SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 5, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:19PM
Is there a moral to this story?
User triggered a company's pre-configured network install of a different OS (that's why it was so easy to install - "she just hit Enter"). User then made vaguely reasonable assumption that it was some weird kind of Windows, probably because she'd never heard of anything else. For all I know that's what she'd call any operating system. And she probably still wants her Outlook back.
Now, if she hadn't called tech support, and had simply got on with her work with no interruption at all, that would be a story.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:08AM
If the *had* have called tech support, and they had actually managed to get her back up and doing her job within a few minutes, that wouldn't have just been a story, it would have been science fiction!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday October 25 2015, @02:57PM
The moral of the story seems to me to be how far linux has come in terms of usability and appearance. The retort for years from MS supporters has been, "Hrm well linux might be OK for geeks and computer nerds, but real people who need to do real work like MS. Because. It. Works."
This story suggests that that is passing away, when non-technical users accidentally get linux and don't notice the difference.
Washington DC delenda est.