Linux

These are some rules of mindset I've given to others in the past when trying linux-based operating systems.

1. Don't try to apply the same computing and productivity patterns you've learned from Windows. Don't try to force Windows concepts onto Linux OS, you will confuse yourself and get frustrated.
2. If something doesn't work the way you expect it to, doesn't mean it's broken.
3. Just because something doesn't behave the same as in Windows, doesn't mean it's worse. It's probably designed that way for a good reason.
4. If your daily work routine or gaming life revolves around the use programs developed specifically for the Windows platform, you're gonna need to invest time and effort to try to recreate that in Linux. It may not even be possible to fully replicate it. And that's not the fault of Linux, it's not designed to be a drop-in Windows replacement.
5. Everyone has their own taste and preferences. Just like some people prefer driving a manual car and some prefer auto. If you try Linux and hate it, that's okay, that doesn't make you bad or wrong, but keep in mind that those who do prefer Linux are not weird or daft or wrong either.

Patience. Same things will work differently than you’re used to, and that can be frustrating.

Also be really sure to help true beginners understand software centers and package managers. I’ve been helping a lot of young people use Linux for the first time this year. Even though I mentioned it the first day and remind them frequently, if for example I ask them to install Java, half of them will download installers from Oracle’s website or wherever.

Because I rather burn my computer than use win11, oh and I also rather flush my money in the toilet than buy apple's products so Linux is the only real choice

It's software that's made by people for people. I think it's kind of wild that you can get a full-featured operating system with no strings attached. Normally, if something is free it means that you're the product, but this is not (seemingly?) the case with FOSS stuff.

Dogged stubbornness. I use Linux because I refuse to give MS any more of my money, and I'm too stubborn to give up.

Back in the mid 2000s, we (my company) were on Windows, including three Windows 2000 Server licences. And we needed to upgrade. But it wasn't sustainable for the small company to pay for all these licences, when a free option was available.

So we slowly moved all applications over to cross-platform alternatives, Outlook to Thunderbird (called Firebird in those days), office to OpenOffice (now LibreOffice), Internet Explorer to Firefox, Corel Draw to Gimp, Company software like accounting to a XAMPP stack etc.

Once this was established and running well, we just changed the underlying platform from Windows to Ubuntu/Gnome, cursed for a few days and went on with our lives. And it worked for the past 20 years and counting. Now I am cursing, when I am forced to use Windows and can't find my butt using it.

So the mindset, if you want, was that of methodical planning and going slow, step by step. This is likely different if you're a gamer, or you need some very specialised apps, but for me, this was not the case. The games that I play, like Sudoku and Solitaire, work on any platform.

Mine was that I hate corporations. That's it. That's literally all that I needed to figure out Linux.

Willingness to independently learn and the capacity to let the frustration roll off of you. You will occasionally want to bang your head against the wall, but give yourself the grace to learn.

For me it was that I don't want a goddamn spying, AI infested, laggy, ugly, rounded, babysitting win11, so I need to get out of the bill gates ecosystem. And I did, quite easily.

Id say it's the mindset of the experienced linux user that matters.

If you're willing to tell a person, "if you run into trouble, call me", and then follow up when they do, half the fight is over.

Most people, they try it and it's fine, as long as the basics are there. You show them where the browser and email are, set up desktop shortcuts to important stuff, and answer questions, and they'll eventually not even think about the fact that it isn't windows.

But the first time they run into trouble, and you can't give them an answer in a reasonable amount of time, they blame Linux, because they forgot how long it took them to figure out windows originally, and aren't willing to look things up even if that's what they did when they ran into a Windows problem.

So, you gotta play tech support for a while if you're the one introducing them.

You aren't going to change mindsets inside someone else in any realistic timeframe.

The most effective motivation is intrinsic. It's very hard to make someone want to do something. It'd take Apple-level marketing, or Microsoft-level outright paying people to use their products.

