Most important question.

Also try to transition her slowly from outlook -> Thunderbird and chrome -> firefox and so on. Then after a few weeks at least do the switch to linux mint. Then the shock of all the new things is smaller

I have to interject: It is not like bread, as it is a bigger commitment (as I dont want to distrohop for longer than a week) and also it is more complex to create an OS than to create a bread (so more manpower is needed). Choice is a good thing. But too much choice can be bad. Imagine someone is directing a “linux curious” person to distrowatch. There the newbie will be overwhelmed. Maybe not and he just clicks on a distro and tries it. Probably a bad idea as the change from his previous (corporate) OS is a big change already, now the newbie uses a distro which probably doesnt fit his needs.

My case is that, like with the fediverse, the different options hinder the wider adoption, as potential new users have a problem with it during onboarding. Which is a difficult time as is. Even for someone who is switching from Windows to MacOS, two polished and widely adopted OSes, they are gonna have a hard time. Now add the choice from dozens of distros and the very vocal linux community and the switch is impossible for many potential new linux-users.

I’d like to say that I am not brainwashed, I am currently using Debian+KDE in Dualboot wuth Windows and Linux Mint for the selfhosting server. (Yes I know, this is the wrong distro for a server, it was my first contact with linux so I just picked the most polpular among newbies. Which is kind of the point of the whole thread.)

No corporate control, not less options.

There need to be a handful of distros with less settings, being more “fixed”.

I personally like to being able to set everything how I like it.

But it just isnt necessary to have THAT many actively developed distros. If devs could drop 1/4 of the distros and redirect their efforts on bigger projects, those would profit massively.

Thanks, you condensed my thoughts very well. The point with flatpak is very important. I used discovery by kde but it seemed not as polished as it should be. Not to say that there are better “stores”. I hope the inclusion of flatpak/flathub into distros/DEs gets improved significantly and gets adapted wider.

I’ve read that before, didnt realize that this was a joke…

No, I dont suggest that there should be another new distro. The existing ones are pretty good at the goal of being userfriendly, at least some of them like Linux Mint

It is a problem if the goal is to increase the “personal desktop OS marketshare”.

But diversity is a good thing for itself I agree. I have the feeling that it is a bit sad that it seems that there isnt one or two “main” distros, which one could recommend that tech illiterate family member.

Yes, sorry, that wasnt my intention.

When I talked about “Linux” or “distros” i only ment Desktop OS for personal use. Sorry!

Agree! I dont want to dictate anyone and I understand that my rant wont change anything.

It was more about the hypothetical optimum “if we one wanted to optimize for user-share of the desktop OS market”, then there should be fewer but better distros.

Not to forget Teams (new)