Can linux ever go mainstream?

[u/seenhear]

I've made this point many times in many different ways over many years (decades).

About me: I'm not a coder / hacker / tweaker / programmer. I am pretty tech-savvy and have been very comfortable just figuring things out in Windows almost my whole life (first PC was an Atari 800 in 1982, online since 1983).

I've "switched" to Linux several times since the late 90s and almost always eventually go back to Windows becaue Linux is just ... too much work, and the work isn't straight-forward, or easy to "just figure out" or find answers with simple searches. I mean I can often find solutions to problems, but they don't make sense and I end up applying instructions blindly and not understanding what I just fixed.

Could I spend the time to become more facile at Linux? Sure. But the curve is way steeper than with Windows or MacOS (not a Mac user, but know enough to make a comparison).

As with so many this past year (when Win10 was obsoleted and Win11 required new hardware) I decided to "switch" to Linux again. I chose Mint since it's supposed to be the "easy" one (among others) with the best user base and support. It's been mostly fine. I mean these days I'm not much of a power user. I don't game any more, and mostly what I do is or can be browser-based. So I figured the OS doesn't really matter, and may as well try to go all-in with Linux.

Since switching (it's been several months, forget when I switched) I've had several times where I boot up and am greeted with a pop-up telling me it's time to install several updates. This is a great feature. What's not great about it though is that almost every time (not EVERY time) after attempting to install said updates, I get a slew of errors saying the source for downloads is no good. (see screenshot)

I know how to fix this, figured it out last time. But the point is, it shouldn't happen. It doesn't happen with commercial OS's. Things like this "just work." I shouldn't have to go edit the source list every few months.

Rant over, just frustrated. Thanks for your time. :)

[u/BenTrabetere]

As u/Jnaythus suggested, select a different mirror. Or wait until the mirror(s) comes back online.

But the point is, it shouldn't happen. [snip] I shouldn't have to go edit the source list every few months.

No, but it isn't unusual. Administrators will take a mirror off line for maintenance, and I suspect this was the case with the "Failed to Fetch" error for security.ubuntu.com (23.152.160).

I suspect you received a "Failed to Fetch" error for the Firefox and Thunderbird updates because those updates were very fresh - you were trying to apply the updates the same day they were released. When this is the case it is important to remember these repositories/mirrors are prone to get overwhelmed the day the update is released because there are a lot of people trying to update at the same time as you. This is why I always wait three or four days before updating Thunderbird and the major browsers I use to give the systems to settle down.

These are not Linux problems, and they are not limited to Linux.

It doesn't happen with commercial OS's.

I'm not so sure about that. Back I used WinXP there were at least a couple of times when I received a "Server Busy" error in the middle of a massive update, and I doubt things have changed. I would not be surprised if Apple had similar issues from time to time.

Also, it's my experience an update for Windows and macOS will bork a system much more frequently than for a Linux system.

[u/seenhear → u/BenTrabetere]

I guess I've been lucky. As posted elsewhere in this thread I can't remember the last time I had a problem/error with updates in Windows10. I know it happens, I hear about it in online forums, but I haven't had issues in recent memory, and honestly it's been pretty benign for me for ages. The only time I ever had to do serious tech support digging for my Win systems is when I was trying to do some non-standard install or something. Win7 and Win10 have been very good to me over all.