It’s in our interest to have good usability to encourage Linux use for a broader range of people. Mounting needs to be discoverable, and done in a few clicks. Command line, and typing magic words into fstab is a definite no-no for people who never work that way for everything else they do.

The strange thing is, why did KDE miss this critical step for backups?

I’m looking for a solution that non IT users can easily do.They will not discover that, or know exactly what to type in. This is something that should be very easy for people. It really needs a setting or command in a Dolphin menu.

Plasma apps don’t navigate to network shares. So backup sync is not possible for non IT people. Even though Dolphin can easily access those shares. No backup is quite a showstopper. There is no easy way to permanently mount shares either.

I just bought a new laptop that presumably had Win 11 on it. I just booted onto a USB stick and installed Linux (Kubuntu) over it. Next is to use Gparted to wipe any recovery partition and get the wasted space back.

Just for historical info: This has been available in Gimp for a very long time. It was there for several years before Adobe copied it, and added it to Photoshop. This sort of thing tends to get forgotten.

Many will already have a running Windows system. And running an app is an every day task for people not experienced in IT matters. Setting up and booting into a live image involves several steps completely foreign to many people. Maybe not to you. But there is a massive difference. These things matter if you’ve never done it before. Barriers like that are putting people off installing Linux.

WUBI did it really well. It got a lot of people on to Linux.

It has been done before despite reasons.

Not for those who are not sure about Linux. Installing an app and launching it, is a familiar task and quick to do, to take a look. No need get a usb stick and do unfamiliar steps right just then.

Then if Linux looks good, and you want to keep it, now you have the motivation to sort out how to install it. It’s a different task.

Many people don’t do that, because they dont know what Linux looks and feels like. So they won’t install it.

WUBI did a good job of that.

Middle paste, like many features, can be used to increase productivity. It’s normal. A better question would be why doesn’t Windows have it? It makes no sense to dumb down Linux to the level of Windows, just when people are leaving Windows because the user experience is so bad. Sure, make it an option in Settings. So people can continue to use it if they want. But there are many things worth utilising to save clicks on both Windows and Linux. Get to know them, if you want to get on with things.