• 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: October 14th, 2024

help-circle
  • No kidding. Why else would it be the result of an attempted update. But thanks for the continued condescension.

    Can we perhaps stop pretending that it’s the most normal thing on earth to run an update and get back “hm yeah so there’s an issue, to fix it you’re gonna have to uninstall your entire GUI and half of your core operating system”, and it’s simply user error to be irritated by that in any way.






  • I met a friend of a friend at an event and somehow PCs and Linux came up. He asked if I’m a Linux user (which I like to think you can’t immediately tell). I assume to build some nerd cred. I said “yeah, I technically have Linux with me right now”. He asked what I meant, so I pulled out the Steam Deck. He was unfamiliar and I briefly explained.

    When he heard it’s a commercial product (obviously), he actually pretended to faint. And then kept acting as if I had personally insulted him, not in a joking way. I had clearly failed the purity test in that moment.

    It was a strange experience. Not even in hackerspaces I’d ever had a conversation like that. So these people are rare but they do exist.



  • Older people rely on logic. And most interfaces are the opposite of logical.

    Younger people have this idea of "press a bunch of buttons and once you see how it works, then memorize the steps ".

    That’s the exact opposite of my experience.

    I tried to explain Windows logically to the seniors in my family. This is a window. This is the taskbar, it shows your open windows. This is a folder, it contains your documents.

    Every time we would start over with these abstractions which are supposed to make logical sense, the very foundation of Windows’ early success with casual users. None of it ever stuck with them.

    They would instead write down every minor step to achieve a specific goal in a specific way, so they could basically control Windows without paying any attention to context presented on the screen. That’s the only thing that worked for them.