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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

Honestly though, how many non- technical people do you know who run any form of Linux? Steve Jobs came along and gobbled up that market 15 years ago.

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My dad! :-P

For non-technical people, I think there's not much difference between using a computer with Ubuntu, Mac or Windows, for regular tasks like browsing the internet, online shopping, sending email, doing stuff in spreadsheets, sharing photographs, etc. Software's mostly the same, in fact. And with this trend to make everything browser based, even more.

Of course things can go wrong, but it doesn't really matter which OS they're using. For example, should this last week botched Windows 10-HP upgrade happened to my father, there's nothing he could have done on his own to restore his computer.

That's true only so far as using MS Office is not needed...

Most people's computing needs would be adequately served by an iPad -- but those who aren't are typically doing more with their computers than can be met by any OS.

Right. While Office has still some unpaired features, it's also true that not everybody using Office needs Office, specially the home users who need only daily finance, writting letters, etc.

That's true -- and most of those customers could just as easily use an ipad (or equivalent, it doesn't really matter at that point and I think they all run some subset of Office applications). The age of the personal computer is almost over, unfortunately. Those of us who still use them do expect more out of them though.

The non-technical people in my life did not realize you don’t need Office to open Office documents. This important when they interact with accountants, lawyers and such.

Once I show them Libre, they still want Office because Libre looks like it’s from Excel 2003 era and loses credibility in their eyes.

Then I show them Google Docs and Sheets and it looks nice. Literally all they need is something that looks modern. But in fact Google apps have actually been quite slick. Perfect amount of functionality at the moment. Google seems to follow keyboard behaviour and shortcuts for easy transition (especially Excel). Hope Google doesn’t bloat their apps over time.

All of those applications are ok if you don't actually need to produce commercial documents. Libreoffice and Google Docs aren't good enough, and if you're doing anything other than basic data presentation with Excel it's not compatible with any of them.

Google sheets isn't the only option available though. You can even use Microsoft's own online implementation if you want compatibility to excel (without vba)

https://office.live.com/start/Excel.aspx

Those are limited subsets of functionality, and vba isn't all that's not there.

Not sure what the definition of "non-technical" is but I'm finding that among friends who've never heard, say, of emacs, they're increasingly getting tired of how corporate macOS feels, and they feel cheated into having to buy new hardware when apple has dropped support for theirs. I think the question of linux adoption is more just about spreading the word and supporting people to migrate, rather than advocacy of the need.

> and they feel cheated into having to buy new hardware when apple has dropped support for theirs

When has Apple dropped the ball on support there? mac OS Mojave supports machines made in 2012...

Wow, a whole 6 years?

Thats officially supported. I have personally run stuff a year or two older than official support multiple times with 0 issues.

And 6 years is typically the lifecycle of any laptop. By that point most people start looking for a new one.

My 2011 mbp is doing very well with a new battery, ssd and some extra RAM. I will still receive security updates for years if I'm correct but no more mayor updates indeed.

Man I love my 2012 rMBP. I recently left it on a flight and was devastated. Got it back, luckily. Greatest laptop ever made. I'm taking that thing to the grave...

I converted several of my non-technical friends to Ubuntu, including various other people I know.

Many of them are running Ubuntu on a laptop that would cover half the cost of a macbook. Not everyone can afford Jobs' prices.

Even if Apples were cheap, I consider Ubuntu a much better choice for an aspiring hacker / programmer.

What does a Linux machine do better than a Mac, if price were not a factor?

Support machines older than 6 years. Got a ThinkPad from 2008 that's still kicking, rocking the latest Fedora release.

That's not really a feature, if cost isn't an issue you can run OSX on a new Mac.

I get it if you're trying to avoid the cost of an operating system, but that wasn't what you said or what I asked..

Your typical Linux stack is far more configurable and customizable than the Mac stack.

You typically have far more configuration levers, as well as deeper customization access. The stack is built entirely from open, accessible source, so you can ultimately customize every single part of it to your exact liking.

For example, KDE has an order of magnitude more levers than the OS X DE.

You realize OSX is BSD, right? Just because they didn't build you a configuration button for everything doesn't mean it's not configurable.

Uhm, no. Somewhere at the core it's BSD, but can I patch and recompile the DE?

Not only is most of OS X closed source, it's also not particularly configurable.

What, specifically, are you trying to configure that you can't?

It really is BSD, although the window manager isn't open source a lot of the rest is.

my father (61 yo) uses xubuntu daily. I installed it for him years ago instead of Windows 7 and he loves it. He doesn't need to pay for an antivirus anymore and from his prospective it's much faster.

My best friend. She saw me being happy to use Linux and that I do everything on it she did on Windows before.

Of course it still needs an opened mindset to use Linux but its disadvantages in some use cases.

She is using OpenSuse.

Literally anyone with an Android or Chrome OS device. Granted, they didn't download and install it themselves, but I don't think that invalidates the point.

The parents and girlfriends of technical people (like mine).

Yep. Siblings, wife, and in-laws here.

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