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Worst I had was guiding someone through some install process in bash. They didn’t know how to use Tab. And made a lot of typos of course. And spoke in an accent heavily different from mine.
Those are the times you have to mute yourself while watching…
Yeah something tells me this ain’t limited to computers, for you. God save whatever man, woman or child has to suffer your oversight.
I had to teach my little brother how to download a exe yesterday. Like just the simple every software or game type of installation:
click download on website -> click windows version on GitHub list -> extract folder -> find exe
Quite honestly im impressed he’s been using a computer for like 4 years without ever encountering a .zip fileAnd don’t get me started with my highschool teachers. One of them got SUPER excited because I showed her how to enable looping on a YouTube video because she kept clicking replay every 3 minutes when the song ended (she plays Spanish music before class starts)
TBF if you’re young, so much software just comes through software managers or super easy installers. Steam + Windows store is probably enough for most people. Maybe? Idk, I have no idea what’s on the Windows store except Minecraft.
Watching somebody scroll to the bottom of a very long list by clicking the arrow button under the scrollbar is my idea of hell.
do those arrows still exist?
Yeah, sometimes. I think Win11 fucks with scroll bars so they might be a line there.
Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
there are benefits to being a technically advanced computer user:
- you can learn how to use linux.
- once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
Try explaining this to your family.
they wouldn’t listen to me anyway lol.
once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
What’s a good parent distro in your opinion? I’ve been eyeing Mint since that’s how I started
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
Yeah I like the idea of an “starter” distros for parents, but then rolling packages would probably be easier for when I need to do tech support
rolling distros are a bit of a pain from time to time, notably if you get a broken package, although i hear fedora is really good in terms of being updated, and also stable, so maybe that’s the ticket. Personally i don’t mind things being out of date, since most of the stuff i host is either externally installed, or stable enough its not going to get significant feature updates anyway.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
have you tried not interacting with people? Seems to work well for me.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
Every single time anybody has had to take remote control of a work computer while I watch feels like a violation and/or some sort of supernatural haunting.
Looking over someone’s shoulder while they clearly engage the interface wrong I have a much easier time doing. It’s the disembodied element that gets me.
Try sitting as a passenger while your friend takes your car for a spin.
Oh my goodness… my job requires me to work with a team on some fairly industry specialized software (steaming and broadcast television); the way my coworkers have their shit set up is so weird. It’s like we are all speaking the same language, but with wildly different dialects.
Same, but CADD packages. Every UI is different for each app. Users each have unique configurations of buttons, ribbons, and task windows. Some apps even use completely different terms for identical concepts. Long ago I stopped remembering button and tool placement in autoCAD and just memorized commands because the GUI would completely change with every update and sometimes after a crash.
In my job as a Product Manager, I make specialized software for internal users in my company. Watching people use it can be so painful.
An example: Look at dashboard view > memorize client name > go to client view > type in client name to search > click to view the client
When they could have just clicked to view the client from the dashboard.
After I finish cringing, I just take it as learnings for how to build/design better in the future.
Having spent many years in tech support and also being my family tech support, this post pains me.greatly.
I get to see other people ways of using the computer daily.
But on the flip side. If you tell somebody something they don’t know like:
‘You can open links in new tabs by klicking on them with the mouse wheel.’
Or
‘You can reopen closed tabs by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T’
They look at you like you’ve just shown them the meaning of life. Bonus points if you see them using it later.
You can what?!
Man, 2 weeks into an IT job, we’re doing a presentation and our VP of IT accidentally closed a tab. Felt like a wizard being the only person in the room, somehow, who knew that hotkey.
When I’m in the passenger seat, I push on the imaginary brake. When I’m watching someone on a computer, I’m pushing shortcuts on the imaginary keyboard.
Go on a older person’s phone. Whenever I have to do anything on my mom’s phone, it gives me a headache. Everything is too bright and big and unorganized and has so man notifications! And her phone is much newer than mine and it’s still hard for me.
My mom refuses to turn off notifications from apps so there are constantly 30-40 notifications. Making it completely unusable.
I just don’t get it, you can control how your phone works but people act like they can’t do a thing
“no don’t change anything, you’ll break it! i like it how it is”
My mom just got a smart phone for the first time this year, but thankfully she has no interest in using it as anything but a phone
Inputs login, grabs the mouse, clicks on the password field, inputs password, grabs the mouse again and clicks OK
With the way sites work these days there’s always some pop-up asking you to rate your experience or some crap. Especially Microsoft admin sites.
I start typing and then that pops up and then I click it away and the freaking focus is taking off of the text field… Now I got to click back in there and type again
If anyone here works at Microsoft please please stop with the fucking pop-ups inside of your own administrator sites. I do not want to rate your site, I do not want to learn about all the little changes you made for no good reason. I want to get my fucking work done
There’s an older guy at my work that defies all stereotypes. Hes in his 60s, but everytime I watch him share his screen, I learn something new.
Now you need to share some examples
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BECAUSE I HAVE ADHD AND CAN’T REMEMBER THEM TO SAVE MY LIFE
DUDE IT’S CALLED A STICKY NOTE
SO MANY STICKY NOTES
But honestly if you’re happy with your current workflow then that’s fair
You don’t use keyboard shortcuts because you have ADHD and can’t remember them
I use keyboard shortcuts because I have ADHD and would never be able to stay focused on anything without them
We are not the same
Every 0.04 seconds I shave off whatever task I’m doing is a hit of dopamine right to the receptors
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my sister’s boyfriend leaves his keyboard,
moves his mouse to the + icon
clicks to make a new tab
moves his mouse to the search bar
clicks the search bar
moves his hand back to the keyboard
then starts typingIt’s so painful to watch. He is making progress though! We made him get a sticky note haha
I had an old friend that would type www.google.com in the Google search bar, click the top link, then search.
omg I thought that was just a meme
I’ll be honest, I forgot there was a + button to make a new tab. Now I wanna get rid of it, that’s space that I could put more tabs.
I forgot where that button is because when I need a tab, I just open a random link on the page that I am on in a new tab and go where I need from there
REAL
I think most people do it that way, hell I use Vim and tiling window managers and I still do it that way most of the time.
The number of people I blow away with Win+X [task manager / device manager / system properties / powershell]…
I’m a ninja. I slide my hand over and thumb/index/key and the required window magically opens.
Even win+X/U/U for shutdown trolling.
I want to see a Blender expert using it with no keyboard shortcuts. I think you can’t even use some functionality like panning without a keyboard. Unless you bind it to extra mouse buttons or smth of course.
why are you moving the fucking mouse for this?
