most of the choir, here...

The choir here already sings 30 years and is considered in tune.

A recent poll in the Fediverse had 81% running Linux. Should it be rightly be renamed the Nerdiverse?. The remainder was pretty evenly split between Windows and Mac.

Now to the real battle. How does one convince Gnome based users to see the true light: KDE? [Retires to his NZ bash-proof bunker]

"How does one convince Gnome based users to see the true light: KDE?"

You don't if it works for them, it works for them. the same applies to the opposite proposition.

... but what Linux really needs here is a Linfluencer on TikTok to demonstrate how to do this to the cool kids, so they can adapt theirs (and their parents) computers.

Count me out, I am too boring for that (I have a teenage daughter, so this opinion counts).

This, writ large.

An OS should be boring: it should allow the user to start and run the software they want without getting in the way or being 'an experience' in its own right - and Linux desktops are exceptionally boring in this regard! Yes, having Linfluencers - I'm so nicking that! - is key. If the great and the good saw their on-line gods firing up a *nix desktop with an-almost throwaway line like 'and I'll just start my Mint box up and show you this for lulz' (forgive my street talk: I'm not exactly core demographic) then I think that'd only do good.

Get your teenage daughter to be that Linfluencer.

You obviously DO NOT HAVE a teenage Daughter ... or Son !!!

As soon as you 'ASK' it is immediately 'NOT COOL' and is assigned last place on a list of 1000 things NOT to do !!!

:)

Fourteen-year-old granddaughter has already issued us with a list of words we are _never_ to use if any of her friends are in earshot!

I'd love to know what those are!

Teenagers and now young adults check parents IT: they (the parents) are not allowed TikTok, Twitter/X, Twitch among many others…

"You obviously DO NOT HAVE a teenage Daughter ... or Son !!!"

Correct. I have a teenage granddaughter and grandson instead.

Granddaughter discusses sewing - which is definitely cool - with SWMBO on an almost mutual level. According to her, her boyfriend - a history student - finds out local history website cool.

"As soon as you 'ASK'"

Did you note the verb I actually used in the OP?

One major problem - and I do not wish to start a fight - is that there's far too much choice in the *nix world. Would that Linfluencer promote Mint? Why not Ubuntu or, perhaps, Debian? MX is my choice but it's a choice based on some boring technical criteria that a Win-user wouldn't care about or understand - but I'm willing to bet that half of us would fight the other half to the death over such issues (read any thread on VI, systemd, pipewire et al if you need reminding how ugly passionate we can make it)!

Then there's the thorny choice of desktop: Xfce is loved by many - but so are a handful of others. To get a disgruntled-and-looking-to-change Redmond user onto a *nix, we - the assembled mob of *nix users - need to put aside our 'discussions' about these technical differences and accept a common entry platform, get behind it and then willingly install/teach it.

Thus the beauty of Linux. Use the distro and UI of your choice. Not the single option that someone in Redmond deems the One True Way. We have a common base; under the covers, Linux is pretty much Linux. There's no fight needed -- I like vim, you like EMACS, I like Mint, you like RHEL, and we can all move ahead without compromise.

What you see as an advantage many non-techies see as confusing. They want choice but only in an undemanding way. So it would better if there were only one flavour of nix on offer on multiple device types.

To actually get people to switch you might need something like a "Linux coffee morning". Bring your kit down and someone will sit with them and help them upgrade and walk them through the basics.

I don't doubt that plenty of people's grand-folks are happy on linux, this is likely because all IT is confusing to the average elderly person so it's no more difficult to teach them to use a nix machine than a Windows PC or a Mac.

If kids at school were taught about this as well, maybe build and use a nix machine as part of a basic computing course, rather then simply taught how to visit an app store; which seems to be how it works right now.

yep. I run windows and mac both. I am one of those that you are trying to get to switch. I even loaded and tried unix and linux in the past. What I found was that there were a thousand different versions to dig through and study, and then there were a thousand different warez to dig through and study, only to find that most of todays high end creative software does NOT actually run on Unix/linux. I understand times have changed, and mint looks the part to me, but I'm going to have to put the effort into digging out a computer, loading it up, and then seeing what software I use DOESN'T work. I'm not talking about games here. I'm talking high end video and audio systems. I know some DEVS will make a (L)unix version, but not a lot. You need to consolidate from an outsiders perspective. Give the DEVS something to build on. They are not going to keep up with an OS that the majority isn't playing on.

It always comes down to applications. If a user has fairly modest needs, then everything in the article applies.

I love Mint and have it running on a few PCs, but my main computer runs Windows. What keeps me there is the unavailability of certain programs that I use regularly - mainly for photo editing. I have played with all the open source editors commonly cited (GIMP, RawTherapee, darktable,etc). Most of them are packed with sliders whose function is totally opaque to me as a seasoned photographer. GIMP is comparatively user-friendly, but lacks features commercial software can perform without resorting to clunky plugins that haven't been updated since 2010. Try stitching multiple images together to create a panoramic photo in GIMP, as I attempted last weekend. That's a super easy task in Affinity Photo or Photoshop.