I would say willingness to learn and to compromise. And by compromise i'm mainly talking about trying to find alternatives to software that might not exist on linux, and see if those work for you. And if you end up finding a piece of software you need that really has no good alternative to what you need, you can always either go the virtual machine route, or the dualboot route, but i personally think that should be considered a last resort.

"I want to know why this is broken. How to fix it can come later."

"That's neat, I wonder whether I can configure it..."

One needs to get rid of the “but it works like so and so on Windows” attitude. That fixes half the problems switchers have. :)

Mindset / traits

-Experimental mindset - why not try it out. (Doesn't look for reasons not to try it out).

-Likes computers/ maths intrinsically (a bit), rather than just uses them.

-Ruined some toys / electronics / appliances in their house because "If it ain't broke, fix it until it is". or just, " Well it has screws, so it's obviously supposed to come apart".

-Prepared to accept that free or cheaper stuff might be adequate. (price is not necessarily a signal of quality)

-Less afflicted by sunk cost - "I already kow how to use windows, or at leady i would if they didnt keep changing stuff".

-They think Excel is shit for anything but a few basic small tables and know they should be using a proper database and/or code rather than insane fornulae and the odd bit or garbled vba vs the "I am a master of excel, and i love it because , look, i can coerce it to do all this cool stuff , excel can do EVERYTHING if you're as good at it as me. Nobody needs anything else to do anything. "

-Seen enough BSOD that they've got nothing left to lose.

As for change: Number 1 is India by miles, so keep India growing I guess. So outwith India . . .

I don't know how many of these are intrinsic vs malleable. I don't think linux desktop (as per current mainstream linux distros) will ever be very widespread. Unless it is packaged into something very sanitised like chrome os, android, steam deck os. or like macos did with BSD.

Create a few enthusiasts maybe by give kids more toys like cheap knock-off lego, and real tools, less pokemon apps. Raspberry pi might be a gateway drug - shame its moved up the price scale. piZeroW2 is still pretty cheap and runs a more or less usable debian/LXDE - for basic stuff. Better to be using GPIO to do fun stuff with motors, gears, pulleys, sensors, solenoids even just blinkys.

Per the last two, that's mostly up to MS to help. You can get some milage taking someones excel that theyre proud of, cut the calculation time in half within excel (to prove you know what you're talking about), then tell them excel is shit, this still too slow/inefficient/unmaintainable/unscaleable , there are better ways. PSA - A lot of people will react badly to that method, so learn a few basic self defense blocks first or do that stuff over videoconference. I think this needs to be developed into a more sensitive implementation of the D.E.N.N.I.S system. Maybe that is what bill gates already did to 1 million corporate procurement teams?

Lots of good answers already. I think one of the biggest factors is to not be the kind of person that succumbs to choice paralysis. There are always going to be a multitude of options for every problem. Learning to live with the idea that the best solution to a problem is not the only acceptable solution will go a long way to keep from getting frustrated in linux.

I have a "I will not ever go back to Windows" mindset and I think that helps. If I fuck up my system to the point it's not immediately fixable, I have a separate /home partition so I can wipe / and start over without worrying too much. I look for answers to fix things on my phone when my system is inaccessible so I'm not stuck.

I am really not a Linux expert, but I was a Windows power user and I like to fix things myself and understand the basics of why it broke.

Honestly for me it was starting Young. I can say wholeheartedly that if I hadn't been working on operating Linux style systems in high school, there is no way in hell that if I tried starting it today that I would want to put myself through the hassle of not only learning it but also fixing it

So I'd have to say an energetic and perseverance and ambitious Style mindset

I think a "fuck it we ball" attitude helped me a lot in my jump. I didn't even bother researching what dual-booting was to give myself a backout option.

Mine was a final straw with Microsoft and a determination to learn. Thankfully linux mint is pretty user friendly and I haven't really ran into issues yet

Linux isn't a product sold by a company. If they're still thinking that somebody else is responsible for how they experience their technology they will not have a good time with Linux. You have to be able to take responsibility for your machine, and in our society of learned helplessness, people would rather give up that responsibility for perceived convenience.

