I'm obviously going to be downvoted for this, but the second you ask me to use the terminal is the second the OS is not ready.
Last week I reinstalled Windows after trying MintOS. I have a 54" Ultrawide screen monitor and I wanted the windows to snap in 3 sections.
I spent a few hours in terminal trying to install something after trying everything in flatpak. Windows 11 split screens out of the box. It can even tile. You can even use hotkeys to snap left and right.
In order for normies like me to switch, you have to make the OS at as easy to use as Windows. Don't make us use terminal like I'm on DOS.
Let's be real for a second. A normie would appreciate that there is a login that have saved their favorites and how their desktop is setup. A normie would appreciate that it remembers they are giving you localized news and weather and traffic.
A normie does not put privacy that high as a priority than you.
Trying to suggest that Linux is now ready for normies is a disservice to normies that try it and will never try it again for another 15 years.
I argue that a grandma has less needs than someone younger. My grandma uses a 10 year old LG phone that has replaceable batteries. Never complains. Makes perfect phone calls.
Ask a teen if he enjoys Fortnite or PUBG with their friends and they will say they don't know. Because their parents force Linux on them.
A very solvable problem with window tiling managers. There's unironically thousands of them.
Linux just honestly might not be for you if a terminal is an insurmountable obstacle 🤷♀️ it's how you interact with the basics of your computer. It's worth ripping that bandaid off and getting over your fear of term imo. I honestly prefer software I can just run from the terminal.
I don't want thousands of solutions. I need 1 that works out of the box for the OS I just installed. Also, why are there thousands of tiling solutions? How do I parse through all of them to know which one to install? Out of the thousand of solutions, which one will become abandonware or already abandoned?
I don't disagree with you. I'm 100% onboard with your assessment on someone like me. A normie.
The argument here is that this meme suggests that Linux wasn't ready for normies 15 years ago and is ready now(2025). My argument is it is not. Normies do not use terminal. We want intuitive UX. We want a smart decision tree of options we can take. What we don't want is entering a script in terminal that could fail because we forgot a dash or transcribe a forward slash to a backslash.
Also, what you consider "basic" is relative. Your knowledge of computers is vastly different across the world.
I had a forum member on Reddit call me an idiot because I didn't know what sudo was. Does that make me "basic"?
I think you want KDE. I'm using KDE on vanilla EndeavourOS and it snaps windows just fine. Hotkeys work too, just slightly different (super + page up instead of up arrow to maximize).
It is the most 'Windows-like' of the mainstream desktop environments. I don't usually snap into quadrants but you can, here's an example of how that would look in KDE.
If you hand someone a computer and powered up terminal and ask them to install an app like Tailscale. Watch them struggle without searching a forum on how to do it.
A normie will have zero clue what is a app get. A normie won't know you have to use a dash for app-get on some operating systems vs another one.
Watch them struggle without searching a forum on how to do it.
Wow, you mean someone wont know how to do something if they've never done it before and are forbidden from looking for help? Astounding, get a research team on this.
A normie won’t know you have to use a dash for app-get on some operating systems vs another one.
But a single search will return dozens of results of the correct answer and then they'll know, because it isn't actually difficult and your argument is based in "I don't want to learn" dressed up as "it's too hard"
But why do I need to do a search? Why isn't it already installed and ready to go? Why must I find drivers for a hardware when I can just plug it into a Windows computer and 99% of the time it starts working?
This meme advertise that Linux is in equal footing with Windows. Yes, Linux has better privacy. But you can't deny the usability of Windows. Until Linux has the same feature set prebuilt in, Linux is going to never be ready.
What are models of vehicles? What are different types of skiis? Shouldn't just one book have all of human knowledge? I'm not assuming anything about Normie's or anything, just telling you to try a different DE. Linux comes with options. You might want a sports car or you might want a truck. Before you buy a vehicle you look at what you want to do and then buy the right vehicle.
I guess when I'm expecting to have at least air conditioning instead of having my pick from thousands of different air conditioning systems from GitHub hoping it hasn't been abandonware.
If I'm picking a specific system, I expect the engine to start when I turn the key, instead of a secret jiggle for it to work correctly.