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submitted 1 year ago by mfigueiredo@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Time for a discordant voice in this festival of consensus. Installing Debian is like climbing a mountain for anyone who is not an experienced Linux user. If you don't believe that, go try doing it while attempting very hard to imagine that you are a non-techie Windows user. You will not succeed.

Yes, other distros do manage this better. And yes, that is a problem, because, once up and running with the right defaults, Debian is just fine for non-techie users. Debian could quite easily be the FOSS alternative to Windows for ordinary people who care about privacy and freedom but don't have advanced technical skills. Instead they are stuck, de facto, with slightly-compromised alternatives like Ubuntu and Fedora.

So happy birthday to Debian, and congratulations. But I think we should all be more mindful of the bigger picture here: desktop personal computing is in a steep secular decline among everyone except techies and a few other groups of professionals. We need to think better about how to make all of this sustainable. The lowest-hanging fruit is an easy-peasy installation funnel, and Debian is failing at that.

UPDATE: People are misunderstanding the substance of my criticism, which admittedly was not very obvious. For a normie Windows user, the difficulty of getting Linux installed comes before the installer, it's the problem of making a boot medium. Debian's approach is to say "Here's a list of ISO files, bye!". That will not cut it for anyone but experienced Linux users. Some people here are saying "Tough luck to them". I think that's a shame.

UPDATE 2: What do people here hope to achieve by downvoting sincerely expressed opinions? There is no misinformation in my contributions to this thread, it's just my viewpoint, which I took time to express as best I could. Would you really prefer it if everyone had the same opinion, i.e. yours? Would that not make for a boring "discussion"? I don't get it. Personally I never, ever downvote anyone for expressing their opinion sincerely, no matter how much I disagree. I have not downvoted anyone in this discussion, indeed I have upvoted lots of them. I really hoped Lemmy would be more civilized than that Other Place, that it might have more of the FOSS spirit of exchange and tolerance. Disappointing. Have a nice day anyway.

[-] Rooty@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I remember installing Debian in 2008 as a complete linux noob and only pressing the space bar to install it. Has the procesd changed in the meantime?

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

Yes, once you have the install medium, i.e. today a bootable USB, it is just a question of clicking to accept defaults. So, back then, unless you got a CD-Rom delivered to you by mail, you must have done much more than "press the spacebar". I also managed to install Linux back then as a noob, but it was not a easy process, I only managed it because I was very motivated.

[-] GrayBoltWolf@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

So, exactly the same as windows.

Can you even order windows on a CD anymore?

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago

Sure, but an ordinary user does not have to install Windows since it is already there. This is Linux's burden. IMO a lot of techies in this discussion are underestimating it.

[-] GrayBoltWolf@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Who is going to pay Dell, HP, Acer, etc to install Linux?

Just because MS can throw billions at these OEMs doesn’t make that “Linux’s burden”.

See also Dell & Lenovo sell laptops with Ubuntu.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

What? I installed Debian last week, and I think it took something like 4 clicks, and setting my username and passwords. I installed it because I couldn't get Ubuntu or OpenSuse to install (guessing because I have a 3090 GPU paired with an old intel 4770k/Z97 chipset).

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

By quoting hardware specs like that you're only proving my point. Ordinary people don't talk like that. And the only way it took 4 clicks is if you already had the bootable USB. Come on, try to imagine what all this must be like to someone who doesn't understand computers like you. They also have a right to the freedom and privacy that Debian provides.

[-] AccountMaker@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

And how do they install Windows? I had to install it for a friend a few months ago and the way I did it was by downloading a bootable windows image and made a bootable usb with it.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Well that's the point, isn't it? You had to do it for them because ordinary people don't have to install Windows, it's already there. That's why it is so crucial to get the installation UX as easy as possible.

[-] oce@jlai.lu 7 points 1 year ago

(Pure) Debian is almost never recommended for noobs, I don't understand the discussion. People would usually recommend Mint for Windows users.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah but why is it not recommended for noobs? I was a noob once and I managed on Debian just fine - once past the ordeal of working out how to make the boot stick. That is what I really meant by "hard to install", but everyone took it to mean the installer software, which has been noob-friendly (if ugly) for years now. I should have been clearer about that.

