460
Finally did it, got my parent on linux.
(lemmy.world)
whatismypurpose
yourunfirefox
I’m having a very hard time accepting that your 60 year old parents, after seeing Linux, said something along the lines of “What was windows doing for us?”
I teach adults 40-80 on how to use Windows products. I’ve taught over 5,000 people this year so far. The vast majority didn’t even understand the concept of browser tabs or copy/paste. These are people well into their professions in corporate office jobs. They don’t even know what an operating system is.
I think you're overfitting to the average here with your expectations. Especially basing that on the experience level of people who would sign up for help learning how to use Windows products. And even then, the ones learning about copy/paste for the first time will likely make more noise about it then those waiting to see if you'll teach them something new or any that ended up in your training because their work made them or something.
While the majority might lack familiarity, the 40 - 80 age range includes tons of people that have been working with computers (windows or otherwise) since before Windows was even a thing, including many who worked on Windows and/or developed applications for it. Experience will range from not knowing what windows is, knowing it's the OS but not knowing what an OS is, to understanding what goes on in the kernel at a high level of detail.
There's a lot of people on Windows just because of inertia and Linux can handle a lot of the use cases. It makes perfect sense to me that someone, once they've seen that things aren't so scary and different on the other side of the fence, would wonder out loud about why they thought their inertia was so strong.
Your skepticism is more baffling to me than that.
my grandmother is in her 80s and uses linux dailt cuz all she uses is a web browser. She has no idea what an operating system is but she knows the word windows. She just thought windows was the browser.
Today's 40 year olds graduated in the high school class of 2002...there are people from that era that can't copy/paste? For real?
I've met people who don't know what a URL is.
The kind of people that google "facebook" when they want to visit facebook.
Completely flabbergasted that we run internal services not indexable by google.
I expect someone in their 40s to not know copy and paste. The more savvy that I have worked with/taught knew they could right click and then click “copy” from the drop down list. Ctrl+c blew some peoples minds when I showed it.
People who are good with tech VASTLY overestimate the general public’s tech literacy. But don’t take my word for it, take this study’s word: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
As a Gen X member who is 50 yrs old, a grandparent of two Grand kids, I never touched a computer until I was 12 years old (1986), this, I think gave me a head start into the computer world with an old Radio Shack Color Computer II (hooked up to my TV) with a Tape Drive to load programs with. With some of the older Gen X group starting to reach retirement age, I think we will probably have a larger portion of the population more adapted to computer than the Boomers before us. That's not to say that during the 80's and 90's everyone was into computers though. The important thing was that schools had Timex Sinclair computers and mostly Apple II computers which were the workhorses even into my high school years in the early 90's, so exposure to computer basics such as copy/paste and Word processing were certainly well know then!
I say all of this to mention that while right now, some of the older generation generally knows how to copy/paste, isn't scared of breaking the computer and pretty much get a long fine with them. I'm more skilled than my peers in a lot of areas but that's because I've used them non stop for so long and the others used them only in school but never saw the value until around Windows 98 or Windows 2000.
I believe there will be a shift of more computer literacy as the Millennials and Gen Z's reach my age and older. The writers then may say that compared to the previous generation (ours), that they are miles ahead in their skills and literacy. Even my Grand kids are growing up with exposure to tablets and phones (VERY SPARINGLY), but also live out in the rural country so are getting great life exposure to great outdoors. :) (Ages 2 and 6). One can only dare to imagine what technology we may have 40-50 years from now when they reach my age range.
I've heard that newer generations are becoming less tech literate on average than previous generations. They don't try to fix their device, they just expect it to work. When it doesn't, they don't have the troubleshooting skills to fix it. They never had the opportunity to learn them.
Can confirm. I work as an IT tech at a school with students between 16 to 19 years old. Most of them are raised with tablets and phones and expect the same behavior from computers. I don't know how many times we have had to try and rescue documents they wrote and never saved because "it's in word so it's already saved".
Yeah but...I mean...wow. I graduated HS class of 2003 and I can't remember anyone handing in a hand-written paper in any of the 4 years.
How do people be around this stuff for half their life and not know basic things like Ctrl+C Ctrl+V.
Windows is just the micro kernel running the actual operating system: Firefox.
When I was at Qualcomm we had an experimental, internally developed mobile OS that embraced the ubiquity of the browser and the power of apps written for the browser. The code name was b2f, which stood for "boot to Firefox"
This isn’t related to boot to gecko, right?
Boot To Gecko is KaiOS, right?
The JavaScript OS.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Windows, is in fact, Firefox/Windows, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Firefox plus Windows. Windows is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning Firefox system made useful by the Firefox browser, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS.
Many computer users run a modified version of the Firefox system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Firefox which is widely used today is often called Windows, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the Firefox system, developed by Mozilla.
There really is a Windows, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Windows is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Windows is normally used in combination with the Firefox operating system: the whole system is basically Firefox with Windows added, or Firefox/Windows. All the so-called Windows distributions are really distributions of Firefox/Windows!
That is the most delicious flavor of that pasta I've ever read.
load more comments
(5 replies)
linux has 2 really good target audiences people using it as a near chrome book like experience, and ultra advanced users who want fine control of the system.
its everyone else in the middle that needs to play how much do i have to tweak in order to do what I want.
Moving from Windows as an intermediate user was the worst. I hated Linux for like a year. I knew just enough quirks about Windows to get 95% of what I wanted, 95% of the time, and on Linux I had to start from scratch.
Now of course I love I made the switch, as my Linux proficiency let me customize the heck out of everything, but damn, that first year...
I wish instead of complaining to people that they didn’t read the docs or whatever that linux devs would scour the internet for these criticisms (like when specifics are provided) and then develop solutions for them.
Yeah, people are shitting on your product because it’s not obvious. Make it more obvious!
(Thankfully this is starting to happen…)
load more comments
(7 replies)
Yeah my grandma uses it without any problems. I would never recommend it to my sister or mom but i know my grandma is completely happy with her basically chromebook.
load more comments
(6 replies)
As a retired software dev, for me Windows is simply a longtime habit enforced by past work environments. I did use Linux for over a year on my main PC but went back to Windows so I could keep using my old copy of Visual Studio. My deeply conditioned shortcut keystrokes didn't work in VSCode - in fact, why did they change so much of the UI? But now that I'm used to VSCode, which I only use for hobby coding anyway, there's no excuse and I intend to go back to Linux by year end.
VS Code is an electron app, mostly likely coded by some flavour of Javascript developers, so I doubt it was ever planned to go in the same direction as Visual Studio. VS Code follows a design very close to what Sublime made popular.
So is Visual Studio basically dead at this point? Are any new programmers choosing to use it?
no, it's still a smoother experience ootb for things like c# desktop apps. in vscode you don't get a wysiwig wpf designer and such, and xaml completion is worse to non existent.
It does seem to be a newer dev thing though, myself and my jr devs use vscode as much as we can and jump back to VS only when necessary, the older devs on my team are all 100% visual studio and will be forever
It is a very different product, born as a .NET IDE and not as a code editor
I've no idea. I haven't used it single college.
"What was Windows even doing for us?"
Providing minimal malware protection while being actual malware?
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
460 points (97.1% liked)
Linux
47857 readers
1536 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS