I saw plenty of efforts that aim to create a Linux distribution for non-enthusiasts, for people who just want to use their computers, and not care about the details - A Desktop for All on the GNOME blog, most recently. While I commend the effort, my own experience is that these efforts are futile, and start off from a fundamentally wrong premise: that people are willing (let alone wanting) to manage their own operating systems.
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My family is using Linux because that’s the system I can maintain for them. Apart from my Dad, they never installed Linux, and never will. They don’t install software, they don’t upgrade, they don’t change settings either. All of that is something I do for them. And to do so effectively, I need a distribution I am familiar with, one that is also flexible enough to fine-tune for every member of the family, because they prefer fundamentally different things!
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The common pattern between all these three is that neither of them maintains their own systems. I do. As such, how beginner friendly the distribution is, is meaningless. The users of the system don’t care, they’ll never see those parts. They’ll have a preconfigured system maintained by someone else, and that’s exactly what they want. To make this work, I’m using distributions I am familiar with. For my parents, that’s Debian, because I was a Debian person when their systems were installed. For my Wife, it is NixOS, because I’m a NixOS person now. For the Twins, it will likely be NixOS too.
I can of agree the focus to make Linux easy to use is not exactly on the right things. There is a bit too much of a “make a GUI of everything”. Which is not wrong per say, but should not be the goal. More a mean to an end.
I disagree that users won’t do stuff on their own. They will, but they will allocate very little time to it, on average, especially when compared to a tech savy person. And that’s just because their computer is a tool.And if they cannot make their tool work for what they want to do, they’ll find another way. Or deem it impossible.
I think distro must make mundane tasks such as system maintenance hands off. As an opt-in option not to upset power user. But things such as updates, full system update, disk space reclaiming, … should have a single “do the right thing without being asked to” toggle. Things a bit more complicated such as printing/scanning document should be more context aware. A bit like on smartphone where, if you have a document open, you can select print and, if no printer is configured, you have the option to add one there and then.
Immutable distro have made good progress on that front IMO. But we still need better integration between applications and the Desktop Environment for things like printing, sharing and so on. I’m hopeful though. Generally speaking, things are moving in that direction. Even if we can argue flapak and snap are a step backward with regards to the integration of the DE, this is also an opportunity to formalize some form of protocol with the DE.
also don’t forget that many don’t even have the time and energy