this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Tried to install Mint on my laptop, wouldn't work. Googled the issue, had to rename a file in the boot directory for some reason.
Tried again, wouldn't work. Googled issue, had to turn off secure boot in bios.
Tried again, installed, okay now we're cooking. Connected to WiFi, updated packages and drivers. All good, reboot. Install Steam. Login via QR code, it begins loading user data.
Loading... Loading.. Loading.. Okay it's clearly stuck. How do I kill a process on Linux? Google it, okay that's not too hard. Try launching Steam again, same thing. Google this issue, get a lot of different potential causes, involving delving into some obscure directories.
I consider myself technologically competent, more so than the average person/consumer. I am a lot of people in my social sphere's "computer guy". Way more than most people are not going to figure this stuff out for themselves.
I'm really sorry to say but Linux is still not ready for mainstream consumers and users if this is the experience of the most recommended stable distro for the average person.
UEFI problems, sorry. Would have them with Windows too probably.
Unfortunately Microsoft pushed Secure Boot everywhere, so yes, for most distributions you have to turn it off (some have signed kernels or whatever).
So removing the
~/.steam
directory after doingpkill steam
didn't help? That seems simpler than most Windows tasks. Anyway, I have Steam working even under FreeBSD.Nobody will believe that you don't have some Windows experience exceeding what you seem to consider the maximum acceptable requirement for Linux. Don't even try.
This is one of those situations where that xkcd comic about experts comes into play.
I don't know how to convey to you that 99% of the people that use Windows wont know how to do anything beyond trying to kill the app via the task manager. I'm one of them. What you said sounds like mystic gobbledygook to me.
Mass Linux adoption is still far out of reach for the average user.
The users on Windows range from casual not techies to full on nerds. In between there are people with different interests and different tech experience. The next likely new Linux users will be at the techy end of that range. Bunching them together is really poor usability analysis. Talking about average users is also nonsense. Out of 100 users, there might be only one average user.
I've been using Linux full-time at home for 14 years+ without needing to use the command line. Linux is far from perfect, but misinformation should be avoided.
At work I need Eindows for our CAD application. FOSS CAD is OK for some use cases. But falls far short for my car design use cases.