[-] spider@lemmy.nz 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Installing Debian is like climbing a mountain for anyone who is not an experienced Linux user.

Here's a more user-friendly workaround.

[-] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

I'd rather install Arch. It's crazy.

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

This happened to me, literally. Ex-Windows user, tried Debian, settled on Arch.

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

100% THIS. Ex-Windows, came for those reasons, tried those distros, didn't like those compromises, went to Debian, everything was so hard I settled on Arch.

Another thing: I get the reasons why not, but I would love if Debian SID was more arch-like to use it as a daily driver. Docker is unsupported on it, for example. It makes sense, because of it's purpose. But personally, I would love to always have the latest kernel, packages, and on the most popular base, and also because I would love to wear the flag of THE bastion community distro.

[-] wolf@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

IMHO it is really hard to talk about installers.

I 100% agree that the Debian installer has a lot of room for improvements, just from the top of my head

  • Make default installations much easier
  • Collect needed information before installation starts (instead of the a little information, a little installation process at the moment)...

OTOH, and that is the main selling point: The installer is very flexible, if you know what you are doing and my specific needs are therefore easier served with the Debian installer than that of other mainstream distributions.

In the end, I would happily see a username-password-one-click default option for the Debian installer while not taking anything away from the current one. (Just move all the input to the front.)

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

My point should have been clearer. Wasn't talking about the installer, which AFAIK is now pretty much as simple as Ubuntu, only uglier. I was referring mainly to the real obstacle of getting Linux up and running: making the boot medium. I mean, really, expecting noobs to know how to do that, or else just hinting vaguely about what 3rd-party tools to use, or how to use dd etc - come on, that is just not realistic. Others disagree but IMO this very much is Debian's problem to fix.

[-] rustydomino@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I get your point - but here's the thing: your average Windows user doesn't even know how to install Windows. And for a good subset of them, even installing a browser extension is a challenge.

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de -1 points 1 year ago

Hm I dont agree that its fine once running.

  • upgrading is a total pain. I can imagine many people just dont do that at all. Like, no official documentation, anywhere you can actually find it? No automated command? Literally manual editing of a sources file?? Checking for held or not upgraded packages again to avoid breakage?
  • apt is pure garbage. Nala is king, and I think they should switch.

I think a fully self updating and upgrading Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite with actually good presets would be user friendly. This means no broken Firefox, flathub, automatic updates, some services enables, some fixes here and there. Easy install, everything preset, install Flatpak apps through the GUI and forget it. Automatic upgrades should be held a month or so to avoid breakages.

[-] the_lone_wolf@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

but nala is only wrapper it don't work without apt

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Yes of course. But the apt frontend is horrible. Nala wont fix the completely manual upgrading process, but it automates some other things like updating the repo metadata.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting. I agree that getting automated security upgrades right is super important. IMO even technical users should not be doing security upgrades manually. They should happen by default and be builetproof. On Ubuntu and I guess Debian, unattended-upgrades is supposed to do this. But over the years I have had terrible problems getting it to run reliably when the internet connection is unreliable, i.e. on a laptop rather than a server. That is revealing. I don't understand why fixing this is not more of a priority. We cannot invite normies onto a platform where security requires babysitting.

[-] Pantherina@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Yess, totally. Fedora Kinoite will get automatic updates soon. But while I like the idea, its still semi-rolling and not a stable distro actually.

[-] cloud@lazysoci.al -1 points 1 year ago

This is absolutely untrue, Debian even ship with proprietary drivers now. Stop spreading misinformation

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

What are you talking about? I am saying that ordinary Windows users are going to have a hard time getting Debian up and running, mainly because of the complexity of making a boot medium. That is all.

[-] cloud@lazysoci.al 0 points 1 year ago

They are not, stop spreading misinformation. There are guides on how to do it and it's the same for most OS including windows

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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