this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

At the same time Linus is making questionable choices at best. Asking ChatGPT for distro advice may be the "normie" thing to do right now (although I'm not too sure about that), but it's not the smart thing to do and it did lead him down a bad path.

I mean that’s kinda the point. They’re noobs, they don’t know what’s right from wrong. People who don’t know right from wrong are likely to go down the wrong path.

IMO Linux’s biggest issue with normal people uptake is choice. Normal people don’t want 7000 options. It also makes diagnosing problems all the more harder.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I mean that’s kinda the point. They’re noobs, they don’t know what’s right from wrong. People who don’t know right from wrong are likely to go down the wrong path.

Ok. But that's a personal problem, not a Linux problem. In the end of the day if you're relying on "listicles" and LLMs to make basic decisions for you (for just about anything, frankly) you're going to have a bad time.

PopOS is a bad and outdated recommendation right now, because they have literally just switched to Cosmis, a brand new desktop environment that just came out of beta a few months ago. I would argue that it should still be in beta right now, and I do think that System76 made a mistake by calling the current version 1.0, but in the end of the day ChatGPT predictably gave Linus a bad recommendation, because that's what LLMs do.

If you go to ChatGPT for tech advice, legal advice, medical advice, or even something as computationally friendly as solving math problems, you're probably making a mistake. That's an "AI" problem, not a "Linux" problem. Use your brain and stop relying on "AI" to think for you.

IMO Linux’s biggest issue with normal people uptake is choice. Normal people don’t want 7000 options. It also makes diagnosing problems all the more harder.

I disagree. Choice and competition is generally good, as it means that different kinds of people with different use cases can have their needs met.

IMO Windows' biggest issue is the lack of choice, in the sense that computers are treated as one-size-fits-all systems where your grandma is expected to use the same computing environment as a professional software developer, which ultimately leads to a system that's not ideal for either of them. Why are we gaming on the same OS that people at the tire store are running? Would we be surprised to find that is holding computing back?

In the end of the day, choice is good, lack of choice is bad.

People have 7000 choices of food, but it doesn't stop most people from finding something to eat for breakfast. People have 7000 choices for transportation, but it doesn't stop them from getting where they need to go in a way that suits them.

It's not hard to get a good recommendation of what Linux distro to use today if you just ask someone who knows what they're talking about.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

What are you on about? People absolutely do get decision paralysis choosing what to eat or what car or bicycle to buy. And those come with budget constraints. The trouble with Linux distros is that you can afford literally any of them!

You're looking at this as a power user. Normies don't want to have to make decisions.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Ok, so don’t review “Linux”, review PopOS. Then review Bazzite. Then review Cachy. Etc. Why teach (through implication) your normie users that Linux is all one thing?

[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago

Pretty sure bazzite is also in the video