My experience with Lemmy feels like my experience with Linux. I’m a nerd at heart and have played with a thousand variants of Linux over the decades. But as much as Linux is sold as the next Windows/MacOS, it never gets to that level. Trying to get people to understand the quirks of Linux (and why they are “better”) has been an act in futility. Linux just isn’t user-friendly, no matter the variant.
I see so many posts of people trying to understand what Lemmy is, what an instance is, why usernames are not unique (unless you include the server name - like email), etc. I just see it all as a huge hurdle to overcoming Reddit.
I’d be thrilled to be wrong.
What you mean by user friendly? I am noob in Linux and Fedora , Ubuntu, Zorin OS , Linux Mint all of them were really easy to use and very user friendly.
my sister didn’t even know what a file browser was until highschool. “normal” people are extremely computer-illiterate. they need everything spoonfed or it won’t happen at all. there’s a reason windows updates happen automatically, most people won’t close their chrome tabs if left to their own devices, let alone turn off the PC, or god forbid doing updates manually. then factor in troubleshooting if the niche software you need for class or gaming doesn’t work right away and Linux becomes impossible for most people. it’s easy for those of us who are passionate about this tech to forget how difficult and unintuitive even the simplest things can be, but for people who get no joy from looking at a computer screen, every second they have to be sitting there is abrasive and draining.
ps
I hope that didn’t come across as talking down on normal people, I’d totally be the same way if tech wasn’t my main hobby/passion, and there’s plenty that normies can do that I miss out on cause it’s not my focus
but we are still talking about signing up for a service using a web site, somthing that virtually everyone is familiar with.
i think the biggest onboarding issue is home instance selection. perhaps a randomized preselect would help, but has issues of its own that would have to minimized.
additionally, easy to use account migration between instances would possibly make home instance selection less harrowing.
I love Linux, been using it daily for well over a decade but simple stuff people take for granted like gaming, drivers, wi-fi, touchpads, secureboot, Adobe, Office, printing and device syncing alongside the ever ongoing dependency hell can be an issue for some.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone else in meatspace who uses Linux as a desktop or laptop. Installing a novel OS isn’t something people tend to do and comes with risks.
The worry is that Lemmy is then not so much a replacemt for Reddit and more of replacement for r/Linux and related subs.
Whilst it’s nice to go online and tell people how amazing and easy I’m finding it is running Gentoo on old hardware with public binhosts I would also like access to a majority of communities who won’t know what that means.
Well yeah you are right I have two computers one with windows for gaming and the other one for Linux. I daily drive Linux and I have never met no one that uses Linux. Just a developer.
I really like how Linux is right now , slowly progressing to become better for the users.
I think Linux is great and doing just fine, I suppose my concern for Lemmy is that whilst I’m happy for my OS to be pretty much a community of techies I’d prefer my social media feed to be a little more varied.
When there’s far more posts about what window manager you use as opposed to pictures of cute cats there’s an imbalance in the force. I suspect I’ve further upset this balance by arriving on Lemmy and talking about Gentoo :)
I really see Linux more user friendly than windows, windows is a mess, their settings are like noodles, Linux is as clear and simple as a smartphone, I installed Linux on my wife’s and children’s laptop, and they never complained or asked how to use it. I really don’t understand what people mean by Linux isn’t user friendly.