Let’s not reach for the “this guy doesn’t want to learn” excuse because that’s you shifting the blame on me, and instead focus on the “this experience has been more frustrating than it needs to be as a first step in adopting an OS and growing the user base”. If I didn’t want to learn, I wouldn’t have bothered to look how to fix the USB after simply cancelling the installation. In what world is that normal? That bug has been around for ages. Also, your installer fatally errors out without a clear cause. Not only was it frustrating, but my time and effort were also wasted. So please, at least take the time to understand what I mean…
Why would you cancel the install half way through, is that something you normally do?
If you don’t have the time to install it properly, don’t start the process. If you do have the time see it through.
If you think you have made a mistake and can’t simply back up to the step you think you messed up, just continue. Most things can be fixed after install. Worst case scenario, you will just have to reinstall.
If you backed out because you were afraid of messing up your windows partition, I highly recommend backing up all your data before you install in the first place.
In what world is that normal?
The world where the vast majority of people don’t cancel installing an OS halfway through the process.
You do realize that there is more than one reason why a person would need to cancel an installation that doesn’t necessarily have to do with not having allotted enough time, right? I had the whole afternoon. And that if the button exists on the UI, it’s reasonable to conclude that the feature is in working condition and would not do the one thing antithetical to what we’re trying to achieve.
I don’t know why you’re talking down to me, but I’d rather not engage further if that’ll be the case.
I do realize that yes, that’s why I offered a couple of solutions to things that had nothing to do with that. Like thinking you had made a mistake or being afraid of messing up another OS on your machine.
I’m not trying to talk down to you, I’m trying to understand what your issue is, that’s why I’m asking questions.
So why was it that you needed to cancel the installation?
Ive never tried installing Mint, but it’s based on Ubuntu which have installed many times. Unless the installer is radically different it asks you a bunch of questions first, keyboard layout, timezone, whether or not it will be a dual boot or clean install etc. It typically doesn’t actually make any changes to the system until all that is set up and you select install.
The only exception to that I can think of is if you got to the point where you can configure your partitions in a dual boot scenario. If you made a mistake during that process, I can see it messing up your install if you then back out.
Other than that the only way I can think of that might bork you system is if you actually started installing the OS, and then attempted to cancel, at which point it makes perfect sense to me that would mess things up.
The only thing I really take issue with is acting as if cancelling an install of an OS halfway through the process is like such a common thing that enough people would run into the same issue that it would turn people off from installing Linux.
What flavor of Linux were you trying to install? My experience on endeavoros has been pretty plug and play. I imagine it would be similar on mint, Ubuntu, fedora, Debian. If it was Linux from scratch, yeah that’s likely going to be frustrating.
It was Mint, which is why I found it odd. I’ve also used Ubuntu years ago, but that wasn’t plug-n-play either from what I remember. I spent too much time getting my sound and video cards running, and then spent twice that time getting Compiz to work so I could have all the cool effects. 😅
Honestly, just try something else. If you’re trying to do gaming, I’d recommend Garuda Dragonized from personal experience. It’s Arch based, but comes packaged with everything you’d need for gaming, and a utility to install a bunch of extra stuff you might want, like launchers, controller drivers, etc. I think it even comes with the Nvidia drivers that you’ll need to install manually for most other distros.
I my opinion it’s really ugly out of the box sadly, with a horrible “gamer” look. It’s KDE though, so it’s really easy to customize.
Truth is windows has plenty of bugs too, the main difference is that it comes pre installed so you don’t have to deal with the install bugs, and you’re already acclimated to all its quirks so you don’t notice them as much.
As for Mint, it gets recommended a lot because it’s stable and looks a lot like windows, but it’s old and slow to update to modern standards, you can always go for a more bleeding edge distribution like fedora.
If you order pieces from people who are mostly doing carpentry as a passion and make furniture. Sure it’s frustrating and you have to put in work. But you can’t compare it to buying stuff from IKEA and telling everyone those carpenters need to do more of that.
SteamOS is just there to run one single application: Steam. Users see absolutely nothing of Linux. It could be running MacOS or BeOS or TempleOS and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to them.
Not that it’s a bad thing, it confirms that Linux is stable and mature and that you can use it for an appliance, but that’s pretty much it. And yes, you can bypass the Steam interface and run a KDE desktop (is that the UX you think of? it’s available on any Linux and pretty much any Unix-like desktop), which is nice of Valve to have included. But except for the .1% who will toy with it, there isn’t really much point (and yes, I did toy with it end enabled ssh, and added a few gadgets). I still wouldn’t install SteamOS as a desktop system though. That’s not what it’s made for.
Desktop mode is a nice extra because Valve are generally nice. But it’s not what the purpose of SteamOS is. It’s just an aside. The same way you can get a shell on your wifi camera. And you could run some silly servers on it. But that’s not the point of your camera.
If you don’t understand or want to learn, then linux isn’t for you. You may ask a computer savvy friend to teach you.
It’s a non-trivial thing and it requires some skills that many people aren’t really trained for.
