Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "Everyone Is Switching To Linux" video.

  1. True, and its a very old problem. I would sometimes informally help friends, sometimes over the phone. In the days of MS-DOS, easy enough: "Type these letters, don't worry what they mean." I thought phone support for a GUI would be impossible, but you can do it if you're using the same UI. Which is true for Windows, except between, say 7 and 10.
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  2.  @legendboyAni  The point about potentially switching is that the user doesn't know or care about the politics. AAC is a standard lossy codec: it's advantages over a good MP3 coder may be marginal by now, but if people have a load of AAC stuff, that's a real consideration for them.
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  3.  @dlsisson1970  You are quite right. One problem in discussions like this is that Linux has two main user groups. There are traditional og users, who at the least are computer hobbyists, and go all the way up to major server wizards in large organisations, and developers. These people want and need the command line, and they want and need to learn the system. The newer group, and I'm one of them, just want an OS to run their computer so they can do everyday normal stuff, like watching cat videos and writing books and doing the accounts for their business. We're fed up with the Apple way, and have come to seriously mistrust Microsoft's desire to own our data and get in our face at every opportunity. And give or take a software issue or two (mostly spelt A D O B E) we've got that now, in the two or three obvious, big, desktop-environment-centred distros. We don't want, or need, to know a lot of stuff, anymore than anyone needs to know how to run a server with Windows to organise their book club or engage in the collaborative production of a policy document. Sometimes real wizards give advice to normies with the best will in the world, but without realising there's a whole new audience out there. They run the internet, but we're the people who will bring about the year of Linux on the desktop (if it is permitted to speak apocalyptically).
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  4. Off and on Linux flirter for 20 years. User for 10, all GUI, Mint/Cinnamon for preference: easy to do now I've retired, but I'm not sure how I'll go shortly when I'm co-operating again on a book, and might have to go back to MS Word, which means Windows. Also I need a Windows machine for iTunes to organise my music for my iPhone. The new interest in Linux is because Windows 11 has become so predatory against its users. "Tell us everything about yourself. Entrust all your data to our cloud, where it will all be encrypted so that no one (apart from us) can access it, including you if you let your subscription lapse." Why Linux won't work for some people: 1: Some people use one or two pieces of software for their professional work: typically Adobe. The decision tree here goes: I need to use (say) Photoshop; what systems (hardware + software) will give me a good experience? The operating system isn't the choice, it's a consequence of prior choices. This is the same as people who have got some very expensive piece of manufacturing hardware which is old but still functional and central to their business, so they need to nurse into life some antique PC with a Centronics port because that's the machine's interface. 2: People who have a lot of experience with Windows or Mac, and know how to do out-of-the-way things, and try to do the same with Linux, and can't. It's partly that a lot of this is what is sometimes called "implicit knowledge": stuff you know without knowing how you got to know it. The charitable reading of the Linus fiasco is that he wanted to set up an advanced gaming rig with his Windows knowledge (the uncharitable interpretation is that he thought a bad-faith video about how Linux is too complicated and broken would be good commercially). This accumulated knowledge can be a real change-stopper, depending on how old you are and what sort of appetite you have for learning new stuff. For pretty much everybody, changing from Windows is a rational choice, but there are some people for whom Mac is a better alternative. (I used to like OS X in the days of the Big Cats, but too much of its functionality is hidden for me these days -- like menu items that only appear when you hold down the splat key while clicking on the menu.) And then there's gaming, but isn't everything better on a console anyway? I don't game.
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  5.  @Arcidi225  Yes indeed. But the real point some of the doubters have is that with Windows or Mac, you don't have to choose your DE. Discovering that there are alternatives, and that there are wars of religion between Gnome and Plasma and the rest, and you have to find your way through them, is a real disincentive to the move. I don't know the answer to that, or if there is an answer, but this is one problem they're right to point out.
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  6.  @hellomine2849  One of the things Mint gets right is that the Welcome screen takes you through a number of set-up steps, in a new-user friendly way, with defaults that are sensible and easy to accept, including TimeShift. But YouTube tech influencers aren't going to start with Mint--has to be Arch and the command line.
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