I used MacOS for a bit, switched to Windows, then when I was 15 I installed Linux :3
Granted I do very much have autism
I used MS-DOS as a kid and installed Windows 98 when I was 12. Started to use Linux in my 20s.
Granted I am old.
Used DOS and an IBM Selectric II in highschool. Installed windows 3.1.1 in college. W95 at my first job. Upgraded to them all to W98, ME, 2000, 7, 8, 10, and 11
Installed Linux the first time with Unbuntu Warty Warthog. Had the CD mailed to me.
I still managed to fuck up GRUB today again… because I’m very talented apparently.
Did you really stick it out all the way from Win2K to Windows 7?
Can you even call yourself a Linux user if you didn’t fuck up GRUB a few times? 😀
I suddenly vividly remember putting my mom’s Chromebook into developer mode and installing crouton on it so I could play Minecraft.
“When I was a kid the computer didn’t need some filthy OS!!”
ZX81 - C64 - Amiga (that wasn’t an OS, it was just for launching stuff! /s ) gang
Did she intentionally use the word disclude to make linux autists mad?
I started on a Mac and now I’m an IT expert.
But that’s because my next computer was a Dell.
My condolences, on both counts.
Could be worse. Dad had a Gateway desktop. I’m still licking old wounds…
I started with a DEC Alpha CP/M, then moved to a Macintosh SE. And yes, I do IT. Where does that place me?
Over 40.
Was it a desktop mac? I feel like only laptop macs should count for the experiment.
Laptops really weren’t a thing back then.
Tbf installing linux is not that hard
When I dual booted Ubuntu about a decade ago it took an afternoon and needed a lot of extra command line stuff to do anything.
Last night I installed Linux mint and it took about two hours. Most of the time was me rebooting my ancient laptop though.
On a newer (less worn out) machine I could probably do it notably faster.
Funnily enough I’ve had the opposite experience: installing Linux on a 12 year old laptop: 30 mins and done, installing windows on the same laptop: 5 and a half hours
Me reinstalling windows for the 3rd time this year cause of some bsod:
- yes
- yes
- yes
- choose language
- partition
- log into forced account
- no to telemetry 20x
- sell your sole, give your personality up for theft to an aI and agree to never sue microsoft in their tos
- reboot
- find some guide on internet to follow step by step while I type commands into 20 different terminals, open 4 different control panels and use regedit to reduce the bloatware and spyware.
Me installing advanced user linux for the first time after previous process did not fix monster hunter from crashing:
- choose language
- partition
- launch linux for first time
- rpm fusion for nvidia drivers
- reboot
If I had known linux runs games better I would have switched years ago.
Ok so now you gotta help me figure something out
Im sort of a hoarder when it comes to my data - as in I don’t know what takes up 80% of my storage space but it does.
And I really want to switch to Linux, but the daunting task of finding where 8+ TB of data needs to go before I install it has slowed me down.
Actually 8TB isn’t that bad thinking about it. Maybe it’s just time to find anything I care about and just purge the rest, and start fresh?
It doesn’t go anywhere. In the file explorer you can just open the disk and work with the contents. Linux can access ntfs drives.
You could detach them before installation, I did that with windows too in the past, to make sure they aren’t accidentally formatted during installation.
:O that’s amazing
When you’re on Linux, use czkawka to clean out your files. It searches for duplicates, big files, empty files, …
Also works on windows, if you want to clean first.
https://github.com/qarmin/czkawka
btw, you’re creating backups, right? A big disk 8TB is fairly inexpensive. Back it up before you do large file transactions.
… Yeah we’ll go with the idea that I’m creating backups
I’d recommend Winderstat to figure out what’s causing the bloat
You are the luckiest motherfucker on earth if your 8tb of data is safe on the same drive as windows.
Id just start fresh. Most of the crap you don’t need. If you needed it youd know exactly what it is and would follow the backup law.
