In my experience most of them are pretty easy to set up with basic computer skills and a look at the documentation. There are two big problems with that though.
Basic computer skills aren’t as common as you would think.
FOSS documentation isn’t written for people without those skills.
That leads to a lot of issues that aren’t terribly complicated to solve but would be showstoppers for regular users. I would not consider myself a high level user but I’ve managed to get quite a few applications up and running with nothing but time and a willingness to be frustrated. The few people I’ve gone into details with about those applications had no clue what I was talking about. Mostly because they would never tolerate the frustration required to get past the initial setup and have therefore never learned how to do any of it.
I also find it very hard to switch to Foss stuff for professional uses most of the time, because of the often rough user experience, or sometimes lacking industry standard features. When you do something full time you want to be using the smoothest version of what you need.
I don’t blame the devs for this either. It’s often one or a few enthusiasts doing it in their spare time for free, so I certainly don’t say this in an entitled way. It’s just the reality.
Yeah paid software babies users, often to the point of being annoying. FOSS assumes you can troubleshoot complex issues effectively. There’s a happy medium somewhere in there but like you said, it’s tough to get there with a limited volunteer dev team.
In my experience most of them are pretty easy to set up with basic computer skills and a look at the documentation. There are two big problems with that though.
Basic computer skills aren’t as common as you would think.
FOSS documentation isn’t written for people without those skills.
That leads to a lot of issues that aren’t terribly complicated to solve but would be showstoppers for regular users. I would not consider myself a high level user but I’ve managed to get quite a few applications up and running with nothing but time and a willingness to be frustrated. The few people I’ve gone into details with about those applications had no clue what I was talking about. Mostly because they would never tolerate the frustration required to get past the initial setup and have therefore never learned how to do any of it.
This is very true, great point.
I also find it very hard to switch to Foss stuff for professional uses most of the time, because of the often rough user experience, or sometimes lacking industry standard features. When you do something full time you want to be using the smoothest version of what you need.
I don’t blame the devs for this either. It’s often one or a few enthusiasts doing it in their spare time for free, so I certainly don’t say this in an entitled way. It’s just the reality.
Yeah paid software babies users, often to the point of being annoying. FOSS assumes you can troubleshoot complex issues effectively. There’s a happy medium somewhere in there but like you said, it’s tough to get there with a limited volunteer dev team.