this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that's awesome! What's not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can't do something or why don't they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn't even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That's just the way I see it.
Average people don't even use networked drives. What are you talking about?
They're happy with Chrome and Steam.
I put into the dolphin path sftp://[email protected]. Then I give it my password, and check the box to save it. Then I right click any folder in the destination and do "add to places" and in the future I just navigate to it like a local folder.
I guess I'm supposed to do it a harder way? I've done essentially the same but with smb:// when forced to work with a samba share like an animal.
Mine is set up that way, but the issue is when I go to click the folder that we added to places, on next boot, it will ask for my password to mount it.
I use the NAS for storage and backups, while running a program on the desktop that will also upload those files to the cloud. The program isn’t able to see the path on boot, because the NAS isn’t mounted on login.
It’s doable I’m sure, but if it is editing some config file somewhere or with some terminal command, I’m going to just shrug and move on because that’s quite silly in my opinion.
And yes, it is samba, but it’s the only thing I’ve used since it was set like that at default. Why would I look into other ways if it’s working just fine, exactly?
Nothing other than your own personal preference. Across a wide variety of contexts I personally find less headaches with SFTP, but YMMV. There are security and speed arguments, but IIRC there is a lot of variance to those arguments depending on how modern the SMB implementation is and how it's config'd.
I have no idea why you can't save your PW, I've done it this way since at least 2013, under several distros, on several different hardware setups, and have never had an issue having dolphin save my PW.
Are you in the "I disabled the KDE wallet because I wasn't sure how to make it not annoying" crowd? It used to be much harder to work with. (I don't even know if that's the likely reason you have to keep putting your PW in, but I do use KDE wallet, and I never have to put mine in after initial setup in dolphin.)
I’ve tried searching for an answer before giving up, but they usually include going into the terminal and running commands or editing this file over here in your system settings.
I may be more comfortable with Linux now, and prefer it, but that’s mainly because of how stable it has been since I’ve tried moving over full time. Well, that and KDE is a damn fine desktop environment!
I don’t like to run the random commands any more because when I did that as a newbie, it almost always blew up in my face. Granted, I know better now, but that’s mainly really set the precedent for how far I am willing to go to get the OS to do what I’m wanting. I drew that line at command line or system file editing. :/
Now, I do remember trying to disable KDE wallet on a VM I was running to try it out one time. Yeah, it did mess things up, so I stopped doing that too! Haha! Great memory unlock, thank you! xD
The average person does not mount network drives themselves.
I would hazard a guess that for the truly average user, booting to a desktop with Firefox and LibreOffice installed is like 90% of what they need.
NAS is incredibly common these days. Backing up data is mainstream now. Not 100% of laypeople use NAS, of course, but many.
I think both of our statements are correct.
I bet the absolute number of laypeople using NAS is way up while the percentage of users is still tiny.
Backups being mainstream is awesome, but for them backup means cloud and almost certainly Apple/Google/Microsoft. Even I personally still use crashplan for actual backups primarily because it’s offsite and has unlimited version retention. I might roll my own one of these days though, whether finding some cheap cloud storage or putting a small server at my parents’ house or something like that.
It doesn't have to specifically be a network drive, I bumped into this exact problem with the ntfs Windows drives I didn't want to reformat after I switched. Only issue is fstab never worked after weeks of trial and error, so I had to use udisks and just elevate its permissions instead.
I haven’t dealt with it on network drives yet, but just recently I was redoing my main machine and had to decide how to mount some big spinning drives for storing media. The graphical disk manager included with Mint, which is just gnome-disks, made it pretty quick.
the average person doesnt know how to mount a drive on windows or even what that is or why you would want to, they just need to be able to open a browser
Very good point!
Example 2:
I need to drag this file into my browser to upload it to the website I'm visiting for whatever reason. I'm an average user that has only ever really needed a browser. My OS came with Firefox, but when I try to drag the file onto my browser window like I've always done, nothing happens. Is my computer broken?
No, it's installed as a snap/flatpak that doesn't have the "privileges" to do that, and I will never know that since I'm an average user who only needs a browser.
Your second example is a newish problem and Ubuntu specific. I had never had a problem with drag-and-drop and I migrated from Ubuntu before the snap thing.
You will always find an example of something that works "better" in one OS than other. Linux is not trying to be a windows drop-in replacement, some thing are gonna behave differently. Linux have some problems for an average user but a lot is just different UX design and others, especially hardware compatibility is because companies don't care for it to work on Linux so the OS is always playing catch up.
That’s the distro’s fault, not linux. Same with your network drive. It’s not up to linux to provide a GUI for anything.
Also “intuitive” should not have to mean “windows-like”. It’s hard for people because they spend over a decade on a fundamentally different OS. Adding a single line to fstab isn’t harder than searching windows’ menus. It’s harder for you/others because you/they are used to it working that way.
Proceeds to describe a task average users never perform.
And no, you having been a smart child doesn’t excuse you being an obtuse adult.
Meanwhile my experience with automounting network drives with dolphin is
Open Dolphin > Add Network Folder > Enter creds > Check automount box > done
I haven't had to use the terminal for anything in years. There's some things I do in the terminal, but that's because I like it better, not because there isn't an intuitive way to do it.