None of the image editing applications I use in Windows run (at least not their recent versions) under WINE. I've checked the database for all of them. I've even tried running some of them inside a Windows VM on Linux, and found that doesn't work well. Affinity Photo, for example, crashes just trying to open an image.

If we're going to advocate for Linux, we should make a point of asking people what they use their computers for. Linux isn't currently the answer for everyone.

I noticed on Amazon the other day, lots of refurbished Windows 10 desktop computers from around £60 upwards. Possibly even cheaper at local 2nd hand tech shops.

I've used Mint Cinnamon for over a decade (since Windows 8.1 came out) and no way will I ever go back to using a Windows computer, despite earning my livelihood (now retired) writing business software for DOS then Windows computers. I'm happy to be rid of the bloated mess that Windows has become.

I've used Mint Cinnamon for over a decade

Let me put in a plug for Mint with the Mate desktop; Mate is, essentially, GNOME 2 as the GNOME project went off the rails with GNOME 3.

Mint is what I run on my laptop, at home my desktop runs Debian with the Mate desktop. Mint gets much of its packages from Debian - not that an end user needs to worry about that.

Mint Mate here, too...mate!

Seriously, though, switching from Windows to Linux is literally as easy as picking up an off-lease refurb machine off Goodwill, downloading a Linux install image from the web, burning it to a USB stick and booting it up. Which I did a few weeks ago. If you're even moderately techy, it's an hour's work. The refurb machines are under a hundred dollars here in the US, but there will soon be a glut of "Win10 but not Win11" machines (thanks, Microsoft!). If you don't want (or have room for) a second machine, buy a new disk drive (I recommend SSD, but HDD are cheaper), swap it for your Windows drive, and install Linux on that. $50 ventured, nothing lost, since you can always swap the Windows drive back in and pick up where you left off.

If you're not technically inclined, ask your teenage daughter (or son) for help. They do this stuff all the time. Check with your local Scout troop...they always have a nerd in the bunch.

Take it from a long time Linux and Windows user -- Linux doesn't suck any worse than Windows, and it's getting better. Definitely worth a weekend test drive.

I'm a little concerned by your idea that a local scout troop, would send a minor into a potentially hazardous situation into a strangers house on request.

I can't wait to get rid of Redmond's bloated mess, but that will have to wait until I'm retired.

> but Linux is forever

Linux basically wins by default these days but I certainly can't say it is forever in that it is constantly changing. I would even say that GNU, Linux, etc is an umbrella term for a group of operating systems that continuously die and get replaced every few years by a loosely similar project with the same name.

Apparenfly, according to Distrowatch -

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20250127#sitenews

- Facebook now deems Linux to be malware, which is ironic, since Meta itself uses Linux.

Malware

n.

Malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer functions or SENDS PERSONAL DATA ABOUT THE USER TO UNAUTHORIZED PARTIES OVER THE INTERNET.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Malware

As this article suggests, it's doubly ironic since Microsoft harvests your data.

It is much closer to the mark to say that Facebook is malware.

Pot...Kettle...

Perhaps the Linux Foundation should sue them for libel. Unfortunately that's unlikely because the membership includes Meta.

It shows that Facebook have some real morons in the moderation team if they don't understand what Linux is and are banning anything to do with it. Duh.

After I'd written the above it did occur to me that it might have actually been a post about systemd and a smart moderator but apparently not so.

This is a misleading statement.

If you run Mint or any other Linux distro that does not have a rolling release update model, you will still have to sometimes perform significant maintenance to move to new versions. As far as I remember (and I'm mostly using Ubuntu with a smattering of Devuan and Slack), you still need to do a dist-upgrade once every four or five years as browers often end up refusing to run on what are deemed "out of support" versions of most of the distros.

The situation is not that dissimilar to Windows. It is not "Windows tm " that is going out of support, it is "Windows 10". The current version of Mint will eventually go out of support just the same.

For this 10->11 upgrade, Microsoft have put some additional requirements on a system to allow it to get to 11, but it won't be that long before Mint and most other distros won't support 32 bit x86 systems, so there are again similarities. (OK, I admit that you're probably looking at systems over 20 years old to find 32 bit x86 systems, but I'm sure there are people still out there using them, and possibly even some still sold, but probably for niche environments).

I'm fully supportive of people moving to Linux (and have done foe members of my family - my wife doesn't even realise she's running Linux on her laptop), not just to extend the life of their systems, but also because I think it's a much less exploitative ecosystems, but is it a one time move that becomes forever?

No.

This is why I recommend Solus as it has a "curated rolling" model (weekly updates, no need to do anything other than check for updates forever, with very little risk of problems). They did have a "bus factor" issue a couple of years ago but that has been resolved. There are a few other distros with a similar model, Opensuse Tumbleweed and some of the Arch-based distros like Endeavour come to mind.

