How can I explain this?

Holy shit, you're so, so horribly wrong. I can't properly explain why without full-on blogging, so please bear with me.

Let's say, I'm a normie living about 10 years ago, smartphones aren't a thing yet. I keep hearing about how convenient and cool these new computers are, and how much you can do with them. They're nowadays required to do a bunch of tasks you could in the past through other means. I decide to bite the bullet and buy one. I go to the local tech store, and ask one of their "experts" what would be best for me. He recommends me a laptop. He briefly explains to me how to use it, and how to look for more information, as well as answers a few of my questions, such as how to use this e-mail thingy. I end up buying it. After a few years of usage, I'm fairly proficient with it. I can accomplish my daily tasks with it, look up information on google, and play a few games. I don't feel like I need anything more. One day, I stumble across an article about how my computer spies on me. I learn that it runs an "Operating system" called "Windows". After looking some things up, I learn about an alternative called "Linux" and how much better it seems to be. I decide to try it. When I open it up, I see a few things that look familiar, so I try to do my daily tasks with it. It dawns on me pretty quickly, though, that I can't do everything like I used to. Sure, most things might be "easy" when you've finally learned how to do them, but I don't feel like having to spend another two years learning how to operate my computer.

This is, what I think, what most normies experience. Except the "installing Linux" part, since most people would be too scared or simply wouldn't care enough to even try it in a virtual machine. Why change what works, right?
The current monopoly of Windows lies in the fact that it ships with all computers. The first thing new computer users get is Windows, and the first thing they master is Windows. This is why everything else feels alien to them. Since most people use Windows, most developers, businesses and public instances expect people to. Remember that girl who couldn't do something she required for school because she accidentally bought an Ubuntu computer, and blamed it upon everything but herself, making herself look like a victim? (If anyone has a link to that news video please provide it, I lost it)
Linux is already gaining traction in this field, being commonly accepted and supported with tech-related work and schools. With actually pretty great software support, and Steam pushing for it, it has everything for a market takeover. The only parts it needs now is for more computer manufacturers/retailers to support it, and for the end users to change.

Everything you said about usability, and how hard things are on linux, is only because you, and a lot of other people are used to windows, and as such it feels alien and "wrong". It isn't actually harder, you just need to learn it.

Please tell me what "basic functionality" you're lacking on a default Linux install, because as far as I can tell, windows even lacks a decent web browser on it's default install. The default install can't cover the needs of all users, and for the same reason you'll install your software after installing Windows, you'll have to do the same on Linux. Ever wonder why Ninite is a thing? For this exact purpose. On linux you don't even need that as you can install multiple pieces of software with a single command (or checking multiple boxes in a graphical interface) without downloading them individually and going through their installers.
The only reason you specifically have to tinker for 8 hours is because you don't know how it works, and are still figuring things out. Expect things to become easier as you progress.

W-what? Why the fuck do you think smartphones and "apps" got so popular? Because searching a name on an app store and clicking "install" is infinitely easier than shifting through a developer's shitty website, looking for the download button, downloading the file, and then clicking through the installer until you're finally done.

I know exactly what they'd type: " search ". If not, you can simply browse the package databases on packages.ubuntu.com, packages.archlinux.org, aur.archlinux.org, slackbuilds.org, etc. Or, just as you would, go to the software's official website to look for the installation instructions.

Except it is not. The only "botnet" thing people bitch about with Ubuntu is the integrated amazon search, which is nowadays disabled by default, can be toggled with a simple switch, and will not even exist anymore by the upcoming version.

They use it because it's what came on the machine and most people don't see the machine as anything but a means to get to facebook and youtube and run the occasional $39.99 chink malware they bought to do a simple task they do two or three times a year, for which a million free applications exist. To them it might as well be a smart phone with a larger screen and keyboard. They will never switch to linux because that requires a couple hours of their time that could be spent tweeting about inane bullshit. The people who aren't tech illiterate that use windows usually either A. have some software they depend on that won't run under linux or B. They didn't try linux until they were already proficient enough with the inner workings of windows that it would take the better part of a year to become that proficient with Linux.

Linux sticks with users best when it strikes them after they have developed enough literacy to google errors, and lose their fear of command line, but not so far developed that they are writing their own code above a novice level. Once users get seriously into programming, they are usually too particular about their preferred environment to change, also many that stick with windows will use .NET, C#, powershell, etc, and when you work with shit developed by MS, it seems silly to go through the trouble of moving to linux.

