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from the it's-2015-and-things-are-easy dept.
I remember a story on the other site years ago when, following the Mojave Experiment, some guys did their own Folgers Test, asking people what they thought of this new (unidentified) UI and most of those folks thought it (KDE) was just more of Redmond's stuff.
Now, there's this story from OpenSource.com.
- Linux is so easy, anyone can install it--even by accident
One day, [...] a user's Windows install went corrupt on her laptop and she accidentally installed Linux. When her laptop couldn't [load the OS] from the hard drive, it automatically booted [to] the network. When she got the PXE install menu, she just hit Enter, installing a Linux desktop with all of our default network security settings and applications.
She then logged into it with her network account and emailed me to say that her Windows had updated and she wanted to know why her Microsoft Office looked so different now and "Where did Outlook go?" We had a good laugh over how Linux is so easy you can install and configure it by accident now, even on a laptop.
Hat tip to Robert Pogson for spotting this. The comment by IT pro oiaohm is, as always, insightful (once you adjust for his dyslexia).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:26AM
About four years ago I did an install of Windows 7 into a virtual machine for a specific need, since evaporated. I don't remember a bunch about the process except for the fact that installing Debian or CentOS seemed much easier in comparison.
I don't know why there are still people out there who think that being able to install a linux distro requires more than the most rudimentary skills (insert USB or DVD and basically just accept all defaults -- you do have to pick your timezone and give yourself a username and password, and in some a root password too, but if that is the definition "too hard", then everything about a computer is too hard).
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday October 25 2015, @10:08PM
I don't know why there are still people out there who think that being able to install a linux distro requires more than the most rudimentary skills
I can think of three reasons:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @11:36PM
#1 No optical drive, USB left out of default boot order for security reasons, and the EFI settings screen is made hard to discover in order to to improve "user friendliness" and reduce boot time and "visual clutter".
Windows would have most of these problems, too.
#2 Microsoft is also allowing PC makers to sell PCs whose Secure Boot settings cannot be modified.
Huh? Microsoft is not "allowing" anything -- thankfully, the motherboard makers do their own thing. What you mean to say is that Microsoft is pushing hard to coerce the manufacturers to require secure boot to try and thwart open source OSs.
#3 A lot of hardware still doesn't "just work".
Yes it does. The quantity of hardware that works on Linux/open-source greatly eclipses the quantity of hardware that works on any Windows version. You just found one of the few recent hardware items that has to be reversed engineered.