Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#21

Post by sickofparadox » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #16

graemep wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major ease of use advantage Windows has is that it is preinstalled on hardware people buy. If you gave a "normie" a computer with desktop Linux distro preinstalled they would find it much easier to use it than to install Windows. My experience is that most people like Linux provided someone else installs it for them.

Most software is also written for Windows and won't be flawless in WINE

Most people use their computers just to browse the internet and maybe run a few electron applications.

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#22

Post by plasticchris » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

ukuina wrote: post #14

Can we take a moment to reminisce about the DSL and Knoppix era of running immutable Linux distros off of business card-shaped CDs?

I burned several Linux boot cds with some games on them and took over an unused computer lab at the community college for a lan party. It lasted until someone came around asking why these computers were running when their system showed them as off. Fortunately they laughed it off when they realized we were just kids.

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#23

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 6:23 PM UTC

stodor89 wrote: post #6

koe123 wrote: post #3

Puppy linux was my first linux install back when I was around 13 years old, and I remember it fondly. I recall I even found it easier to get up and running than ubuntu. (Which is somewhat puzzling in hindsight?)

In my experience Ubuntu is one of the harder distros to get working when it doesn't work ootb .

Agreed. This is exactly why I built Shell Bling Ubuntu https://github.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu , and test it every 6 months or so against a fresh install of Ubuntu in a VM - I don't want to have to remember all the little trivia I have to use to get all of my little command line tools, neovim setup, etc. working together harmoniously. The best part is I can hand it off to my colleagues and blow their minds with just how nice a terminal experience can be, "out of the box", kinda.

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#24

Post by gapan » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 9:35 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #18

graemep wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a different issue from ease of use, and depends on what software you want to use. There is certainly a lot of software that is available for Linux. I am far from sure how you would measure "most". Number of executables, number of GUI apps...?. These days there are probably more GUI apps for mobile platforms than for desktops in any case. A lot of the most commonly used software (e.g. web browsers) is cross pl…

Most mainstream apps that normies are already familiar with

Ah, facebook then.

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#25

Post by homarp » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 9:57 PM UTC

gapan wrote: post #24

paulryanrogers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most mainstream apps that normies are already familiar with

Ah, facebook then.

and google

Re: Who's a Good Boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review

#26

Post by bbbhltz » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:43 AM UTC

ukuina wrote: post #14

Can we take a moment to reminisce about the DSL and Knoppix era of running immutable Linux distros off of business card-shaped CDs?

I do remember Knoppix. In particular, being able to recover my very important data (ok, fine, it was pirated music) from a computer that wouldn't boot anymore.