Oh it’s not on the same drive as windows. It’s just scattered amongst various SSDs
Easier than installing any other OS.
I recently had to make a bootable iso for windows for someone in my family and it was a way bigger pain than linux, so… not wrong lol
Never tried installing mac so can’t say how the experience of that is :3
At 12 i would still have been too scared of breaking something, which I think is a reasonable fear, at the very least if you’re sharing a PC.
Even arch was easy back in 2010 as long as you could read the guide.
Now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ been quite easy for like a decade at least
Yeah no fun.
Ikr? At least we still have LFS /j
Two decades minimum, my first install was an Xubuntu live cd more than 20 years ago
Fairsies :3 I just said a decade cause that’s my first experience, and I couldn’t be bothered looking into when the install process was really simplified for a random lemmy comment lol
I’ve met people that struggle with the concept of shutting a computer down.
You are 100% underestimating the average non-techy
Don’t forget to park the hard drive before you power down.
You are assuming they can’t when in reality it is more that this is learned helplessness, they have been told over and over that they wouldn’t understand anyway so they aren’t even trying.
Oh no, these very same people have been told time and time again they can.
It’s not a can’t, it’s a won’t.
Ah, the learned helplessness<->weaponized incompetence spectrum.
Watching a millennial (around the same age as myself) simply turn off the monitor when I asked her to restart really put things into perspective for me.
I don’t take any knowledge for granted anymore, all my clients get step-by-step, stupid-proof instructions for even the simplest tasks.
Back in the day when installing Solaris and OpenBSD and such you had to specify in numerical values the number of sectors of hard disk space you wanted to format drives with. Shit is considerably easier now with modern UNIXy systems.
Back in what day? My first Linux was in the early 2000s, and even back then it wasn’t any more complicated than a Windows install.
The mid 1990s for me, OpenBSD came out in 1996 and Solaris was Solaris was like 1992. I was admiring a Solaris SPARC station back around 1997 that had a gnarly install if I remember correctly. It was on 3.5” floppies and I still have that SPARC station and the original Solaris OS sitting in the basement collecting dust. At one point that SPARC was being used by some of us working with the PHP group to diagnose file system limits on Solaris and build PHP binaries back when I was involved in PHP development. Fun times.
My first Linux install was like Red Hat 5.2 or something and it was much nicer.
Oh man. I remember Solaris. I tried to install that on something and never got it running.
It’s absolutely insane how much progress was made from 1995-2000.
Lemmites are old brah
my first linux install was on a 486 from a box of floppies we got at a computer convention in the late 90s. Back then you had to do all sorts of crazy setup steps like figuring out drive layouts and screen frequencies. It was craziness but when you’re 13 and want to tinker with computers that’s what you did.
Bah! Young’un! ;) Installing Slackware off of a stack of 5 1/4" floppies and trying to work out your harddrive’s geometry without switching the machine off to look at the label was a challenge. Doubly so if you were trying to dual boot.
When I installed Linux for the first time around that time frame, I had to write X configs (for XFree86, not X.org) by hand. And be sure to get your monitor timings exactly right or risk permanent damage, said the scary warning.
That was always ‘fun’. Trying to find things like the ‘front porch’ timings was an exercise in frustration at times. Then put it all together and try it, hoping it either worked, or at least didn’t go too badly. The ‘boiinng’ noise sone monitors would make was always a bit alarming.
I ended up soldering together an adapter to convert from VGA to a monitor that took separate red, green and blue inputs with a sync pulse on green. Working out the timings for that was interesting, but I doubt any other PC OS could have driven it.
You’re right. In fact, I think the easiest OS to install is probably some sort of Linux distro. But most people don’t install their OS. And Windows is shipped built-in on many computers (even though we’re starting to see some Linux options as well).
I grew up on Windows my entire life, but really only as a user until I got into teenagehood. I still remember when I was 12 and had to reinstall Windows 7, and I was given the option of either x64 or x86. I thought “Oh, my laptop is stupidly old, it’s gotta be the lower number” and it took an embarrassing amount of time to then actually try the x86 option which immediately worked.
