@Spl-it

Every operating system has its flaws and when people are faced with problems on Windows they know what to do and on Linux they need to learn what to do in order to fix their problems and where to search for the solutions. Please stop refering to Windows as an OS where you don't run into any driver related problems or software related problems or problems in general because I've been using it for my whole life until about 2 years ago and am very familiar with its flaws and there are a lot of them... even way more than on Linux side of things for me... with Linux sure I run into problems but after fixing them they do not reoccur on that installation where as in Windows that is not the case... from time to time something just breaks on Windows and you must reinstall eventhough you don't know why and you didn't do anything inappropriate. It's just that people know where to search for the solutions on Windows side and are so familiar with it...

And yes... Linux has a lot of room for improvement but at least has a potential... Windows doesn't have it since Microsoft will not allow it to advance, just to the point they wish it to but on the other hand restricting users from everything that makes PCs great and our own.

And about having OS preinstalled doesn't mean that you cannot switch it if you don't like it... and don't think that I was forcing Linux upon them as MS does with Win10... they came to me alone and asked how to fix smth in Win10 and I suggested them to try Linux... they have been all extremely happy with it because for non-advanced users it's enough to have Linux installation that just works and have 1 person for backup if something goes wrong... And I've always had more help from community rather than Apple or Microsoft themselves even on Windows side because they don't give a **** about their users, they're just economists.

*Edit: I was able to set my neighbour's HP Wireless printer with their proprietary Linux drivers with ease... things have started to change a lot lately on the hardware side, these are rather myths that things are mostly unfixable on Linux...

Quoting: MaCroX95(...) Please stop refering to Windows as an OS where you don't run into any driver related problems or software related problems or problems in general (...)

Totally agree. I can name few major problems from my experience:
- Countless times I've seen multiple problems with Windows because of malware. As a result, people were asking me to fix a PC that was unusable because of problems with boot, problems with machine being unable to respond and stuff like this.
- 5 years ago I bought 2 laptops, very similar for me and my girlfriend (we use them now) but manufacturer provided only drivers for 32 bit systems. I've spent 2 days while looking for drivers from weird sources just to make her laptop run Windows (mine is Windows free, however there was a time that I had a Windows partition for university related stuff).
- Do you know a person that was using Windows and haven't seen BSOD (or it's newer form)? I've seen it on Windows XP, Vista, 7. I've seen newest form of BSOD on Windows 10. Windows crashes, that's a fact.
- On a PC that I used at previous work, Windows 10 had 2 issues, that were unfixable for me.
1) I had a Office 365 Business, which comes with One Drive for Business. Build in Windows 10 One Drive was crashing every 5 minutes. There was a hotfix that was fixing the issue until next update was installed. After any update issue started to appear once again.
2) Synaptics touchpad was crashing from time to time and was presenting alert about this information.

I have an impression, that I would be able to list issues for next hour. But to be fair - I have many issues on Ubuntu as well. But on Ubuntu I'm more productive and I do not rely on Microsoft.

Quoting: wojtek88I have an impression, that I would be able to list issues for next hour. But to be fair - I have many issues on Ubuntu as well. But on Ubuntu I'm more productive and I do not rely on Microsoft.

I totally agree with you wojtek88, I've had number of problems on my Linux partitions also had them on Windows partitions. Problem solving is quite different but after you learn where to look for fixes and solutions you are great to go with Linux, also found that when you fix a problem once you're good to go untill you have to reinstall so you need to write down or bookmark solutions that work for you one time because it's likely that you will switch distros because that's what we Linux users love to do. I just hate it when people say that "Things just work out of the box and nothing ever crashes and there are no problems" on Windows or Mac... We all know that that is far from the truth...

