Wait until you see what a headache Windows is. Half the time it can’t log me in without a restart.

It seems only natural…

• the “grandma”/casual users never try anything complicated or different so nothing goes wrong.
• the “pro” users either know what they are doing well enough to not make a mistake or to fix it when it goes wrong.
• the middle users will always have it harder, they are trying things beyond the margins of “easy” so of course things go wrong and they don’t know how to fix it.

Anecdotal example: just yesterday I found out that I broke my file picker function in five out of six web browsers, by loading an Xcompose file with some definitions that GTK apparently doesn’t like. It took me about 5 hours of poking at things to figure out that a change I did a week ago, broke a function I hardly ever use. So I did fix it eventually but I it took me a week to notice and then hours to track down what was going on.

Is there any chance at all that the casual users would be using a compose key, let alone loading a custom definition file for it? Hell no!

But here’s the secret: there is nobody out there who is the perfect expert who never makes a mistake and knows all things. We’re all out here pushing boundaries; the only difference is where those boundaries are.

and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.

Well I’m closer to that. I’m an “IT pro” (I pay my bills by writing software) and I did learn CS at uni… and yet it’s STILL damn hard!

I think that might be the part that “grandma” (bit sexist and ageist there but going with the example) finds it hard is a given but that professionals are struggling daily is somehow hidden away.

I can give you examples from just yesterday :

• my deGoogled Android phone rejected my SIM card yesterday “SIM 1 not allowed”
• my home IoT server stopped working

and few others smaller problems. So… I had to find ways to fix that which lead me to learn that :

• some bug into HomeAssistant (my IoT server gateway) led me to restart its container, without having to restart the device itself
• my Android ROM has a “Reset Network Settings” within the “Reset Options” menu

The irony is that some people who are not professional might even know about the later one but I didn’t. So… my whole point :

TL;DR: IT is hard for everyone because it’s complex (lots of moving parts) and always changing (“updates” are not just “better” but different) so we ALL must keep on learning.

You’ve used Windows for so long that you don’t remember how it was when you first started using it.

This isn’t different than what you are doing with Linux. The flow gets better and better and you will acquire the experience needed to navigate the issues. It takes time, that’s all.

But us in the middle who pretend we’re smart

The trick you’ll learn is that everyone is just pretending. The more your learn the more you realize you don’t know.

Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!

That’s the right attitude. A lot of the comfort of Windows comes down to habit and mere exposure. Every Windows user who dives beyond the surface also spends a lot of time learning, but with the added burden of having to sift through every forum post suggesting sFc /ScAnNoW. And if you keep the same hardware for a few years, the Linux experience ages like a fine wine as drivers improve and features get some subtle polish.

Sometimes I wonder if my health takes a toll each time I help someone set up Windows. I can literally feel my heart rate increase as I go through the privacy-related settings.

all that said, linux could use some more “intermediate” tools.

windows is surprisingly decent in that aspect too. service managers, cron managers, startup managers, a good task manager, all by default.

this would help intermediate linux users quite a lot.

I had a crisis too some years ago, when Windows 7 was the shit, I heard Windows 7 was very good (for Windows).
So I tried to dual boot Windows 7, goddam a load of crap!! I’ll never believe anyone claiming Windows is good again.
The structure of security is a bloody mess, providing worse security, while taking control away from the owner of the system.
And lack of package manager makes it ask for updates at the most inopportune moments. Just a tiny program like Adobe reader was super invasive, and was a major pain in the ass.

Windows is not in any way user friendly, it’s just what most people are used to.

I keep breaking my setup when I update my Nvidia drivers. Feels like shit, but I am never going back to windows

This is very true. Linux is great if you just want to check email, or if you want to compile your kernel or dig into incredibly esoteric config files. But if you want to do something between those 2 extremes, the learning curve is extremely steep. My Windows box and Mac Mini both do all the things I want them to, but my Linux box keeps breaking and I don’t trust it with anything important. I usually try to do things on Linux first, but when it inevitably breaks I switch over to Mac and get it done in a tenth of the time.

I’m sure I could get my Linux box to do everything I want. I’m busy and I don’t want to fight with it and spend all my time learning about its eccentricities. I want to point and click and occasionally modify a text file.