Let’s not reach for the “this guy doesn’t want to learn” excuse because that’s you shifting the blame on me, and instead focus on the “this experience has been more frustrating than it needs to be as a first step in adopting an OS and growing the user base”. If I didn’t want to learn, I wouldn’t have bothered to look how to fix the USB after simply cancelling the installation. In what world is that normal? That bug has been around for ages. Also, your installer fatally errors out without a clear cause. Not only was it frustrating, but my time and effort were also wasted. So please, at least take the time to understand what I mean…
Why would you cancel the install half way through, is that something you normally do?
If you don’t have the time to install it properly, don’t start the process. If you do have the time see it through.
If you think you have made a mistake and can’t simply back up to the step you think you messed up, just continue. Most things can be fixed after install. Worst case scenario, you will just have to reinstall.
If you backed out because you were afraid of messing up your windows partition, I highly recommend backing up all your data before you install in the first place.
The world where the vast majority of people don’t cancel installing an OS halfway through the process.
You do realize that there is more than one reason why a person would need to cancel an installation that doesn’t necessarily have to do with not having allotted enough time, right? I had the whole afternoon. And that if the button exists on the UI, it’s reasonable to conclude that the feature is in working condition and would not do the one thing antithetical to what we’re trying to achieve.
I don’t know why you’re talking down to me, but I’d rather not engage further if that’ll be the case.
I do realize that yes, that’s why I offered a couple of solutions to things that had nothing to do with that. Like thinking you had made a mistake or being afraid of messing up another OS on your machine.
I’m not trying to talk down to you, I’m trying to understand what your issue is, that’s why I’m asking questions.
So why was it that you needed to cancel the installation?
Ive never tried installing Mint, but it’s based on Ubuntu which have installed many times. Unless the installer is radically different it asks you a bunch of questions first, keyboard layout, timezone, whether or not it will be a dual boot or clean install etc. It typically doesn’t actually make any changes to the system until all that is set up and you select install.
The only exception to that I can think of is if you got to the point where you can configure your partitions in a dual boot scenario. If you made a mistake during that process, I can see it messing up your install if you then back out.
Other than that the only way I can think of that might bork you system is if you actually started installing the OS, and then attempted to cancel, at which point it makes perfect sense to me that would mess things up.
The only thing I really take issue with is acting as if cancelling an install of an OS halfway through the process is like such a common thing that enough people would run into the same issue that it would turn people off from installing Linux.
What flavor of Linux were you trying to install? My experience on endeavoros has been pretty plug and play. I imagine it would be similar on mint, Ubuntu, fedora, Debian. If it was Linux from scratch, yeah that’s likely going to be frustrating.
It was Mint, which is why I found it odd. I’ve also used Ubuntu years ago, but that wasn’t plug-n-play either from what I remember. I spent too much time getting my sound and video cards running, and then spent twice that time getting Compiz to work so I could have all the cool effects. 😅
Honestly, just try something else. If you’re trying to do gaming, I’d recommend Garuda Dragonized from personal experience. It’s Arch based, but comes packaged with everything you’d need for gaming, and a utility to install a bunch of extra stuff you might want, like launchers, controller drivers, etc. I think it even comes with the Nvidia drivers that you’ll need to install manually for most other distros.
I my opinion it’s really ugly out of the box sadly, with a horrible “gamer” look. It’s KDE though, so it’s really easy to customize.
That’s an interesting suggestion, thank you!
tbf mint had a few rough edges last i tried it.
Truth is windows has plenty of bugs too, the main difference is that it comes pre installed so you don’t have to deal with the install bugs, and you’re already acclimated to all its quirks so you don’t notice them as much.
As for Mint, it gets recommended a lot because it’s stable and looks a lot like windows, but it’s old and slow to update to modern standards, you can always go for a more bleeding edge distribution like fedora.
The way I see it…
If you order pieces from people who are mostly doing carpentry as a passion and make furniture. Sure it’s frustrating and you have to put in work. But you can’t compare it to buying stuff from IKEA and telling everyone those carpenters need to do more of that.
Right, and I accept that from any other part of the OS that isn’t the very first step when trying to use it.
SteamOS proves that Linux doesn’t need technical expertise to operate.
All Linux OSs need to aim for SteamOS’s UX, imo, if they want to see greater adoption.
Unless the point is to keep normies from migrating to it, which is just bass ackwards.
SteamOS is just there to run one single application: Steam. Users see absolutely nothing of Linux. It could be running MacOS or BeOS or TempleOS and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to them.
Not that it’s a bad thing, it confirms that Linux is stable and mature and that you can use it for an appliance, but that’s pretty much it. And yes, you can bypass the Steam interface and run a KDE desktop (is that the UX you think of? it’s available on any Linux and pretty much any Unix-like desktop), which is nice of Valve to have included. But except for the .1% who will toy with it, there isn’t really much point (and yes, I did toy with it end enabled ssh, and added a few gadgets). I still wouldn’t install SteamOS as a desktop system though. That’s not what it’s made for.
Desktop mode isn’t Steam.
Desktop mode is a nice extra because Valve are generally nice. But it’s not what the purpose of SteamOS is. It’s just an aside. The same way you can get a shell on your wifi camera. And you could run some silly servers on it. But that’s not the point of your camera.