Reply to post: Re: Just works

30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Just works

I switched a female relative's computer from Windows Vista to Devuan Linux a couple of years ago. Not only did it fix the thing so it worked well again, it did nearly everything it had done before (but better) and did not need replacing with a "New, Shiny" Win-10-nic machine. She knew very little about anything computer-related except using mail, web browsers, managing music files on an iPod nano, playing videos, and playing games. Well, some of the games she played as a kid were no longer available (but I offered to set up the games in a VM if she needed it, so far no).

Her successful OS paradigm transition took less than a day. Mate desktop helped. Everything just worked. It was an older Sony Vaio laptop, and I set it all up on a new hard drive. No problems since.

I would say that, for her, Linux is kinda like using a Mac. Switching from PC to Mac is generally painless (except for the bank account). Switching from Windows to Devuan+Mate, also pretty painless (and the hard drive needed replacing anyway, so no harm to bank account).

More people need to understand this.

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