Again. Have you used Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu?

Regular people get help with basic stuff in windows All the time. That’s why there is a Geek Squad in best buy. That’s probably the only thing missing for the non technical Linux users.

If people are paying someone to “install” their printer, why would it be different with Linux.

In fact, in Linux they’d need less tech support as many windows users calls are for slowness, virus and obsolescence.

Let’s not compare usability using different standards

Tell me you haven’t used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.

“I remember”. Using that phrase tells me it wasn’t recently enough. And “using it inside windows” tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don’t know what you are talking about.

You may be a MAC fan and that’s OK if that works for you, but I haven’t needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I’ve been runing it without issues since probably 2010.

“Microsoft testing new ways to lose customers”.

It’s well known that piracy was what made Word (.DOC) and Excel (.XLS) the de facto standard.

If the kids at home can’t use windows, they’ll find something different. And when enough of them find if, when they become decision makers they’ll stay away from Windows.

Imagine how different the landscape would be had MS cracked down on Piracy for their flagship programs.

Hahaha, we can always hope.

When OP says “layout” I think he means the old as windows 3.1 layout and workflow. It was good in the 90’s. Now it feels cumbersome and dated.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s the main selling point of Mint: Familiarity and stability. I settled on it for 19 years after I got tired of distro hoping. I’ve contributed financially to it every month for years.

However, it’s that cumbersome workflow which got me back into Gnome where I use only two extensions: transparent task bar and window autotile.

Gnome on a laptop flows naturally and out of the way.

Usually the problem is that new users go out of their way to fuck things up.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Most of us did that and that’s how we learned. But really, all mainstream distros are good out of the box unless you have an unusual hardware configuration. Specially now with flatpaks, appimages and Snaps.

Of course if you want to tweak and twist KDE or install extensions on Gnome or PPAs from who know where on Ubuntu or overuse the AUR in arch you need to know what you are doing.

However, it’s no different in Windows but for different reasons. The most common way to fuck windows up is to start installing software from non reputable sources. I think many of us have had to clean windows installations from friends and family when it becomes unusable.

You don’t mention the specifics of your hardware and that’s an important consideration.

I was a mint user for more than 10 years. It never crashed. It became my fail back when I moved to Fedora/Gnome. It’s very crashed, but my laptop (ThinkPad X1 carbon) supports Fedora out of the box.

People keep saying “a DE you can customize…” While I love KDE, the amount of configuration available means that’s it’s easy to screw things up.

I suggest Gnome because it has a modern workflow and it’s otherwise out of your way. Of course, you can install extensions. Just don’t go crazy because extensions may not be as stable as the core.

The GNOME workflow becomes natural after a few minutes.

I’ll need to try!

I have a finely tuned Xmonad/Xmobar but at some point I’ll need to switch to Wayland. This looks promising as a replacement.

But, really, how frequently a normal user borks their system?

I’ve been using Linux for since 2004 and I can’t remember the last time (if any) that I irrecoverably borked the system.

I use arch, mint and Fedora. Repositories in those three are solid.

Yes, immutable systems have their uses. Mostly entreprise uses but for home? Only out of curiosity.

Really? I guess everyone was 15 at some point and hadn’t heard that distro wars are useless 🤣

There is no best. Period.