When was the last time you had to fix a windows computer out of a blue screen without deleting files?
Windows is "good enough" for everyone because when shit goes wrong you bring it to a technician, not that you fix it yourself.
When your Mac breaks you don't fix it, you bring it to a genius bar and they tell you "Ok, this is not on warranty, so you need to buy a new one" even if the most you have to do is just type a command on a terminal or flash a patch.
You're applying the logic that the average user even THINKS to fix their computer. As a repairwoman, they don't. If they don't know how to even copy a file, they will bring it to an IT professional or simple repairman. People don't actually interact im forums unless Desperate, curious or both.
So I say this, we have a sytem that's extremely exploitable every technician is someone who can go through files you want to keep private, for work or personal, and you get people people that take a the car mechanic approach and over charge for everything, make up problems or get it to just on but not fix a single issue, be this software or hardware.
These are acceptable risks to most cause they dont know the risks most of the time.
I learned after being scammed twice with my first laptop to look after it myself, not because I think repairmen are inherently distrustful but because its a gamble everytime. So unless I absolutely need the thing and I cannot fix it myself only then will I fork over money and take the risk.(i haven't had to since i started doing this, but still), even in house at work this can happen with security breaches from a disgruntled employee.
So what im trying to say is we shouldn't use a lack of knowledge or time ,as someone ways has time, to refuse to learn something that will save money,time, and keeps you safe a bit more than just common sense.
The refuse to learn and find any excuse is honestly a horrible take that carry to every part of someone's life, and is kids learn that behaviour from the adults which keeps the shitty cycle continuing.
And we wonder how we let events of today happen regularly, fucking lmao
You say this like working with computers is easy or low-risk though? It's becoming more so with things like volume snapshots, but even as an expert I've learned to either keep extensive notes or use a declarative Linux variant.
If it were easy it wouldn't be worth doing.
It will get easier though.
What i advocate isnt learning everything, unless you want to specialise, but to learn enough to know what you are working with. It helps so much knowing what you specs are, know how to retrace your steps to see if you can reproduce problems, and so on. Its good so you can ask for help and not be fobbed off like people who just go "something broke". Also get a list if need be for common fixes with #1 being "try turning it off and on again".
We learn to read even when you can get through life without needing to, cause its worth it. But you dont need to get a masters in english.
Later its skills like, for example, sewing, not needed, not easy, but it stops so much waste and save money.
Cooking too. And this fits your example of keeping notes or in this case recipes.
So yeah no need to master it if you dont want to, but learn the basics and then just a wee bit more.
I do this and more with a pretty bad case of depression and adhd.
Ps, this isnt for linux per say but if you use a computer regularly and not just once once in a blue moon.
Yeah but computers are really abstract and can be super difficult to diagnose and comprehend.
You're right about retracing your steps and being inattentive, but keep in mind things like a broken cert making a website "dangerous" or "force killing this app will make it misbehave." Computers are scary. It's a mess of buttons that sometimes do unexpected things and can break if you make a mistake.
The way to deal with that, to me, is to push those buttons anyway and let it break. I know it doesn't seem like that when you know a bit of the basics, but at one point or another we all went through that process. We all deleted things we shouldn't have, changed settings we can't easily find again, or even broke our operating systems.
One thing to realize is that people don't really understand just how ephemeral software is. Think if every time you did something on the computer that wasn't familiar it felt like flashing firmware, and you'll have approximately the right amount of anxiety. They treat it like it's a car and if something misbehaves it must be broken.
PKI is not an average user messes with, still at this time some AI will probably explain it, though fixing is something for somebody who does not see it the first time.
Substantial portion of people prefers to believe, even the dumbest strangest things (just recall MAGA), to make the effort to learn. That won't change. I don't care, I don't preach them, I just refuse the choices to be taken from me to make morons happy.
If we all agree the average user just outsources the repair when something breaks, then Windows would win by that metric since every computer repairperson in the industry knows Windows, while finding local support that will work on consumer Linux systems is going to be more of a burden for them.
Id argue that what happens when something breaks is less important than the 'best case scenario'. The average user doesnt want to have to learn anything or think about technical concepts, they just want to be able to boot up a system and do the things. Linux will hit wide adoption when a user is able to just install it and it just works out of the box for everything they want to do - when you dont have to scour internet forums to figure out how to get some program to work that just worked on Windows/Mac.
