This person has not met Apple users. Windows users that do PC gaming, use pirated software, use good antiviruses (Kaspersky, ESET, Bitdefender), or have to modify or purge the bullshit in W10/11, often can know more even compared to most Linux users that are these days just adopting it for “MOAR performance” or ease of use with Flatpak+Steam+WINE or low malware.
Apple users on the other hand are some of the most tech illiterate users that also happen to be an incompatible annoyance to rest of the 95%+ Windows/Linux/Android users.
It’s possible that compared to the way the OP regards the average Microsoft user, they might just consider apple users more like monkeys at a keyboard and felt no need to mention them.
Ignore the rambling
Being pedantic, but OP is merely the sharer of the reddit user’s take.
Although the point can seem to be missed in what I say, that the reddit user is making here - Microsoft merely made complex computing extremely accessible with an incomprehensible amount of backwards compatibility to this date. Everyone cannot be pleased, and we happen to be that group that can learn and take care of ourselves, unlike the tech illiterate users with no interest in computing. I doubt that humanity would have done any better if it was someone else instead of Microsoft, and even as a socialist, I can acknowledge the insane level of condensed advancements we have made due to roughly 20ish years of specific products (Windows, MS Office) made by these ultracapitalist tech corporations is helping shape the future planning of society and tech.
OP has a meaning highly dependent on context. Sometimes it’s referred to as the top comment, sometimes as the post author (though that’s the most common), and sometimes as whoever wrote the actual content of what’s in the post.
- Giving effective error codes is the opposite of unhelpful
- Users who can’t figure out the underlying logic behind a GUI aren’t exactly going to thrive in a CLI environment
- The dominance of Office is because it’s better than its competitors, and because getting businesses to change literally anything they do is near impossible. SPSS isn’t even a Microsoft product.
- Troubleshooting on Linux certainly never involves “edit this root-owned file buried 6 layers deep in a cubby hole you never knew existed”, and it never involves “run this .sh script lol”.
This is an absolutely insane take
The dominance of Office is because it’s better than its competitors, and because getting businesses to change literally anything they do is near impossible. SPSS isn’t even a Microsoft product.
Also, because of the whole Open Office clusterfuck. People still download that shit not realizing it hasn’t been supported in years and haven’t heard of Libre Office. It leaves them thinking FOSS sucks because of a bad experience.
Most people who can’t afford Microsoft Office just use Google Docs anyway.
Yup. It’s actually quite ironic that this person is advocating to learn how operating systems work, but has seemingly refused to learn the slightest bit about the Windows ecosystem.
people shouldn’t have to know how computers work. Computer scientists exist to know that for them
you shouldn’t need to be a radio engineer to use a phone
But many people would like to fix there own issues and make there device work for them. Not all but a decent majority.
Just look at peoples wallpapers and apps
Yeah, a lot of people are making this comment, and they’re missing the point.
I think people should have at least general knowledge about the internal workings of the things they use.
When PCs started becoming fully mainstream in the late 90s, I thought “finally! people will learn to use them and not act like they’re paralyzed, computer use is nerdy, or like clicking around a GUI is terrifying!”. Alas, nope.
Very good post. Very true post.
…isn’t this quite obvious? You will become lazy if you have a lazy life and avoid anything that requires any amount of effort. You will become (negative aspect) if you have a (negative aspect) life and avoid anything (add positive aspect here).
The post frames this avoidance as both a result of the fear windows errors cause, and as… Rather than avoiding, streamlining. Simplifying. Being uninterested and lacking curiosity is “easier” for this thought experiment windows user. Because the computer is mystical magic that is beyond them. The OS has manipulated this quality into us.
Does this person think these are unique insights? It’s not some big secret that manufacturers and software developers have continually tried to make their products easier to use so as to attract customers.
Learned helplessness lmao, what a load of shit.
Do you realize that those two goals go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive? For example, there’s no benefit in OS usability to putting out a single line error code as opposed to even the slightest detail as to what went wrong. That’s not “making their products easier to use to attract customers” as there’s not a single person in existence that judges an OS on how little they have to know about an error.
That’s mystificatiom of the system.
While it’s true that an overall goal of a company like ms is to sell more operating systems, that doesn’t mean that learned helplessness isn’t in the syllabus somewhere.