1/2
If you want to show them studies about spying/datamining here's some conferences that are made by professionals:

The surreptitious assault on privacy, security, and freedom
media.libreplanet.org/mgoblin_media/media_entries/1529/144_7_gerwith.webm
slides (all the references are at the end of the slide):
mikegerwitz.com/talks/sapsf

Corporate surveillance, digital tracking, big data & privacy
media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8414-corporate_surveillance_digital_tracking_big_data_privacy
cdn.chiefmartec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/marketing_technology_landscape_2016_3000px.jpg

Data collection, psychographic profiling, and their impact on politics
youtube.com/watch?v=HUm9hV9KPy0

The Power of Big Data and Psychographics
youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc

Ask them for sources.
This kind of shit pisses me off.
Just like when fakenews says that 99% of the population are ok to be probed by aliens.

Also all new generation of consoles that are connected to the internet also spies on people;
nintendo.com/privacy-policy

Tell them to not be naive because that's how we loose everything.

You want them to realize the shit on the web ?
Have a vanilla firefox installed and then install lightbeam:
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lightbeam/
Once lightbeam is installed open 10 random news website.
Go on news.google.com to choose them.
Once they are loaded, open lightbeam and you'll see the shit.
After doing that.
Show do the same but install µblock origin:
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
Open again 10 news website and then open lightbeam.
You'll see the difference;
It's not perfect but it's better with it.

2/2
Ask proof or tell them to gtfo

Yes and minigames embedded in browsers like farmwille and whatnot in facebook and the like doesn't exist.

They haven't made one.

Because we read.
Because we remember/archive.
Because we don't watch TV or always ask for proof.
Because we have something that almost everybody has lost called == CRITICAL THINKING ==

The year of the Gnu/linux desktop will happen when a worldwide catastrophe will happen.
Brainwashed people move only when they realize something is menacing their existence.

But this is just a boost to move in the free software world it's not the real reasons why people should move one it.
RMS has some great quotes about that see
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

My advice is to talk about free software has a tool and without control of your tool you aren't in control of your life.
finally I recommend you to read the book "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" it's really good for communicating with people.
Good luck user.

kek
I can make most old games run on it.
Even more recent games like fallout 3 and new vegas.
Remember that wine isn't a sandbox.
If your game install some botnet then the botnet will work on your system.

I'll be straightforward - I do graphics stuff. Yes, you can pretty painfully do graphics on Linux, but precisely the "painful" part stops me from going full Leenux.

However, Krita is going well. Inkscape is well done. openSUSE helps me with printing (yes,yes, systemd, go boo me) and I personally expect that next year people will run out of excuses to move to Leenux full time.

Nearly the same time Krita will fix their damn bugs.

Not even close. Not in a million years close.

Just because Krita is neat and better than GIMP doesn't mean it's still even close to as powerful as Photoshop when you need to use it for something more professional than imageboard memes.

Inkscape doesn't come even close to Illustrator, unless the features it should have are hidden somewhere in the depths of it's utterly incomprehensible and retarded UI.

...

Thanks!

Normies doesn't read specs what new ?
Normie user didn't try with ethernet.
Normie user didn't connect to it's wlan because they are so used that "it just works".
And you blame ubuntu ?
Why should the OS do the effort to be compatible with a software that doesn't share the source code to make it feasible ?
Wut ?
What's the correlation between MS word and verizon ?
And the problem is ?
MS Word can save it's files under ISO/IEC 26300 and open/libre office can too.
But let me guess no one knows that.

Shit like this makes my blood boil. When I get into a car and some of the controls are a bit different it takes me a bit to figure them out, but when I get it I move on. I don't throw an autistic rage fit because this brand of car is not exactly like my brand of car. How do these people cope with anything in their life when it's not 100% the same?

The linux equivalent of a new car would be your car requiring a specific type of fuel that you can only find out by opening the engine and having enough pre-existing knowledge about engines to know what fuel it requires, and every button and switch requiring a special secret club handshake to press instead of just pressing the damn button, and the phone charger requires you to open the front panel and rearranging the wires, and the sunroof is stuck and requires a hammer to open but at least there's screws so you can fix it yourself™ therefore it's actually better not worse!

It looks horrific, but when it works, it just works.
Today, I just found out my Linux System Tray popups are apparently minimizable.
Before I knew this, it would just disappear, and I couldn't do anything to bring it back up.

Also, it's fucking hilarious that my desktop environment shows up as an unclosable application in the toolbar.

At this point, the only OS I haven't tried is macOS, and I'm willing to give it a shot.

