I installed Fedora on laptops of few mine friends during last years. All of them are using it till today.
One of them was really sceptical, but after while said "I though linux is more for nerds and more different than Win." Well, she is just casual user of browser, few chat apps, Kodi and occasionally libre office, but still positive with change.
However while I use linux on server and laptop, I cannot use it on workstation beacuse of Adobe that I need for professional work.
Do you provide support when they ran into issues? IMO there are a lot of variables here that boil down to Windows (and macOS) having the benefit of familiarity, widespread use, and more consistency.
Your experience with Linux will heavily depend on your experience with computers, distro, hardware (e.g. due to obscure driver issues), and workload.
Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent. There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
- Do you provide support when they ran into issues?
Sure, few of them are from family. They never had issue with OS, mostly it was application related.
- Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent.
I do not agree. Every system update scares me quite a bit.
- There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
On Fedora, I never had to install drivers manually. All drivers was installed together with first upgrade after fresh install. Even on very old ThinkPad x201 from 2011. On Windows it's mix of searching on multiple HW manufacturer sites, manually installing them and trying if they are compatible.
So a set of barely maintained applications that cannot support modern Hidpi screens that are shipped with almost every midrange laptop (except Thunderbird which is the only passable app in comparison to its alternative).
The rendering of the Office file formats by the LibreOffice is dogshit. Feature parity is a rounding error. LiberOffice UX is completely from last century. There is so many little UX things that MS added which are so out of the league (like live content update from Office 2007!) for LibreOffice and its outdated codebase.
The Office alone can maybe replaced partially in Linux-compatible environments. However the MS Office-integrated prosumer software ecosystem is the thing that keeps people on Windows. Unless Linux people redesign the whole ecosystem to be as accommodating to closed source app ecosystem and find a time machine to replace all the existing Windows ecosystem, nothing will change.
You are getting downvoted, which is sad but also a testament of how delusional the fanboys actually are. Not that I don't think doesn't have its uses cases/upsides.
The reality is that even without talking about the UI and various stability/compatibility/performance (oh god) issues there are even some very basic missing functionalities that ones will encounter regularly when doing stuff that is not just low-level administrative filler work.
If one company would decide to invest in developing a decent competitive alternative it could be worthwhile but, in the meantime, most people are better served with browser-based stuff.
Either the Google stuff, free Microsoft version or even the newer Proton offering are decent but there are some semi-commercial offerings that can be decent too.
On the surface LibreOffice is all right, but the hard reality is that it is way too much of a PITA to work with for most people to bother unless they really don't have a choice or are forced too for some reason.
The fanboys don't like that reality and would rather deny it instead of working on fixing the issue; which is precisely why it's a lost cause.
I just got off the phone from my aunt who was filling forms in with Adobe Reader, editing word documents sent from her solicitor.
No it's not all in a browser. That's a shitty assumption and one that should not be forced upon anyone.
I always wonder how many people have been fucked over by a helpful relative giving them a Linux install with a browser and telling them to get on with it ...
I dispute that notion
I was a Windows user from 95 all the way to 10. Yearly formats with fresh installs were a constant through the whole time.
Ever since I switched to Linux things are surprisingly stable. My laptop is running as well as my fresh install from more than 2 years ago.