“Do you want to install GRUB on /dev/sda?”
I installed Slackware in ’96.
Things have most certainly changed.
Been a PC/windows user and builder since the 2000s and as someone who doesn’t work in coding or tech. Linux confuses me
🤣🤣🤣
I started on a Mac, and now I live as a nomadic caveman, never contacting the civilized world.
What about TRS-DOS?
I’m currently training a new employee who comes from the “My school handed out Chromebooks” generation, and hol…eee…shit… Its frustrating as hell.
Literally every single instruction gets followed up with “no…double click”
FML
Yeah, I’m having a lot of trouble working with younger hires, and I’m not even 30. If I had to summarize, they’re able to do things like memorize button combos, but there’s just no comprehension about the how the buttons were only pressed to achieve larger goals.
My favorite part is that my older coworkers are still convinced that Gen Z is super computer savvy.
Compared to Boomers, maybe…
Sounds like my mum. Follows the process without understanding the reason why.
Have the exact opposite problem: double clickers are a hell in a web world !
I wonder if it’s really a computer issue or a more general lack of problem-solving skills. In your 20s you should still easily and quickly be able to switch to any OS and understand the logic. If you don’t the issue is likely not limited to computer-skills.
I don’t get it. There is no double click on chromebooks?
It’s there, it’s just not necessary for launching an application. It’s the same as on Android.
I can sympathize from both directions. Teaching my iPad generation nephew to use a Windows PC is a challenge.
At the same time I look like a total incompetent when trying to do anything using the GUI on a Mac. My muscle memory is just plain wrong after 20+ years of Windows and assorted Linux variants I keep clicking in completely the wrong places
Over the last 40 years I’ve used Mac, Windows and various Linux desktops as well as the Atari desktop called GEM (used it in an early music studio), Amiga and BeOS. Probably a few more over the years.
I always go back to Windows because it has support for pretty much everything I throw at it and the OS isn’t as bad as nerds want you to believe. Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does.
" Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does. "
** Debian enters the chat **
Debian can be just unstable as everything else. Sorry.
Haven’t seen it. Only with NVidia stuff. And we all know why that is. I’ve been rock solid since my twenties. Come at me, bro!
OS religious fanatics are weird, bro.
Point to where the .deb package hurt you.
My Windows 11 laptop has never crashed in all the time I’ve owned it.
Everything does, indeed, crash; but the rate on windows is ridiculous. I was thinking the same way as you, but a year ago was given a windows laptop at work, which was my first windows device in close to 5 years ar the time.
It is, without any exaggeration, completely unusable compared to my tiny sway or hyprland desktop. Got a replacement laptop about half a year in - same nonsense. So hardware faults are ruled out.
Eventually made a deal and set up my favourite distro on it - all insanity went away. It might not run photoshop, but I don’t need it. At least it doesn’t crash every few days.
Many words to say a simple thing: people get used to software being shit. It’s really nowhere near that bad if you leave windows environment.
I hate to say it, but maybe you just didn’t take the time to learn Windows?
I’ve had the same pc running windows 10 day and night for 5+ years (I think I’ve literally had to reboot it 9 times in all that time), and it has never crashed. And I have RUN that thing ragged.
I had used windows for decades prior to that. Never been a windows admin professionally, but definitely new my way around.
I’ve had my desktops with reasonable uptime as well, but it was on win7 (and probably 10). However, system uptime is not everything. Things running within that system have to keep running as well and they don’t.
I think thr closest comparison I can give is upgrading speakers - you can’t really tell a higher quality speaker plays your music any better until months pass, you get used to it and then hear the same track on a previous set. It’s night and day.
