You either misread or ignored what I actually wrote, so maybe give it another look. Specifically, I said the issue with Linux in the early 2000s was lack of software support, not now.
For the record, there is plenty wrong with the way Linux handles external drives, at least UX-wise. For one thing Dolphin mounts them differently than a mount command, which is insane. In the case of Samba shares it also mounts them in an entirely different location, which is extra insane. And the whole thing keeps a distinction between drives included as part of the system and external drives, even if the external drives are fixed, so if you want to add your extra hard drives to the navigation path for software you either have to go messing with fstab (which is both risky and terrible UX for newcomers) or manually click them every time you reboot your PC.
By comparison on Windows any time you mount a drive it just gets a drive letter and as long as you don’t remove it it stays there. Samba shares, optical media, USB drives, hard drives… doesn’t matter, mount it as a drive, assign it a letter, navigate to it consistently for the foreseeable future. It’s just better.
Oh, and when digging for solutions to my issues I found some of the same problems I’m encountering reported as bugs in threads from 2020, with the same workarounds being suggested in threads all the way from then to now. So your definition of “swimmingly” may not be the same as mine.
And you’re wrong about Linux being less of a hassle now, too, anecdotes aside. Although I’m not surprised, given that your parents probably aren’t trying to game on a modern HDR monitor. “Everything works on a browser” isn’t a good argument for Linux. It’s a good argument for getting your parents a tablet and calling it a day (which, incidentally, is what I did with mine and I haven’t had to troubleshoot it, either; Chrome is Chrome).
You either misread or ignored what I actually wrote, so maybe give it another look. Specifically, I said the issue with Linux in the early 2000s was lack of software support, not now.
For the record, there is plenty wrong with the way Linux handles external drives, at least UX-wise. For one thing Dolphin mounts them differently than a mount command, which is insane. In the case of Samba shares it also mounts them in an entirely different location, which is extra insane. And the whole thing keeps a distinction between drives included as part of the system and external drives, even if the external drives are fixed, so if you want to add your extra hard drives to the navigation path for software you either have to go messing with fstab (which is both risky and terrible UX for newcomers) or manually click them every time you reboot your PC.
By comparison on Windows any time you mount a drive it just gets a drive letter and as long as you don’t remove it it stays there. Samba shares, optical media, USB drives, hard drives… doesn’t matter, mount it as a drive, assign it a letter, navigate to it consistently for the foreseeable future. It’s just better.
Oh, and when digging for solutions to my issues I found some of the same problems I’m encountering reported as bugs in threads from 2020, with the same workarounds being suggested in threads all the way from then to now. So your definition of “swimmingly” may not be the same as mine.
And you’re wrong about Linux being less of a hassle now, too, anecdotes aside. Although I’m not surprised, given that your parents probably aren’t trying to game on a modern HDR monitor. “Everything works on a browser” isn’t a good argument for Linux. It’s a good argument for getting your parents a tablet and calling it a day (which, incidentally, is what I did with mine and I haven’t had to troubleshoot it, either; Chrome is Chrome).