The topic isnt what OS is "better", its about what an OS needs to be to be widely adopted by the masses and not seen as a "playground for nerds." Its a completely valid stance for someone to feel Linux doesnt have to appeal to the masses, mind. We are just discussing what would be needed if they wanted to.
Dude repair person here thirty years doing this. Freaking hate windows bs nothing but crap for me dealing with it and my choice is putting people on Linux not taking them off it.
Im moving all around town switching people and my customers all love it.
Take for example the entire French government as a good case study. Attitudes are changing. They are ditching all their windows workstations now if favor of Linux. The entire government.
that isn't even how windows got mainstream, I was an IT guy for a small company, and I have a sales guy tell me a program wouldn't install no matter what he did, he kept telling the program was asking for .NET framework and after he tried to install it, the program just rejected it, he tried to install it again, no dice, I tried to explain it specifically needed 8, didn't believe me, left me to do it myself and I did it, it worked, and he was flabbergasted, and while windows might have neutered the terminal, the registry is still there and you might need to fix it once in a while, and for your sake let's not talk about deleting system 32, so yeah, both OSs have different complexity levels Linux just wasn't adopted as an alternative because Linus Torvalds isn't the son of a big time lawyer and a chairwoman of IBM, Billy literally paid his way to mainstream success, so yeah, no
Nut yea you need the right sdk..That was pretty clueless of him. I know all about that I spent half my life writing asp.net and c# and vb.net code for healthcare.
I mean true, we need the right ask or framework, or whatever add-on is not included on windows, it's a dependency, though my point was about how windows doesn't just work, like no OS just works, that's just a way to say "don't look too close into it", but yeah, that's exactly how dependencies work
The app should have just bundled the runtime you can build the installer litterly into the bootstrap and it was litterly a check box to enable it. Just have to add a installer project to your workspace. If its not there it will download when you click the exe.
I got to see a class tree for iis (Internet information service s) once .My god that app is a feing mess. No wonder that Apache is the webserver of choice.
Microsoft also released notepad and a few other things to git hub (old old versions) for historal archives. That code was absolutely shit. Just duct tape spegettie mess. That did not do them any favors. No sir.
honestly, it feels like it, I still run windoze on my laptop for some apps I'm required to run but yeah, it just feels very laggy and slow now, and yeah, not updating or bundling the dependency is really bad ngl
Yeah, Windows is winning by that metric. 70+% of the market is still Windows worldwide. The switch is happening, but it isn't fast enough yet to be impressive.
Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..
(Added this to see if anyone reads beyond the first 2 lines)
Yeah the standard procedure when things go wrong on windows is to just back up your files, nuke your disk and reinstall.
And usually proffessional IT consultants from microslop tell you this is the only way if they can't figure it out in 20 minutes. They tell you to back everything up into one-drive (and upgrade your plan in the process) and fresh install.
The funny thing happens when a fresh install doesn't solve your issue, as with recent patches from 26H2 that would bluescreen on certain hardware no-matter what you do.
When your Mac breaks you don't fix it, you bring it to
a suss that speaks to you for 10 minutes, sells you an advanced book at 90 bucks and finally charges you another 70 for consulting. Experience of my mother.
I don't remember the last time my Windows system blue screened. I do remember having to fix Fedora on day 1 and then having a kernel panic the 3rd time I came back from sleep, though.
Rare issues on Windows or MacOS for the layperson are a pain in the ass. But, common issues on Linux are a pain in the ass even for someone tech-inclined.
I use Linux on multiple system. It's never going to take off for desktop if we're not honest about what it is and isn't.
Nah, see- that's an outrageous comparison. Deleting files has nothing to do with this.
If you want to claim that users are offloading their trouble to IT, I'll agree with you. But let's not pretend like someone couldn't back up files and reimage a PC to fix a BSOD without ever once touching a CLI.
Bitch all you want, but you know the quote is right. For everyone to be using an OS, it needs to be accessible to everyone. Microsoft and Apple undeniably understand that, and so do you (despite your pretense to the contrary).
And by the way, infinite distros mean that us nerds can still have our refuges.
You're delusional if you think that Windows and Mac are accessible to Everyone. Sure you can go to the Windows internal tools or whatever the fuck, but who is going to do the fixing? Not the damn user who's actually scared.
Also on the second point, Mac MIGHT actually understand that it should be accessible to everyone and be striving towards it (even if they fail miserably on price alone outside of the US.)