Even then, it's still a pain in the ass.
How do you disable scroll zoom? KDE5 has decided to re-implement scrolling twice in several applications, so some of them obey the system defaults, and others go the speed of light.

if you aren't using Linux-libre, then you shouldn't be even allowed to use RMS pics

but then my wlan doesn't work anymore

thinkpenguin.com/catalog/wireless-networking-gnulinux

Can a burger fill me in on what a 'Verizon internet CD' is? How does that help you connect to the internet? Why is it cable provider-specific?

apt-cache search whatever
apt-get install
Sure, there's a nice gui available as well, with searching etc. Installing software is inarguably easier on Linux than on Windows.

She was using a cellular modem. the CD contained drivers/helper software for it. Most of those cards work on linux just fine without 3rd party software/drivers, but when you are too retarded to understand that .exe files won't run on linux, there is no way in hell you will configure it correctly anyway.

Normioe chucklefucks will continue to use whatever came with their $499 best buy computer.

For more tech-conscious people:

The thing is the world operates on incentive/disincentive. The average tech user who could use linux does not have any real incentives to do so. Your tech-aware normalfag doesn't care about privacy because they don't have any unkosher opinions. There are no usability advantages to linux for most users. There are many disadvantages.

-some software won't run/doesn't exist
-getting free software that isn't part of the package tree to run can be a pain in the ass
-Getting some hardware to run is a pain in the ass
-shitty ideosyncracies like screen tearing/other open source driver nonsense are still not a thing of the past
-some open source alternatives really are trash tier, stuck in the early 90s
-total lack of self-awareness means that many distros are so aesthetically bad that you have to spend 20 minutes to unfuck your desktop environment. Retarded default color schemes. Retarded default wallpaper. Retarded default cursor. Absurd non-standard way of doing UI things, not because it's better, but because the project lead is an autistic faggot.

All of these are no big deal for the average imageboard user, but the reality is that most users don't have the time or inclination to deal with all the bullshit linux entails.

Ubantoo has made efforts to simplify the experience with some new desktop environment. It was a 6/10 effort. Now they've decided to switch DEs again. This is a cardinal sin. Microsoft released the 9x shell in Windows 95. The UI of every version of windows since then works in generally the same way. OSX works basically the same way since the first beta appeared. Your average linux distro has changed desktop environments 17 times in 10 years, meaning a non-tech user has no fucking chance in hell of learning how to use it, and won't put up with the frustration either.

The operating system as a whole is technically the GNU operating system. Linux is a component of the operating system known as a kernel.

Since the term "linux" has better name recognition due to marketing from big corporatiins, it's useful to include it in the name, so a compromise is to call the system "GNU/Linux".

The term GNU was coined in the early 1980s. The name come out of an old naming convention that followed three rules. 1) it is a recursive acronym that is 2) a real word and 3) gives attribution to its predecessor. GNU's predecessor is a proprietary operating system called Unix. GNU was made to eliminate Unix and to replace it with a fully compatible system which respects the user's freedom.

GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix.

I hate to say it but image boards after the fappening and mobile became dominant have filled with "normie" idiots. Most of /g/ is windows 7 desktop animegirl threads and "ironically" discussing how great iphones are.

Not only that but they switched to a harder to use DE. At least KDE or Cinnamon are windows like enough that your average person could use them without much effort. I think this is indicative of why linux will never become mainstream (barring some sort of sudden microsoft meltdown): linux devs are insistent on telling users what they want and not the other way around. The average user doesn't care if the desktop metaphor is inefficient, they've been using it to browse the facebooks and they don't want to change.

why the fuck can't people use computers? even my fucking 23 year old peers at university who grew up with them can't seem to grasp basic concepts despite spending 10 hours a day on facebook/reddit/twitter

Meanwhile my mom was on Windows 95 until windows 2000 came out then on windows 7 after they stopped updating windows 2000 and now macos so she can more easily message the rest of the family and share photos.

Is my mom gonna start dicking around with desktop environmants when all she wants is to look at cat videos on youtube and type her recipes in MS word?

The point is, linux will always be a fringe OS until it can satisfy a large swathe of users. KDE3 was good, why did they give KDE4 med resistant aids? It's contrary to the unix philosophy to begin with.

What you're missing is that you shouldn't have to learn how to type commands into the terminal in the first place. When my mom switched to a mac everything felt alien to her too. But intuitive in its own way so within a week she was good to go again. Linux is lightyears away from being this way.

package not found:

or how about:
>apt-get install
unmet dependencies, go fuck your dog

because they're not reading about hardware/software. they're reading about new genders under development and more self-flagellating ways to check their privilege

Good luck trying to install Win7 on Ryzen, they expect you to do it with a PS/2 port and from CD. Intel doesn't even want you to install Windows 7 natively with 6th-gen i-series, you have to use PCI passthrough to relive the glory days.

