
That's not really a "Linux" issue.
"Linux" isn't some singular OS, it's an ecosystem. It's just like choosing a car, just because most cars have four wheels and an engine doesn't mean they're all the same. Selecting the right car is rightfully frustrating and can and does make a huge difference.
It's like selling a Tesla to a 90 year old grandma and then her complaining that it's unfriendly. And just because the Tesla is unfriendly to a particular audience doesn't automatically make it a bad car, but even if it was, that doesn't mean that all electric vehicles are as bad as Tesla.
I'm not sure about the scope and details of Germany's attempt to switch to Linux, but for the average user, any of the popular distros would likely serve them well. I think there's a huge difference between a user installing Linux on a general purpose PC vs. trying to incorporate it into an entire country's worth of devices.
I've heard horror stories of people spending loads of time tinkering with their OS to fix obscure issues, but generally, these distros are often as easy-to-use (if not more so) than Windows these days. I think the main issues people have stem from software built specifically for Windows that won't work on Linux, which hardly seems the fault of Linux imo.
I would probably choos Debian over Ubuntu vecause "debian" is more fun yo say. Or even Arch. "Ubuntu" is just a clunky 3-syllable word that makes me sound like I have a speech imprdiment. I dont know the difference between any of those distros and would probably choose wrongly.
It seems like you need to be an expert to pick a distro, but how do you become an expert without actually using it.
Even the most complicated Linux distro is more user friendly than Windows 10 or later. And the mainstream linuxes are trivial to install and use as a daily driver. The only tech skills required are when you want to
Linux can be easy to use if it's set up to be easy to use, and you have the right hardware. It's the set up process that most people can't get through on their own.
I tried installing Fedora the other day with the provided installer, and it failed to even launch from USB. Then I used the same image and wrote it with Rufus instead, and it worked fine. But your average person wouldn't know to even try that.
Linux is almost never as easy to set up as techies make it out to be. And you can't just hand wave issues like graphics drivers. Even after I installed the Nvidia drivers I still had to sign them manually so secure boot would actually accept them. That's just too many hoops for most people.