Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward

Yep, I'm constantly astonished by adults that insist that Linux is too hard to use on the desktop. My entire family has been using it for years. I raise my kids on it. Works great.

My family has also been using it for years, but I'm the one who always had to install, update, fix problems, etc.

I think the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Linux is not using Linux itself, it's installing it on a computer. 99% of people don't know how to format a USB device, or how to enter the BIOS.

Ubuntu's Wubi was a great attempt at a "try Linux" solution, but - Canonical being Canonical - killed it.

To be honest, I think most non-technical people that are not close to someone technical probably don't even know about Linux and/or just don't care about it.

If it isn't a problem it's not worth fixing. A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them.

I made this point elsewhere in this discussion, but it really does matter to them, even though they don't know it.

Third-party doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

The least technical people will be fine because they only use their 4 programs where a Chromebook would probably be enough.

Between those and the people that can navigate everything on Linux, there'll be mildly technical people. Those may explore things that are out of the ordinary but will be unable or unwilling to fix issues that could arise from that

> A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them

Until their computer dies, and then they get upset at Microsoft for not having some automatic backup process like they have on the other platforms their friends use.

It's a shorthand for 'it's hard to get everything 100% working after a fresh install and it's hard to have it not break when it updates'. If you manage to get from the out-of-the-box 90% working condition and don't touch too many things afterwards, it works great indeed; hence the recommendations of starting out with legacy hardware so you're closer to 100% than 90% initially.

I'm not in the US but the third party doctrine looks obscene to me, is this saying I'd have no expectation of privacy for my full name/DOB/address/ID because I legally had to give it to a bank to open an account, which is an essential thing to do in the modern world to get paid into nevermind spend money? I absolutely have an expectation of privacy for all of those details, doubly so if I am mandated to provide them to a third party

Yep. It’s 2025 now and Linux on desktop has evolved far from the much maligned days. Gnome should be more than enough for casual purposes.

Yeah, I probably didn't formulate that well enough. What I meant was that they don't care about it. Sure it matters.

Thanks for the link, didn't know about that, sounds awful..

They just use it as an excuse because change takes effort and might show that there previously believes where wrong.