Mint used to need some typed commands to upgrade between major versions, but when I went from 21.3 to 22.0 last year it was done with a button-press (and then clicking OK on several warnings about what it was about to do), followed by a "Please reboot your system" message. Point versions (I went from 22.0 to 22.1 a few weeks ago) have always been with a button press (since 17 at least). This was all from the usual updating tool (I've forgotten the name). I guess that "dist-upgrade" is one of the commands run in the background by the GUI?

Personally, I would never trust a GUI to handle system upgrades. Even if I was on Windows, I would much prefer to see Windows print a log of wtf it is going to do, what it is doing, with the option to stop it. But no, all you get from Microsoft is "Hang Tight! We're getting everything ready for you!"

Having just done the 21.3 to 22 upgrade on both my laptop and desktop I can confirm there is a 'Testing the update to check for issues' step along with various points you can choose to bail out. I had an issue with 'foreign applications' (apps installed directly by me and not through the Software Manager) which needed attention before the upgrade could complete but all the needed information was on the Mint Forums

I tried that GUI major version upgrade on Linux Mint XFCE. Thank goodness I had Timeshift running, because the "upgraded" system was as unstable as a very unstable thing and it wasn't too hard to scramble back to safety.

I installed Mint Cinnamon on an Acer Aspire 5552 (AMD Athlon II X2 processor P320) with 3GB of memory (ex-Windows 7 laptop) and found it really struggled and ended up installing Mint Xfce which worked far better. That is probably my lack of Linux use as I've not really used it much since I used Redhat and Mootif back in the late '90's.

That's one of the advantages of Linux. You have a choice of user interface and once you've made that choice it doesn't radically change between versions.

You have a choice of user interface and once you've made that choice it doesn't radically change between versions.

Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 ?

Fairy Nuff

I sometimes think I'm the last person on the planet who remembers KDE4, with a weird unremovable icon in the corner which was supposed to do things. All abandoned in KDE 5. Anyone else?

My last major interface change was going from Blackbox to Fluxbox...

3GB of RAM sounds on the light side. I always put 8 and 16 if the machine will take it. The cost is low, so I do it as a matter of habit. Another thing that will boost Linux performance is to run a SSD on a machine that came with a HDD. I have never had a Linux install that performed worse than the Windows install on the same machine.

Nice article. Making the move to Linux Mint myself. Nevertheless there are some things to keep in mind:

1. Antivirus does exist for Linux, see for example ESET. Given all the threats out there, I do recommend getting anti-virus

2. If you use Office 365 in the cloud, you do not get all of the functionality available in the desktop versions. For example, no macros or ActiveX controls in the web version of MS Word. See for details for example https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/word-features-comparison-web-vs-desktop-3e863ce3-e82c-4211-8f97-5b33c36c55f8

3. Using Office 365 in the cloud means that Micro$oft still has access to much of your private data.

4. For many Steam games you need to install Proton, a fork of Wine. With Proton many games run without a hitch.

All in all, I think Linux Mint will fulfill the needs of many users. Another reason to move to Linux for me is that Windows 11 does not suport VR anymore. In Linux support is not complete yet, but at least offers more perspective through projects like Monado.

If you're forced to use a cloudy version of Office, you have my condolences.

Unfortunately a few of the games I play don't support Linux, but maybe this just means it's time to ditch them.

Just because a game "doesn't support Linux" doesn't mean you're out of luck. Check them on ProtonDB.

These days, it's a rare occasion when I find a game that doesn't work out of the box on steam. Just "apt install steam", go to options and "Enable SteamPlay for all titles" and try your favourite Windows game.

Indeed something *does* need to be set straight...

"4. For many Steam games you need to install Proton, a fork of Wine. With Proton many games run without a hitch."

I've never had to manage/install wine or proton to let windows-native games run. The Steam client handles it automatically when you select to enable compatability for an individual game, or for all games.

1. Antivirus does exist for Linux, see for example ESET. Given all the threats out there, I do recommend getting anti-virus

ESET for Linux has been out of support since August 2022.

TBH, anti-virus is a losing battle, and comes with many drawbacks, i.e. most AVs are basically rootkits in of themselves. ClamAV is somewhat useful for scanning suspicious files, but in the days of infinitely permutable obfuscated code thanks in part to AI, as well as supply-chain attacks, you'd be a fool to rely on AV.

Run anything potentially-dodgy in a VM, monitor the network traffic and disk contents of the VM from outside. That's about the best you can do.

Depends which ESET product you are looking at. Her is a release anouncement of last September for [1]ESET Endpoint Antivirus for Linux 11.1.3.0 . That page contains an end-of-life warning, but that only affects previous versions of the software.

[1] https://techcenter.eset.nl/en-US/news/posts/release-announcement-eset-endpoint-antivirus-for-linux-11130

The alternativesto site will find other suites some of which are loser in appearance to more recent MS Office suites and I believe at least one of my local history group members uses one - on Windows.