Regardless of what a message box says the majority of people are gonna have to Google the issue.
Linux powerusers have a meltdown when trying to comprehend that there exists a middle ground between power user and complete idiot, I guess - which leads to small essays saying nothing at all to people who will blindly agree with it no matter what it is says because it’s anti-corporate / anti Microsoft.
Ok, but the solution to “lots of users don’t know the difference” isn’t “we might as well show so much less that we reduce the entire problem to a nondescript code that can mean several different things”
There’s literally no reason to do that except to discourage people from solving the problem in the first place, because the users you’re referring to won’t do it either way.
I don’t get why this is a controversial opinion?
Nice, I made a wokrshop about that earlier this year for RightsCon :
"Can you host the metaverse? How learned helplessness from Big Tech made you believe you can’t
BigTech seems expensive, complex, secure, new and basically the only way to use any modern tool. This is a blatant lie, repeated daily and orchestrated to limit emerging technology to very few for-profit corporations. Being a repeated lie is a problem because instead of at least trying to challenge the status quo we, all of us, can assume it is true and give up on trying, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Before digging into the technical aspects it is important to first prove it by running a short experiment then, only after, question how lie made us collectively and individually impotent. Learned helplessness itself will be used to identify extremely difficult situations most of us did encounter and might still encounter in the present.
This session will invite participants to simply try what is the state of the art of BigTech marketing at the moment, namely “the metaverse”, and show that behind the abstract concept there is a technical reality that is not that complex and definitely not unachievable, even for a independent person with a very limited budget.
The workshop itself will rely on self-hosted open-source tools in order to both communicate and capture lessons learned, demonstrating by its own execution that synchronization and exploration of such a topic is possible today. "
If people here are interested I can record it again in a presentation format.
Please do - it seems it was not recorded on the AccessNow’s YouTube account
Yes, please. Missed RightsCon this year.
Is your workshop is more for tech-oriented people or more for lay audience?
It’s for everyone. People who are tech oriented can dig deeper by implementing or modifying what I suggest but overall anybody can understand the problems, see that solutions are available and what a next step could be. I would say it’s for people who want to do better with tech regardless of their current knowledge.
Edit: I give weekend workshops for 11-12 years old kid so I believe the material is rather accessible but always happy to hear suggestions to do better!
Yes, please.
I’m interested in this as well.
It’s definitely not human nature and is, instead, an improbably well coordinated conspiracy by a gigantic corporation known for being full of internal conflict over a span of decades to engineer helplessness in users. Whereas we all know that users are normally such resilient, inquisitive souls, more than willing to engage with a piece of technology in order to understand it. Or they were, until Microsoft attacked. Alas, if only it were not for the great evil empire, all would be well. At least this very real conspiracy serves the additional purpose of flattering the community’s vanities and affirming its values as both morally correct and intellectually superior. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
I do find the idea that “the GUI is a Microsoft conspiracy to use their market share to make people too dumb to use computers” instead of “the GUI is why they have their market share” kind of amusing, though.
I absolutely see the value of explicitly dictating what you want with clear, precise text commands. I love using short simple scripts to get shit done for myself. But I have absolutely no interest in using the command line to navigate directories and files. It’s perfectly fine that it’s an option, but as the only option it’s kind of shit.
Also, if we’re gonna be talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use?
I wonder if its Linux, which has different programs for each flavor (apt get vs pacman vs yum) and whose command-set is from the 1990s where you had to use as little code as possible because of space/cpu limitations so the names for what each command does are not very descriptive…
Or is is Microsofts Powershell which has an extensive get-help command which provides a deep-dive on each and every command there is on top of all the commands being human readable in a verb-noun format that can be read by a layman and generally understood what the command is doing simply by its name. Oh and get-command so if you’re not sure what command you need, you can search for it by keyword.
Man pages can be pretty useless if you don’t already know which command you need. In Linux you don’t have as many options of learning what the command you need is, because they’re not human readable. Instead you have to search online and hope someone can clue you in to the right command/set of commands.
Linux is the better OS, but Microsoft made the right choice by making Powershell commands human readable and straight forward. If Linux was being started from scratch, this is something I would put in the pipeline: “Human readable commands in a verb-noun structure.”
The problem with powershell for me is everything needs to be typed in a dreaded Pascal + Kebab case which makes typing quite slower than linux’s all-lowercase commands. Easeir to learn, perhaps, but not easier to use.
