I feel like the people I interact with irl don’t even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.
My own experience, as someone who is not necessarily tech illiterate, but also not an expert either:
I decided to check out some basic Linux stuff, and found a post directing newcomers to a website that was supposed to be a top-notch beginner’s guide. This guide started with a history of Linux, written in the style of an early 2000s GameFAQs guide. It then jumped immediately into selecting a distro, and started describing each option with terms like "lightweight"and “robust” without explaining what those terms meant in that context - or even defining what a distro was in the first place.
As someone who has used Windows for around 3 decades, I could make some inferences to fill in the gaps. But I imagine someone with less experience with PCs would get completely lost.
Now on the flip side, I’ve also shared in another thread the story of how I lost interest in programming partway through my introductory university course, and mostly received positive feedback. The folks in that thread seemed happy to hear the perspective of an outsider.
Ironically a windows veteran can give you a better introduction to Linux than a Linux veteran.
I think the issue is, a Linux veteran is going to be used to all the choices you have, and also know there’s not really one correct answer to most of them. There’s also the effect that when you’ve been doing something long enough to be quite good at it, you overestimate other people’s abilities in the area. Of course there’s an xkcd for that https://xkcd.com/2501/.
So it’s true actually someone that is a windows veteran and has recently worked out the basics of Linux could likely give better advice to another new user.
I think the thing about linux is, the choice is perhaps overwhelming to some at the beginning.
For total beginners I’d point people straight to mint (*) really. https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ now it is going to give you a choice of edition. But I feel like the info next to each version are accurate. Cinnamon if you want things to look good, MATE if you want something modern looking but also fast and Xfce for something a bit more basic, that will be happier on lower end hardware. You can progress to different distros once you’re familiar with things in general a bit more.
Generally, using Linux you’ll always have a lot of choices. It’s just because everything is very modular.
(*) I’ve never used Mint, just because I’m a bit of a Linux veteran (servers since 1997 or so). But, I’ve heard it’s the best to start with for desktop, and the instructions do seem pretty clear.
I put Mint on my mother’s computer because the constant pop-ups from Windows were confusing her constantly. No issues, I just put a big icon that says INTERNET on the desktop and she’s fine now. If anything goes wrong, I’m not savvy enough to easily fix it but I know that at least I can just do a reinstall if something breaks beyond my ability to handle.
I think this is an important consideration too. So much is done from a browser now that getting that right in a Linux install will mean most users are fine for >90% of their tasks (for non gaming tasks that is.)
For gaming tasks there’s loads of options though. If you don’t want to swap OSes you have Steam’s Proton and Codeweaver’s Crossover that do most of the complex stuff for you. For the stuff you have to deal with I’ve been able to tweak it all from GUIs instead of needing to edit a file somewhere. Gaming on Linux has come a long way, and I’ve even switched off of Windows fully I’m that confident in it. Still have to do more tweaking than Windows, but it’s no where near as bad as it was.