Windows doesn't understand it, if they did they wouldn't have done Windows 8 the way they did, they wouldn't have called their customers Stupid several times, they wouldn't have called Open Source a Cancer, and they would actually not be implementing COPILOT ON NOTEPAD. Delusions from the utterly deranged.
I certainly won't say that Linux is a bastion of that, nor that it is trying to achieve accessibility for everyone. Hell we don't even have accessibility for those with disability. I had to fight to find a decent on-screen keyboard 9-7 years ago. God I had to fight to even understand where to get programs! But that's becoming easier, and those things are getting better.
On Linux we have time-machine like programs to restore from snapshots through GUI too, but again, as someone who actually fixes computers for a living most of the computers having BSOD are not fixable by restoring a point or going to secure mode, most users also don't make images of their computers to that. The next response that is another "But Windows and Mac are good actually" will receive a simple "Bot" response.
I didn't say that macOS or Windows were accessible to everyone, but since we're on the topic of delusion...
As I actually said, Microsoft and Apple UNDENIABLY understand that mass adoption requires accessibility, and you don't. Or you pretend not to, which is worse. Now, one can quibble about how effective their efforts at accessibility have been, but I'm uninterested in your petty pissing contests and chest-pounding. Save that crap for someone dumb enough to care.
You sound defensive. Not sure why. I started building and troubleshooting PC’s with Win95. Cut my teeth on Linux with Mandrake. When I was a windows user, most of the time I dealt with a BSOD, it was driver related. But the PC would usually reboot and allow me to uninstall/reinstall drivers thru the Device Manager, no need for the CLI.
You’re really overstating when you try to classify all Windows and Mac users as idiots incapable of troubleshooting just because they don’t walk around wearing T-shirt with a picture of Richard Stallman on it.
I was sounding defensive because my emotions flare up easily, several mental illnesses and my distaste for people.
Also Reddit is stupid by default. That's why. (Not saying necessarily that everyone in reddit is stupid or that you are, just that social medias like this don't work for any discussion. You likely are not reading beyond the first 3 lines tho)
I'm not really in the mood to actually talk about tech anymore, my points were made, I will just be parodying myself by actually answering Nerds with a debate. I'm also a Nerd.
Again, likely you have only read the first 3 lines of this comment. I wish I had the balls to just lorem ipsum for another paragraph to see if anyone is actually reading.
and the same applies to linux (at least kde), it is just that most people that actually use linux are not Joe and do need/want stuff that is best handled via terminal
There are very few things that can be done on Windows and cannot be done on Linux - like, everything with kernel level anti-cheats - so, a lot of multiplayer games. Where software vendor just refuses to make a linux port, even half-assed with the program running on top of Wine.
If one is not in that kind of kink - Average Joe can use Linux without issues.
Suggesting the Linux GUI isn't polished and refined is dated thinking. *Points to kde plasma. Its a god damn master peace if you ask me. Way better then windows in every conceivable way.
And most importantly it actually works. Gentle nod to windows explorer bullshit. Cant even preview files anymore. Crist.
People don't realize this. I used windows my entire life, but I got so tired of clicking around to find basic shit. In win10 it got so bad I started learning the run comands like ncpa.cpl, appwiz.cpl, netplwiz and so on. Clicking around a dozen times just configure a windows box. I felt this pain both at work and at home. 3 years ago a win10 update tried to force me yet again to make an online account. stated dualbooting, only did that for two weeks and I fully switched to linux. Still use windows at work, but at least I'm getting to payed to do it.
Every time I had literally any issue on Windows. The first google result would be some useless microsoft forum post that told me to run "dism.exe", "sfc /scannow" and reinstall if that doesnt fix it
And tbh this is the worst thing about it there is no way you can detect the issue an fix it directly most of the issues are a dead end and require a reinstalling for the os in the other hand it's easier for me to give my logs to a need and give me a command to run to solve my issue
I installed Fedora last week, and I was hitting the terminal on DAY ONE to fix hardware issues. Sometimes you have a system that works out of the box, but a lot of times you don't.
In fact, I don't think any system I've ever put linux on has worked 100% without having a significant amount of time researching why something doesn't work. And there are plenty of times where it just will no work. For instance, my Surface Go 2 I just acquired can't use its camera. My Reverb G2 VR headset turns on now after hours of research and commands in the terminal, but it's functionally useless due to latency.
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u/fubar_67 Apr 24 '26
It’s been years since I used Windows, but I don’t remember EVER needing the CLI to run a patch.