Hacker News Reader

Comment by d3Xt3r | Hacker News Reader

The point OP was trying to make is that for most people, they don't need to learn anything new - If all they're going to be doing is fire up Chrome and go to Facebook or whatever, then the OS doesn't really matter to them.

The minor UI/UX differences between Windows and say, a distro running KDE or XFCE isn't any greater than the difference between two major Windows versions. I mean, look at Windows 11, a lot of normies were unhappy about the center oriented taskbar. And look at the mess that Windows 8 was - no start button initially, and a fullscreen start menu.

The proof in the pudding is the relative success of Chromebooks - normies buy it knowing that all they need is a browser, and they didn't need to take any big effort to learn anything new.

View on HN

>The proof in the pudding is the relative success of Chromebooks

Actually, I think Chromebooks are a failure. Google used the wrong strategy, namely being too controlling and restrictive, with Chromebooks. This is diametrically opposite to Chrome or Android. Chrome and Android's pitch was simple, "No matter how shit your hardware is, we'll give you a good operating system/browser". It was a lost closer to the linux ethos. Chromebooks on the other hard are integrated and licensed devices that manufacturers make in collaboration with Google. They are all crap because Google's needs are different from the manufacturer's or the market's. Outside of the education sector, where there is some product market fit, they are useless trash. A waste of so much good technology.

"Outside of the education sector, where there is some product market fit, they are useless trash"

Give me another ultramobile and rugged linux laptop for 300 bucks with touchscreen and I gladly take it. I also would consider a more expensive one, but for outdoor use, I never found a better working device than chromebooks.

Of course the OS by itself is terrible. Via VMs every app is possible, but for me I have a very simple dev device with node and chrome dev tools (in developer mode)

When I said success, I didn't say that in terms of technology or market share, I meant it in terms of normies being able to adapt to a different OS without having to undergo training. The fact that normies were able to simply pick up and use a Chromebook shows that people can use a different non-mainstream OS, as long as their needs are simple.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com