I’m as much as a Linux guy as anybody else, but this really just seems like an interfacing issue. I’ve never done anything professionally with computers, but I run all of my self hosted stuff right on my windows machine (no virtualization) with no issues. The only times things MIGHT go down is when I’m updating. I’ve never used Windows 11, so if it’s as bad as Windows Vista then that makes sense, but then why not just use Windows 10? It exists and you can use it and it works
I don’t want to use windows. I’ve found something better.
Funny. We had a bunch of Lenovo laptops we ordered in for the developers. A few stayed as Windows and a bunch got various versions of Linux installed.
The Windows laptop chugged along and did their thing, We had a problem with some of the Linux laptops overheating. Some just were unusable unstable.
Ideally we all use what works best for us. I’m not going to get into an argument over which OS is better because clearly it has to do with what hardware it’s on, how it’s setup, and who is running it. I also think it’s pathetic to make an OS part of my personality. I use whatever at work, but at home I use Windows so I don’t have to mess with things. I get it installed on good hardware, update some drivers, and the thing chugs along fine. I can’t remember when my workstation at home has ever crashed. My Windows laptop does from time to time because it’s a Asus ROG that it a bit dodgy. My Apple laptop and my Chromebook are buggy and crashes as well so maybe I just have bad luck with personal laptops.
I am that generation, but I was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home, and my mom got me a HP laptop later because she knew I was gonna be going to a tech school program in my Junior year, and knew that Chromebooks were dogshit.
My tech teacher would constantly complain about the kids who had like zero Windows knowledge, and couldn’t do shit like open a PDF in word, or simply find the terminal. I knew this shit would happen when I was in school, I literally told my mom that anyone who can’t afford a windows device at home is fucked in the work environment. Compounded by the fact most teens are iPhone purists and make fun of Android, they’re just too used to “shit just works”
open a PDF in word
Hmm.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/opening-pdfs-in-word-1d1d2acc-afa0-46ef-891d-b76bcd83d9c8
Word can open PDFs in word for editing them.
It’s honestly more intuitive than opening then with the internet browser (edge).
Thank you, I literally switched over to my Windows partition just to try to prove that (but you gotta pay to download it anyway…)
They’ve got an online version of word and Excel for free, not sure about editing a PDF on there but the online Excel works really well.
LibreOffice has free editing of .pdf files in writer. So glad I switched to Linux last year. Games are pretty seamless too.
Yeah games hold me back. I got teenage niblings that play on my PC when they come over and they want Windows and fortnite. It’s a nice family/friends setup though, 4k tv with game mode and four controllers.
You just screenshot it and then paste as image!
but was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home
“Blessed” and “windows” on the same sentence only make sense of there’s a fire and you can jump from one.
I get it, Windows is trash, but at least using Windows and Android got me to care about what my device does and can do, eventually leading to me getting Fedora.
The point is that I have experience with having to fix the occasional issue and know basic computer skills due to using Windows.
windows was good while linux was os for servers.
I switched to Linux with Ubuntu 8.04 (April 2008). I assume your comment refers to a time before that.
I started using Linux maybe 10 years earlier than that and stopped using Windows at all around Windows 7 (at which point it was just the occasional dual-boot into Windows for a few games every couple of months) and at no point can I remember a time when Windows was good in that time period.
Yeah yeah we get it, you hate Windows.
But if the alternative is nothing more than a phone OS, Windows is a blessing.
Can confirm. Started on a Mac. Was using terminal, hex editor, resource forks, and squirrel basic to modify my Catz installation before I was 10. Windows peers seemed to think computers were made of rainbows and unicorns
What are you confirming? They didn’t state their hypothesis.
Yeah I guess not. It seemed obvious to me, but I guess for other people it seemed obvious in the opposite direction.
Nah. Windows with ati card here. I was fucking around with regedit and config files, drivers and dlls every damn time I wanted to run a game.
Weird. I was thinking the post was saying Mac kids were less digitally literate because of the whole “it just works” culture. When I ran a help desk, the Mac users were definitely less adept. The pattern seems to continue with iPhone and Android users I encounter today.