We could all be listing our issues for hours here and we would not run out of them either for Windows or Linux but one thing is for sure... On Windows we have the experience Microsoft wants us to have and they do not even do it well (crashes, bugs...) and on Linux we depend on the community and ourselves. Microsoft on the Windows side is rather a problem than the company that provides support to their users... There was one time I've seen a question on Microsoft's official support site where a user had a hardware specific problem and first he didn't get the reply for them and later some Windows user wrote that it's due to the Microsoft's last update and suggested him to revert back to last update. He did that and things started working as they should and he thanked the user. Soon after that Microsoft staff replied with something like we are happy that with the help of community you were able to solve your problem and marked the topic as solved... How is the problem supposed to be solved if he just needed to revert updates that ruined their things??? And that was my point that Microsoft just wants marketshare and money, they don't really care about their individual users and provide close to no support by themselves...

And we don't need support like that, we're better off on our own! :)

not my point at all.

I'm saying the average user doesnt care about the OS or problem solving.
If my aunt buys a printer and it doesnt work on windows, she can return it to the shop. she will never start troubleshooting as she simply doesnt care.

And yes, you and I can get a wireless printer or external hdd's working just fine, my aunt cant and doesnt want to mess with it either.

Saying people will just need to do some trouble shooting doesnt make a lot of sense for the average user that doesnt care about his computer, the damned thing simply needs to work.

people dont do trouble shooting on windows, those same people wont do it on linux either.
No matter how many times someone on a forum types that they just need to learn how to solve the problems themselves.

And I never refered to windows as an OS that is problem free, its a horrendous piece of shit in my eyes and it drives me insane when I'm forced to use a windows machine.

That's my point ;)

I'm not bashing linux, I'm simply shining a light on a little something called *reality*

Quoting: Spl-itnot my point at all.

I'm saying the average user doesnt care about the OS or problem solving.
If my aunt buys a printer and it doesnt work on windows, she can return it to the shop. she will never start troubleshooting as she simply doesnt care.

And yes, you and I can get a wireless printer or external hdd's working just fine, my aunt cant and doesnt want to mess with it either.

Saying people will just need to do some trouble shooting doesnt make a lot of sense for the average user that doesnt care about his computer, the damned thing simply needs to work.

people dont do trouble shooting on windows, those same people wont do it on linux either.
No matter how many times someone on a forum types that they just need to learn how to solve the problems themselves.

And I never refered to windows as an OS that is problem free, its a horrendous piece of shit in my eyes and it drives me insane when I'm forced to use a windows machine.

That's my point ;)

I'm not bashing linux, I'm simply shining a light on a little something called *reality*

I agree on that part that aunt doesn't care whether she uses Windows or something else but if she needs her printer to work she needs someone who can troubleshoot for her and if any of my neighbours would come to me so I could troubleshoot their hardware I would be glad to suggest linux to them and even maintain the device for everything they need on it and also learn them the basics of linux troubleshooting, usually aunts like that use only google and some basic text editing :D and also trust me that aunt who needs her PC for those kinds of things don't need all of MS's advertising bull**** and bluescreens and viruses (because people click everywhere around the internet) so they are WAY better of with Linux for now. People also didn't care because they didn't know what kind of a spyware Win10 was but there are a lot of videos on youtube exposing this problematics and that is I believe the very reason why linux has been growing more than it ever has in the last year. I think that the trend will continue, there will be no such thing as "boom" in numbers of Linux users but I think that it will be growing faster than it did before the release of Win10 :) However we shall wait and see and hope for the best, to at least be considered as a real platform so companies like Adobe would provide full support for their users of CC who would probably love to use linux over Windows due to its pureness and openness, in fact there are a lot of people who dual boot Windows and Linux just because of a specific game (ex. LoL) or specific software (Adobe CC), though I have heard that LoL will provide Linux support eventually when they move their engine to vulkan! And Adobe has promised their users Adobe CC support but still has not done it... it will be probably done eventually as well...

Quoting: lucinossome links for linux statistics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption
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link for the latest Wikipedia stats, now calculated weekly...
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Wikipedia page for Tracking Linux (and other OS) usage...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

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linux percentages

platinum: 4/12 = 33.3%
gold: 3/12 = 25.0%
silver: 6/16 = 37.5%
bronze: 24/60 = 40%