Why the Linux Community needs to STOP blindly recommending Linux to Windows 7 users!

Support for Windows 7 has ended, and already Linux is being recommended as a replacement. While that does work great sometimes, it can also backfire - and no one seems to be taking that into account when making this recommendation. In this video I talk about why blindly recommending Linux to Windows 7 refugees is a horrible idea and needs to stop!

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Music used in this video:

Fine Line - Geographer

Lounge - Bensound

Choose Me (Instrumental Version)
Spring Gang

[adjusted-bunny]

A windows 7 refugee myself I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon a half year ago on my very cheap computer without further research or testing. It worked out of the box. It has been so stable and reliable it's almost boring.

[Noodles.FreeUkraine]

Sensible point of view, appreciate it. I'd say don't recommend Linux unless you're willing to own the recommendation and help with the transition. If the person is just a tad daft / not tech-savvy, things are destined to go sideways. He'll format the drive, try to install Linux, happen upon a gazillion of unknown options and obstacles and end up with a dead or half-running, misconfigured machine. You'll be the guy that did this to him, because he likely lost all his photos when he blindly formatted the drive and he'll hate your and Linux's guts for all of eternity.
So do yourself a favor and check wisely if the person is able to deal with tasks above and beyond entertaining a basic metabolism. Going by my personal, unfortunate experiences in the wild those are hard to come by and the amount isn't really increasing.

[MyReviews_karkan]

A friend of mine was disposing of a 17" HP laptop with good specs. He mentioned that it just stopped booting up completely. He can't start windows at all. I took it. I have a cd of windows that I have burnt a long time ago for just in case. It had a corrput bootloader from the look of it. Reinstalled windows 10 with that CD and it, somehow, fixed the bootloader and worked no problem. The bios was messed up, too. Updated it and that worked, too. Booted into Ubuntu live and it would never find my router. It didn't even show anything in the wifi search. Period. Installed Windows again and it was freaking fine. Tried pop OS (since it didn't need to connect to WiFi during the installation) and tethered it to my phone, then searched everywhere on the internet to find a solution then found an old article that was burried their on how to fix it. Finally fixed it. It was so painful. Moral of the story, I agree with Jay 100%, do not state that Linux just "works on everything". It doesn't.

[LadyLexyStarwatcher]

As a windows 7 user I recommend Linux.

[michaelcox]

Migrating from Windows to Linux was literally the best decision I've ever made. Run it on everything from my Pentium 4 machine to my Ryzen gaming rig with no issues.

[mr]

"This year's gonna be the year of Linux!"

....


"Stop recommending Linux to people, explaining it is TOO MUCH WORK"

Remember, in the Linux community "too much work" is never an excuse ...until human interaction gets involved. Great community guys. Well memed.

[LloydLynx]

The first time I tried Linux and dual booted I blew away Windows a week later, and also ended breaking grub. So that was fun.

[dhaneshs]

I was a windows 7 user for 8 years... I switched to linux one month back ... LOVING IT

[nrich]

I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on an Asus Windows 8.1 computer that was totally "bricked". It had never run properly from the beginning and I was about to "chuck it" when I heard about Linux. The computer was completely transformed and became usable again. But I have one problem that I have to research for a solution. When I click on an icon on my desktop to open a program it takes 30 seconds to a minute before the program opens. Example: Firefox which comes preloaded with the distribution. Anybody got an idea why ?

[data]

I switched from Windows to Linux completely. I am very excited, my machine is faster and I love it. I use Zorin. That is great. So I did scenario "A" Everything works fine. Do not talk Linux small.

[TheBigGiant_SpaceChiken]

When you switched the camara over to your laptop, I saw you press the El Gato Stream Deck on your right. How did you get that to work? I thought that the Sream Deck was not compatible with Linux, only with Windows 10.

[HeadHunter]

I dual boot and when i was switching to linux i went through 6 distros until i got to mint what worked best with my machine and its been doing good

[librequestpodcast]

New subscriber here, I love your stickers LLT! I I think you're right about the best route being recommending a system that is backed by a manufacturer that offers user support. The majority of computer users are accustomed to that type of support structure rather than community support. I think it is becoming more common among younger computer users to seek help online on forums, wikis and videos however. I think adoption of Linux may gain a bit of momentum over the end of support for Windows 7. But I'm really not expecting that much of a bump. It's likely going to play out much like WinME and Vista. The numbers increased over all but not on a massive scale. If I had to make a guess I would say that the majority of Windows 7 users will run their systems without support until they replace the system.

[Hurricaneger]

The most 2 question I met.
"Where I can download the archlinux"
"How to unzip the iso file?"

[colincomber]

Surely more than 90% of Linux users switched from Windows for one reason or another - I did and when I put a Linux distro on an elderly friends computer he was delighted.

[TheStevenWhiting]

Agreed. I like Linux, I'm useless at using it, I'm great at using Windows and supporting it as I have for years. But for new users, Linux is just too complicated. But still great to have it as an option.

[pdxthomas]

Thanks for the video. Sound advice all around.
With that said.. Maybe I just got lucky, but a few weeks ago, I migrated from Windows 7 Pro, to Mint. (I've never used any version of Ubuntu before.) I did the full system over-write and in under 20 mins, my Lenovo Thinkpad 430s was running better than it had when it was brand-spankin-new. Within another 20 mins or less, I had dialed in a suitable desktop environment, along with my browser of choice and installed the software (LibreOffice, VLC, Audacity, etc) I would be commonly be using. The only disappointment involved trying to find drivers for my 2008, Canon printer, which still worked great on Windows 7, but what the hell, I can still use it on my girlfriend's Windows 10 machine.
Granted, I still have a *lot* to learn, but as of now, it feels like having a brand new laptop. I'm not missing Windows whatsoever.

[markclark]

Tried Linux for my DVR with two Hauppauge TV tuners used the drivers recommended and nothing would detect the cards I tried various versions of Linux. Loaded Windows 10 and NextPVR worked great.

[FlyboyHelosim]

Excellent video. This needed to be said for a while now. The implications of blindly installing ANY operating system is never advisable. I do tech support and see people all the time who still struggle with basic tasks that they've repeatedly done for years on their OS of choice. Telling casual users to jump in and switch to a completely different architecture and way of doing things would be disastrous, and let's face it, it's the casual users who are the ones likely to blindly install Linux if it's deemed to be some miracle cure. People don't realize that installing a new OS will wipe all their data and can't just rollback to the previous OS and have everything as it was. Linux has its time and place but that isn't all the time, everywhere.

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Jay. If someone isn't ready to put forth some effort and willingness to learn, no distribution of Linux will suit them.