this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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He didn’t emulate an average user. He emulated an absolute moron. (But I suspect that’s because he is one. Every time he makes one of these videos, he convinces me further.)
So average user.
The average user is just average. He emulated the worst, most inept, least knowledgeable, and most resistant to learning user he could. That’s not average. It’s prevalent, but it’s not average. He’s emulating the worst stereotypes of bad users and calling it what an average person would do, then implying that the experience he had would be the experience you, the average user, would have. It’s disingenuous and irresponsible.
That's definitely not what he did though. He did research on the internet, going through various websites and articles listing options, and asked ChatGPT. That's imo more than what the average user does (or is even willing to do).
He then picked the distro that he saw was being recommended most to him. He installed it with default options, which ended up being Cosmic. Which is improving fast these days, but it's still a bit unstable. But the install process won't tell you that.
Pretending that these users are "bad users" or that highlighting these issues that regular users run into is disingenuous or somehow irresponsible is just unfairly dismissing a valid perspective.
The whole "Linux just works"-shtick just isn't always true. And the sooner the community learns to accept that and works to help these users with their issues, rather than stomping their foot angrily whenever someone shows up highlighting problems. I'm pretty experienced myself with a job in software development, but even I needed to reinstall Bazzite 2 times when installing it for my sister because I somehow messed up something when mounting the hard drives, getting Bazzite stuck in an unrecoverable bootloop (none of the recovery options suggested online worked either). I hate Windows as much as the next guy, but I've never been able to manage that on a Windows install (once running Bazzite ran fine btw, just the setup was frustrating).
Haha, I managed to bork my wife’s Windows 11 install so hard the other day just by resizing the partition that not only would it not boot or recover itself, but it also lost a bunch of her files for some reason. Not all, but her entire AppData folder. Had to reformat.
Anyway, an average user would just try a different distro. He should try a different distro. PopOS kinda sucks.
The average user just gets frustrated and tries to boot back into Windows. I've seen it first hand. Linux is basically all the same in their head so why bother distrohopping because if one is broken they're likely all broken. They consider distros to be much more like the different Android variations, even though those are much more similar to one another than Linux distros are.
Average users just expect things to work. They don't want to tinker or do long setups or navigate 600 different distros, they just want a clear good option and for it to work. It's part of why Windows has this huge inertia behind it; there's always one upgrade path, setup is basically automatic and in the vast majority of cases any issues are handled either automatically or don't show up in the first place (in large part due to manufacturers providing support for their model PC/Laptop, not because Microsoft is amazing at support). And because the majority of their friends and family also use Windows, there's usually someone around who can fix what is truly broken.
I genuinely think a user on a hypothetical Dell or HP or Lenovo laptop with Linux preinstalled would have a much better time on average than anyone trying to install it themselves.
I definitely agree on the average user being more suited to a Linux preinstall. If they want something that just works, they should ask someone who knows. That’s what my parents did, which is why they’re happily running Fedora and have been for years. Fedora just works. I would never recommend PopOS to them.
Honestly the only reason why PopOS is ever recommended is because rather than the “Install Nvidia drivers” checkbox being during or after install, it’s when you download the ISO. That’s a silly reason to choose an OS. I told my dad to go to the Software app and search for the Nvidia drivers after the install, and his gaming PC works great with an Nvidia card.
The single biggest reason people don’t think Linux is easy is because they learned to use Windows when they were young and don’t remember that process. Since they don’t remember all of the hassle of learning Windows, the hassle of learning Linux seems unreasonable to them. Like seriously, no one is born with the knowledge of what the fuck
C:\means.In reality, people are fine making decisions about basically everything they do. If they weren’t, we would all be driving the standard car, eating the standard food, and watching the standard show. Oh and we’d all be using Mac, which is the standard OS. Mac is the only mainstream OS which perfectly implements the POSIX standard, so by the most literal definition, Mac is the standard.