Just start with something like mint that will probably mostly work.

Persistence, willingness to learn or open curiosity, and responsibility.

Persistence because sometimes when learning things, you'll run into problems and will need persistence yo overcome them.

Willingness to learn or open curiosity because otherwise you're in a rut and inflexible which makes learning differences between Win/Mac and Linux almost impossible or at least much harder.

Responsibility because you are in charge of your system and your laptop/pc. You need to take responsibility for learning how to do things, solving problems, doing updates, etc.

Sadly, these days people lack most of these qualities. So many people want things handed to them on a silver platter or to have their hands held and told exactly how yo do something instead of working it out for themselves. And people don't want responsibility - they want someone else to be responsible, someone else to blame and someone else to do the thinking.

A lot of Linux adoption won't change until there's also a culture shift :/

If I have a problem, I try (and with Linux) often succeed to understand the problem. This is very rewarding and allows my systems to run without many problems, since I can extinguis issues at the cause.

You have to want to use FOSS software. If you want to use certain proprietary applications then buy the commercial platform they run on.

The other is interest and ability to solve your own tech problems.

Keep in mind there are a lot of ways to start. Install it in a VM, buy hardware with Linux installed, or install it yourself.

i guess convenience seekers can have linux these days. ppl don't care for the os, only for "the programs" they "need". i was agnostic to e.g. office suites (i hate em from the bottom of my heart) long before i considered trying a switch. that helped, i guess. a feature, that can only be reproduced with a certain version of licensed software is fundamentally bullshit.

i wish people hadn't told me abt dual boot but using wine properly (or running a vm?). for windows will fuck up your boot section and that's very scary the first time, alone.

the only problem i see, is the upcoming dependency on copilot ... just leave those ppl be.

instead teach the willing some fundamentals:

• piping ps through grep and use kill is not intuitive for the windows user.
• the packaging system the distro comes with (idc, just call it 'the appstore').
• show them software, there are ppl who arent aware, how e-mail works, and that you can have "your outlook in thunderbird or whatever"
• show them how to find solutions, and teach them how to read the shell commands they'll find. (+ the jokes abt rm .. they dont need to understand it all, but be sceptical before running any 3 lines found on the net.)
• ...
• really, its usually abt games. they come from steam. they got proton. teach ppl how to use steam! (and only after that tell them not to buy software that doesn't run on linux natively!)

There are probably a variety of mindsets that will do it.

For me, I think it was just really wanting to get away from being under the boot. Get away from the walled gardens. Like that feeling after using LinkedIn, except for the OS. Hearing the call of freedom, authenticity and humanity.

The mindset of "if it doesn't look and behave 100% exactly like Windows, it's shit and I won't use it"

i think i just stopped seeing changes as problems but learning opportunities that actually are useful, learned so many things in windows that are now obsolete, when learning how to cater to my system i actually learn for myself. when I don’t have the time I just google the problem and try the first solution or revert with a backup. but in the end i always try to learn what the problem was and the fix and understand. now i never get problems, just mini boss battles, that i can pause, and win on a later date.

Get a ventoy drive set up with a few distros that interest you. Try different desktop environments (Big ones are KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, Elementary OS's, Unity, XFCE) there are literally hundreds! You can boot into one at at time to try them all out.

Linux is political. You're going to face annoyances, but you should believe that linux is a good thing, and giving less support to Microsoft/Apple/Google is intrinsically good. It's helpful if you want linux and free software to succeed. While it certainly isn't as obtuse as it's memed to be in 2025, it isn't necessarily an end user product, designed to expect the absolute minimum of user input and competency either. This isn't necessarily "elitist" though there are elitists among linux users. User approachable =/= user friendly. Linux also empowers user competency, and uplifts users to be more capable. Some of the common complaints about linux don't understand these things.

Don’t.