Memes

Exactly my thoughts. Back in the day when I joined the Instagram in the first month of launch there were only professional photographers posting some great stuff, it was fun until celebs and general public started using it.

Starts with nerd culture

In a nutshell, this is the perfect social media for me!

That's how social media was invented. I remember when computers were things that only geeks and nerds were into. And then Neverending September happened, and suddenly normies were everywhere on the internet. We create something new to congregate, and they just invite themselves in after we make it popular. MySpace, Facebook, Reddit...even IRC and Geocities were taken over by them. We eventually took back Usenet at least, but only because it stopped being free for most people.

Haha, the appeal of political science to me is less about arguing with strangers about the news and more talking about broader philosophies and theories and then applying them to what we are seeing in the world. I feel like I can have a more nuanced conversation about the prisoner's dilemma with regards to x topic, or applying philosophies like American Pragmatism to solving problems.

Talking about the news without using some of the tools political scientists use has so many emotional trip wires that it can feel like I'm just keeping up with the Kardashians. That said sometimes I just can't help but keep up with the Kardashians.

to be fair the 3 first points only apply to arch, the same people to say "i use arch btw" so you know they also hate themselfs

edit: 50% of devs use linux so the 4th point isn't that true

Rant incoming, so ignore if you're just here for the memes.

The Linux community as a whole seems to still be delusional about the real world outside power users, and it hasn't changed much in the last 25 years from everything I've seen. Distros have come and gone, some better than others, but the community as a whole is still living in a fantasy world about the "year of the Linux desktop". And it's the reason quite frankly that Linux in it's current form will never be a daily driver for the average user. Even though it would actually work for probably 30-40% of the population that just uses a web browser without any issue out of the box, as soon as they have an issue, the community would be impossible to find actual useful help from for these users. There are enough toxic Linux users to anyone that doesn't know the basics. It's almost as toxic as the League of Legends community with some distros. That leaves a permanent bad taste for all of Linux for the average user that comes across just one of these posts. Not to mention little to no support from places like Geek Squad, which is where the real average users take their systems. Even checking online themselves is heading out of average user territory in the first place.

The other main issue is that there are productivity mainstays on Windows that don't have a true Linux version. There are Linux alternatives but they quite frankly aren't the same, and the average user doesn't want to have to deal learning something new or with file format differences and not being able to just do what they already do.

My mother for instance several years ago tried to switch to a Chromebook when she needed a new laptop. She only uses a web browser and Microsoft Word through Google Drive and Gmail. Seems like a Chromebook would be a good fit for an ultra portable and lightweight system with WiFi 90% of the time. She is definitely able to search the internet well and find answers on her own, she is better than the average user due to learning from me breaking things constantly as I grew up. So even her handling of the situation would be more than many users. This was before the stripped down online versions of Office apps existed, so you had Google Docs, and the Linux alternatives like OpenOffice, which did not seamlessly support DOC/DOCX files for users who primarily work with those and need to have those types to send. Even now though the web version of Office is stripped down, some of that stuff just isn't available without the full software. Google Docs was essentially not compatible with regular Word documents at the time, everything had to be converted to Google's format and then exported back to a DOC, and constantly having to remember to save files as an alternate format just to send them off to others for further edits or distribution from their systems was a lot of unnecessary work, easily forgotten that just wasted time. Not to mention getting her head around the idea of cloud storage vs local storage if there was no WiFi available for some reason. Google Drive on Windows has a nice visual indicator of backed up stuff, and it's all stored locally by default as well. It just works for the average user. This is something that Apple does extremely well with their walled garden. They hide the magic and user is never the wiser because it just works for them without getting in the way, you just HAVE to use their system for that experience.

Those are the issues the average person already knows how to do with Windows and even OSX with the current applications they use daily. Switching to Linux is not just changing the look of the computer and the engine under the hood, there are other usability changes as well. Individually they aren't a big deal, but adding them all up, the average user just ends up deciding another Windows system is easier or trying OSX instead to go with their iPhone. Unless the user has someone they know personally that is willing to help those users with every tiny issue, without complaint, or they are savvy enough to handle a good internet search for specific error information and find a community willing to be just as helpful, avoiding the toxic users, they're just going to decide it's bad generally and stop using it, probably forever.

Linux must be objectively better than Windows in major ways to get the average person to jump ship and learn something new, dealing with all the small issues and differences they'll come across.

My Angelfire page is still up and running.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

My education background is nursing and social work. I've only ever used Windows and very surface level. I've never programmed anything, the closest I've gotten to anything technical is troubleshooting a game that I've modded to within an inch of its life.

Though I'm picking up an old laptop from a school surplus next Monday to wipe and begin exploring Linux. My only other experience with Linux is the interface of my housemates NAS (which I use only to manage a plex and valheim server)

I'm an IT tutor in a community centre - basically just teaching grandma how to close all her iPhone apps. No experience or formal qualifications needed. If you can be patient while showing seniors the basics of the devices they've got at home, you're hired.

Our organisation currently pays too much for an IT managed service provider, who doesn't provide a comprehensively managed service, so my boss wants to end their contact and hire me as a dedicated IT management officer. My boss is 75 and is confident in my abilities because she thinks power cycling the router when the internet goes out is an amazing and high level skill, but I know enough to know how much I don't know. But I also know I can learn.

So maybe in a year or so I'll understand more of the jokes on lemmy.

nurse in a psychiatric hospital

Not trying to tell you how to run your life, but maybe you should try to spend you leisure time away from work related environments.

No correlation I hope.

So this supports my point completely. No fuckin clue what you're saying.

A corporate going down in history for the abuse of word open despite being anything but

Music and programming both have a sort of logic to them

Same here. I count the days until it's discovered that I'm just a normie who agrees with the ideology of open source, and am hanged for my crimes of not knowing what a "cron" is, thinking stdout has to do with diseases, or wanting to play video games with 0 troubleshooting haha.