Way back in like 2006 when I was in middle school, a friend of mine pulled me aside to tell me there's more than just Windows and Mac. His parents worked IT and they showed him a lot of stuff and he showed it to me. I installed Slackware on a laptop with him. I basically just did as he said.
In high school, I looked more into it and tried installing some other distros but landed on DSL as the laptop my parents got me was a piece of shit and it worked good enough. I moved onto Ubuntu later because DSL can only do so much and really struggled with it lol.
And then as the years went by and Ubuntu started to suck I moved onto a variety of other distros like Arch(which took me 2 days to install and I fucked it up), Void(which also took me 2 days to install), Mint, and when it finally came out I tried things like SteamOS, Bazzite, and Nobara.
This all as I was dualbooting with Windows. I never took any classes, I never read any books on it, I just figured it out by doing it, breaking my OS a bunch of times, chatting with friends and randos on forums and Reddit, and the man command, thank GOD for that. All that and I just come back to Mint which I adore for its ease of use.
So all my knowledge is muscle memory. What the actual fuck does a package manager do? Like I know generally, but there's more to them than just downloading shit? What is the difference between Systemd and OpenRC? WHAT THE FUCK IS HYPRLAND OR WAYLAND!? I DON'T UNDERSTAND! 20 YEARS AND I LEARNED FUCKING NOTHING!
shoutouts to tux
You shouldn't have to take a class for an operating system...
You can use it without learning additional skills, but to truly know what's going on with any operating system that requires higher knowledge. I'm including windows, mac, android, linux, etc in this. If we could fully understand technology by touching it tech support wouldn't need to exist. Nor would the insane number of overpriced certifications.
...So we should use android? Maybe chromeos?
I've had windows classes in school, I've later learned how to configure Windows and Linux servers. Windows starts simple and isn't easy to customize away from the default configuration. Linux starts difficult but doesn't grow as quick in complexity. Both shouldn't be configured that far by most users though and the basic usage of both has similar complexity.
Why do you think an operating system shouldn't have classes? From what I'm hearing around the workplace(though thats biased) more people should have basic computer knowledge and they even get training time allocated for in-house training courses.
Basic computer knowledge is the answer here. Concepts in OS'es and software are reused over and over and are common to most vendors/platforms. Partitions/Partitioning.. etc. All basic knowledge. The fine details don't make sense without it.
Invalid inference.
invalid reply?
Can you use more than two words to explain your point? The only operating system I know that can be used by most people without teaching them the usage is Android and Chromeos and some similar mobile platforms, maybe MacOS though I don't see enough people starting on that platform to know if it's intuitive or not.
Of course people can also figure out the usage over time but that's more by trying out what works and seeing what does what and most people just give up before they get that far.
If you want to take a class on a system to get into the stuff under the hood, that's fine, but you shouldn't have to take a class for like, basic operations. Saying "this starts difficult and stays that way" isn't a good selling point for people to use your system.
Edit: To be honest the actual difficulty of a system also depends on what you do with it. Windows at work and Linux at work both require only a basic understanding of how to use the OS to use effectively. Basic usage and restarting it if something isn't working correctly. At home you're more involved with actually installing the software that you use, the system settings and Updates/when they happen. Linux makes installing software safer due to the repos preventing the easy virus downloads and windows makes drivers for some windows only hardware work without complex setup. Assuming we're buying a PC that ships with Linux drivers will work though that's what I assume your average person using Linux would use (as in the average person uses a PC with the OS it is shipped with).