It comes down to the distro, how much fat they trim, and their FOSS policy. For example, installing Lubuntu on an old AMD Toshiba laptop is a bad idea because of skimming too much on obscure laptops. Likewise, some laptops come with shitty Wifi cards that blacklist FOSS replacements (like Thinkpad) either from stupidity or malice. When you start seeing the patterns, Linux isn't that hard to switch to. At least Linux gives you the opportunity to improve/make drivers for peripherals you like.

This x1000. If you autists can't understand that neck yourself.

What about busybox/Linux though

Bullshit. Here is how it goes:
Instead what happens is:

jesus fucking christ kill yourself.
typing the name of a program in and what you want it to do is not difficult. its not more difficult than a GUI.
your mother adjusted to macOS because its interface is basically the same as windows, just a little different. its the same kind of user interface, just implimented a little differently. using a command line is a different kind of interface. its not actually any fucking harder. why the fuck does every single retard like you seem to think that whatever you/people know already is the best because people know it, and that inasmuch as anything else feels any harder at all its because it must just be inherently more 'complicated'?
Its not even any harder to skim a manpage than to bumble your away around menues and buttons until you figure out what does what. plenty of normies seem too oblivious and timid to manage the latter anyways.

Your friend is retarded. Im so sorry.

People use windows because getting fucked in the ass by M$ is the only way they can get laid.

1. In practical terms,,,, you can't avoid the botnet.

2. Linux is obscure and much of the free software is shitty (mainly due to shitty instructions).

Over the years Linux has gotten more Windows-like (more GUI-oriented, easier to use) but it's still lagging behind in a lot of respects that non-programmers care about.

Why speculate as to why the average person does anything? What good is going to come of that?

I propose we focus on howler monkeys instead. Why DO they piss in their own mouths? Why are they so keen on trees? Is there some deep reason they fling shit at each other, or is it as simple as "I just like to fling shit around?"

You're not talking about how easy using windows is, you're talking about how easy using programs on windows is. But as people have tried to explain to you it's just as easy to use programs on distros like Mint and Ubuntu if all you want is a clickable icon to start up a program. But to actually use windows the OS you also end up typing commands in the search bar and using CMD so your argument is invalid.

If you can't fit your thoughts into one imageboard post maybe you don't have any worth hearing at all, fucking redditor.

Just because you can do the same things as you can with a GUI does not mean it is just as intuitive. I think you're conflating the two.
This is an extreme example, but trying teaching a mute kid with down syndrome to play music using an ipad, and try doing the same with a regular computer.
Another example. It's much easier to teach my mom to use text edit on a mac rather than using vim. Maybe you only need a few commands to use it, but it's unintuitive to her, she's gonna forget it if she doesn't use it again soon, and she's not interested in learning how to use vim. She wants to use a write a .txt file and all this shit means nothing to her when she sees a gui and all she needs to do is press save and then the red button with an x when she's done.

I think is somewhat right that you can do intuitive shit using mint, but to be honest it's probably easier to import her iphone pictures to her computer using a mac and synching all her music than it is linux. And even if it's possible to do the same thing, why would she bother learning how to when she knows another way that just werks?
And is also true because when windows is everywhere, most people already know how to use it and are accustomed to it.
But I don't think you should ignore the fact that having an intuitive user interface makes people more likely to use stuff, and that helps.

It doesn't hurt to read you know. fucking redditor.

The operating system that is typically used on a desktop computer should really be called the GNU operating system.

GNU is the name of the operating system as a whole.

As a whole, the GNU operating system might come with the kernel Linux or Hurd or kFreeBSD. Regardless of which kernel comes with it, it's still fundamentally the GNU operating system.

GNU stands for "Gnu is Not Unix". It was made to replace Unix, a proprietary operating system, with the intention of wiping Unix from the face of the earth.

Half of Holla Forums current userbase came directly from twitter, it's no wonder they can't read posts longer than a couple sentences.

no, user, it really isnt any more 'unintuitive.' You have to learn what a gui is and get used to the shit most of them usually do before one is 'intuitive' to you . You have to learn exaclty the same thing to use any command line program. again:
The fact that people who willfully refuse to learn anything new find GUI's easier is not evidence that they are somehow naturally more intuitive, its evidence that those people are used to GUIs.
the second half of the post is just
marketing hype. that isnt real. its a meme apple pushed in commercials. No desktop UI is significantly harder than any other for someone whos used to one of them already, except inasmuch as its different from the one they first learned.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

high quality post

thread a shit

you are being pedantic and nobody who isn't a linuxfag gives a fuck about these silly pecularities you claim value so much

the main reasons that Linux has gotten more popular is because they made it more like windows
...but even so...
a lot of the "free" software on Linux simply doesn't work well enough to replace the commercial software on Windows or Mac