I've used it pretty exclusively since the 1.x days, though I did make a bit of a detour to Gnome 2.x for awhile.

It mostly excels at being a decently well-integrated desktop environment with all the bits working together in a fairly consistent way with similar interfaces and setups. If you're coming from Windows where (at least until recentlyish) it also does a decent job of having a lot of integrated, consistent tooling it can ease the transition plus it mostly just works fine.

Linux has gotten better over the years with having various standards and consistent common desktop APIs and such so it's a little less necessary than it was. I remember the old days when every DE and Window Manager had its own completely different set of APIs and interfaces which meant trying to mix toolkits was often an exercise in frustration. I just still prefer KDE's interface and customizability.

Unless it runs on a 6502 embedded in a black Trans Am I'm not interested.

My favorite version of this is the original Super Mario Bros was only 40KB, with 32KB of that being code and 8KB of that being graphics. That's it. This means that most screenshots of SMB are bigger than the entire game, sometimes by orders of magnitude depending on specifics.

It has happened under both.

Free speech includes lying.

Merit should always consider strictly value.

The $5K a year just gives you a $300 per person per visit discount. So pays itself back in 15 visits or so.

Plenty of us nerds can afford this and want to see news about this.

Garbage regulations like IP create these behemoths. If you want freedom, stop regulating monopolies into existence.

Statism creates billionaires.

Democracy is for retards.

Government did this. All of this. Government regulated so much that only a rare few can afford to compete.

This is late stage statism. Retard voters are to blame.

Like you.

For the main full-featured distros like Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora, etc you don't even have to use the console for most software. They all have "app stores" with tons of stuff in there from the big hitters like browsers, big office suites, email, etc on down to random little tools for random uses.

I've also been using Linux for nearly 30 years now and am very comfortable with it, but I wouldn't expect your average Windows switcher to want to have to mess with the console at all period for any use.

I see this a lot and I genuinely don't understand it. I'm not saying it's not happening to you or questioning your experience exactly, it's just not been mine for a long time. I use Linux almost exclusively across a bunch of different devices and laptops and things and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to use a command line for anything. One was when the proprietary Nvidia driver on my main PC got so goofed up I had to do some manual work to clear it out and reinstall it. Another was when the fingerprint reader on one of my laptops got in a weird state trying to dual-boot Windows and Linux (since it stores some fingerprint details internally) and I needed to manually wipe it. The latter wouldn't have been a problem for someone not doing weird stuff with an old laptop, though the former could potentially be an issue with a gaming PC.

Of course, there is a valid argument that having to go into it at all for any reason, even once, is too many which I don't disagree with. But on a decently supported machine with a good distro/DE under normal usage I just don't see there being a lot of situations where someone should be regularly having to resort to a command line.

KDE has pretty much always aimed (intentional or not) to beWindowsish in its interface, integrations, shortcuts, basic menus, etc. It works very similarly with how it launches built-in helper applications, handles network and internet integration, general window handling and options, and such. There are also themes that do a passable job of making it mimic Macs if someone prefers that.

I was/am a long-time Windows user who has been using Linux on and off since the late 90s and pretty much 100% for a few years now and it's been helpful for muscle memory and such. The couple times I've actually been in a position to introduce long-time Windows users to Linux they've preferred KDE. I'd always go for a KDE distro (even if Kubuntu, which I use a lot myself, since it combines the wide support of Ubuntu with KDE, although Neon is pretty interesting too) when suggesting something to a noob. I do like Manjaro but I might still lean towards Kubuntu or Neon just because there's so much documentation for the *buntus out there vs. Arch-based stuff, but either would be a good choice.

My recollection is they had to put some fixes in for 486 support on real hardware a couple years ago because someone discovered it only actually worked on emulators (maybe just qemu) which wasn't quite matching real hardware.

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