The reason guides tell people to use the terminal is because it's the same across DEs, not because there aren't DEs that make it more intuitive.
Would I throw a random non techy friend on Linux? No, because it's not what they're used to. If they had no computer experience at all though I absolutely would.
I once wanted to change my mouse scrolling direction on Windows. In KDE it's a toggle in the mouse settings and on Windows it's some dubious registry editing (apparently). I think there are about as many things that are easier on Linux than on Windows as there are things that are easier on Windows than on Linux (assuming you're using a modern distribution with a beginner-friendly, sensible configuration).
I think the hard disks thing, looks like gparted kindve, can add fstab entries automatically for you.
I could be wrong
Thunar + (i think) gvfs does fine with network drives, it mounts them as soon as I try to click on them. If I wanted otherwise I wouldn't use the tool that's meant to show me files when I want to look at them.
When administrating (an admittedly horribly set up) computer system I hate that Windows automatically saves the address without asking because then after turning the protections back on after installing a program from there, the users still see the network drive and want to play around with it.
While I agree linux has some pants on head stupid shit that needs to change, like right click new file being something you need to diy for some reason on fedora, linux now is better than windows was when I was 10. Most things work, you don't need to troubleshoot. I remember spending more time troubleshooting games than playing them back in the day on windows while linux desktop didn't even exist at the time.
There are some issues to work out but majority of them are things that are done differently on linux and you hate cause youre used to windows bullshit.
I mean, I was able to figure out how MS-DOS worked as a child just be flailing on the keyboard and reading the errors. It was "easy" because now I know it while Macintoshes may as well have been alien technology. A "mouse"?, moving windows?, you have to find programs and click on them instead of just typing?
You're just used to Windows annoyances and not used to Linux annoyances, that's all.
For example:
Installing and updating a program on Windows is a horror show compared to using a package manager. It expects average users to find, download and run executable files from the Internet and conditions them to approve elevation for anything that asks.
If Windows breaks, how do you troubleshoot it? Maybe Google knows, maybe rebooting fixes it, if not then possibly re-installing the entire OS. It's so bad that if you work with Windows clients you probably already have an image of a Windows install because troubleshooting is so much of a pain it's easier to just completely re-image the machine.
Don't even get me started on how often Microsoft changes the layout of administration tools and system menus or their tendency to change the name of various system components for no logical reason.
I don't think Linux is for everyone, but only because most everyone already has years of Windows experience and forgets all of the frustration and learning.
If you used Linux for just as long as you've used Windows, then editing fstab would seem as trivial a task as pinning an item to the ~~start bar~~ taskbar, or ~~launching a program~~ starting an app from the ~~system tray~~ ~~notification area~~ system tray.
It's kinda funny that as a seasoned Linux user, I never had to edit fstab for years. I just use Gnome Disks if I need automount or format a USB drive.
LucidNightmare tries artificially complicated ways for niche use cases instead of going the straightforward path and then complains all the time how bad Linux isn't for average users, as if those would meddle with network drives, disk partitions, etc. at all.
It seems so. An average Windows user wouldn't meddle with those too. I even saw a Windows user who doesn't know what C or D is, I would guess because the file explorer doesn't even show drives as default window for a while now.
Yeah, ironic they chose dolphin to make that point since I literally just did it in dolphin ~a month ago and it has a checkbox to set up automount for you.
Yeah, this one gets me, but you are exactly right with "years of experience". Something goes wrong on my GFs MacBook or Windows PC and she just googles fixes, something goes wrong on her Steamdeck and she hands it to me "I don't know how to get around the desktop mode"........GOOGLE IT, LEARN, YOU ARENT STUPID! sigh
Mounting a network share is beyond the usage scope of the DAU you describe. They need a functional default desktop environment, working standard drivers for their standard hardware, and a browser. That's pretty much it.
And let's not pretend there's anything intuitive about Windows distinguishing between accessing a network share, and mounting it as a virtual drive. This is just the staying power of "whatever I'm used to from an age when I had the curiosity and patience to figure stuff out".
If my mother can't tell the difference between Firefox and the OS, but can use Linux mint just fine, then so can the average user.
The average person doesn't use network drives or know what they are.
The real problem is if people can't buy Linux laptops at Best Buy it literally doesn't matter how usable or not it is because the average person doesn't install an OS.
I work with windows for over 10 years, and use Linux daily for private stuff, including being a nerd and a gamer, and some side gigs for at least 8.
If something is weird, doesn't work or breaks in Linux, I can usually find the culprit and help fast. It's out there or it's so obscure I need to puzzle it myself.
If something like that happens on windows, pray someone already had that issue or Microsoft decided to write an article about it, because nobody will help, and most search results point to bot responses about scf scannow, dism at best, and straight up reseting your system to factory defaults.
Point being, I like figuring out stuff in Linux, and I dread opaque bullshit Microsoft gets away with.
Even your network drive example, in my experience is a coin toss. So many variables, hidden settings, weird registry keys with no documentation. Yeah.
You are confusing the average user with the mids... average usage is equally easy to windows:
Open a file Edit a file Copy a file Open a browser
Most people i know does not care for anything else.