Well, now I really want to see the results of such a study. My hypothesis is that it actually has more to do with the activities each computer is used for rather than the actual OS. As in, gamers (Windows) are more likely to be tech literate than authors (Mac), or graphic artists (Mac) are more likely to be tech literate than office workers (Windows).
Anecdata: everyone on the film set in 2009 except for the studio accountant used a Mac, and the accountant was a Thinkpad Guy.
Yeah, that is a pattern I’ve seen. I grew up having to troubleshoot stuff offline just to get a modem on PC to work on dialup to get to a BBS or CompuServe or editing mods for computer games, whereas my Mac friends were mostly playing with artistic programs on Mac. I also used artistic software on PC but that too required more skill. I don’t recall seeing them deal with a command line interface whereas most of my earliest games ran in DOS.
Is Apple IIe a Macintosh?
yep, exact same thing. Apple is the name of the company, Macintosh is the brand of computer
It was rhetorical, and it’s not the same thing as Macintosh. Strictly commandline, like DOS.
Is it the same exact thing if it came out years before the original Macintosh?
deleted by creator
Is the hypothesis that Windows being constantly broken forces you to learn how to fix it ? Because that’s kinda what happened to me 😆
I’d add that PCs also had great gaming, which also encourages upgrading, and PCs have always offered more options for upgrading. You learn a lot and can break a lot doing that, both of which add to the experience.
deleted by creator
Same. Got tricked into deleting System32 at age…7 maybe? Started learning a lot from that point on.
I mean, I managed to fuck up my Windows 95 just by installing a couple of games. God knows how that happened.
I remember!
My family just got a new computer; running the brand new Win95. It was so fancy, I can’t remember what game it was, but I couldn’t get the sound to work, so I tried reinstalling the sound drivers…
I managed to completely nuke our 2 day old PC. Had to get a friend of my stepdad to come and fix it…basically reinstall Windows. I have no idea what I did, but I did learn from that point, you can basically fix anything not hardware related given a bit of time and knowledge.
And that was my origin story, been using Linux full time since 2007, and dabbled for a few years before that.
“Reinstall windows” was such a common solution, I still have my windows 95 and my windows XP key memorized (and no, not the FCKGW one)
And it always took so fucking long.
I grew up with mac, but I was always so frustrated that I couldn’t play the games and run the programs my friends could on their computers. I finally bought my own PC in high school, and was so happy to have the control I always wanted. I haven’t switched to Linux yet, but at this point it’s inevitable; I’m just dragging my feet on figuring it out.
Download VirtualBox, its free and open source. Download a few Linux isos, actual Linux isos, and fire them up in a VM to see what sticks out to you. People usually recommend Mint As a bridge from Windows, personally I’m liking PopOS a lot more than I thought I would. Both are based on Ubuntu which is ubiquitous. I hear a lot about immutable distros, but I haven’t ventured there yet. Point is you can figure it out for free and completely without hassle.
few Linux isos, actual Linux isos
like shitpost OSes?
Sometimes the term 'linux ISOs" are used to describe other less innocent files
like porn? how would you setup porn in a vm? still confused 😭
Lol maybe sometimes porn but usually just pirated digital media. As in ‘I have 32TB of Linux ISOs.’
Muy daily driver is Hannah Montana Linux, keeping amongOS running in my server
as God intended o7
Thanks for the tips! I’ll have to check that out.
VMs are a good way to dip your toes, but honestly, doesn’t hurt to boot from a USB and try that way too. That’s how I checked of Fedora, which I stuck with and now dual boot with. I rarely go to my Windows partition unless there’s something I have to do that can’t be done on Linux.
I don’t touch terminal often, and I use Fedora Silverblue, which is immutable, making it harder for me to fuck up my system somehow. I have used the rollback feature due to updates with the kernel breaking bluetooth, so there’s the bright side of rollback distros.
Well that feels targeted.