I get that, but Windows/Powershell isn’t case-sensitive, so you can type it all lowercase if you want (I do).
Linux on the other hand is case sensitive despite most GNU tools defaulting to all lower case. There’s definitely a bunch of case-sensitive switches in Linux CLI applications.
There has been optional case-insensitive file system support in Linux for a few years now, though.
It’s case sensitive? Oh wow, that does make things a lot easier. I still hate hyphens
I prefer using the CLI for navigating file systems. I can pipe the output through other commands, search quickly, and move anywhere in the system with ease
I think this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with the average human has no interest in learning something that only passively helps them.
I only know a handful of things about working on an automobile, while my father could practically take one apart and put it back together wholesale.
I can take apart a computer and put it back together wholesale, but I’m lost on an internal combustion engine.
I pay someone with expertise to handle the engine, because I’ve spent my time learning other things.
Look, unless the people you’re talking about are doing tech jobs, there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of it, just like there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of how their car works. Both a car and a computer are tools, and those tools are made to be used by people who may not know the depths of the internal workings of either.
This post feels like elitism and gatekeeping to me, as someone who thinks Windows sucks and prefers Linux. The idea that it’s the OS that is “holding people back” and not that those people might have more important things to do with their time than dedicate half their life to an operating system is absurd. If someone spends 20 years becoming a doctor, I’m not going to act like they’re a dumbass because they don’t know everything about fucking computers.
People don’t want to learn more because for most people not knowing more doesn’t impact their fucking life. Just like me not knowing more about my car doesn’t generally impact my fucking life. Because I’ve never had trouble finding someone to pay to fix it for me.
Surprise, we’re the people who are paid to fix computers for the people who are just using them as simple tools. Maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about that.
Also, last but not least, Android is a strain of Linux and it suffers from all the same issues listed above as Windows. Acting like you couldn’t pull the same bullshit in Linux if you wanted to is kind of a joke, because it’s already been done with Android.
All the ad infested bullshit we all hate about Windows 10 and 11? Blame Linux-based Android.
EDIT: Also, personal opinion, if we’re talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use. Microsoft has made great strides with Powershell being easy and accessible to people who haven’t faced a command line environment before. The things that make its command line better than Linux’s are two things, and only two things. (I hate that it’s object oriented instead of text oriented, Powershell has a lot of bad things, too)
First, human-readable commands whose names describe what the command does in a verb-noun format. This means instead of Linux with some very, very obscurely named commands that are not descriptive and you just have to sort of memorize, you can just sort of remember because the name is human readable.
Secondly, the get-command command is huge because it allows me to search these verb-noun names for the command I’m looking for. On Linux, if I don’t know the specific command, I have to search the internet, because there isn’t a built-in tool that will give me an idea of what each command does and allows me to search for them through a filter. Once you find a command you think might work, it has the get-help command which produces something similar to a Man page.
Linux has Man pages, but because there is no rhyme or reason to how any commands are named, it’s not very easy to find the command you’re looking for if you don’t already know the command. On Windows, if I know what the command does I may already have enough information to find the command using get-command instead of having to turn to Google and be like “what command do I use if I am trying to do X?”
So if we’re talking about the superiorly designed command line that’s easier for first time users. Powershell is where it’s at. Because Linux is a confusing fucking mess of 30 years of random decisions by lone programmers. Literally the only reason I know commands in Linux CLI is because I had to memorize them. I don’t do so much memorizing Powershell commands. If Linux was being built from scratch today, I’d practically demand a similar naming convention system to make it easier to understand what the fuck commands do.
Look, unless the people you’re talking about are doing tech jobs, there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of it
Even in tech jobs you can be doing things that don’t require you to understand the nitty-gritties of the operating systems.
Just because I have enough admin rights to fix basic issues on other people’s computers doesn’t mean I’m allowed to just install what-the-fuck-ever on my own computer. Even as someone in IT, our workstations are locked down, even if it’s our team that is the one locking them down.
Yep. This post is largely mixing up cause and effect. The popular programs are like that not as the cause of people not learning underlying logic and such, but as the effect of it.
The only thing that would happen if popular GUI based interfaces had never come along would be that computers in general would still be something only a tiny amount of people use.
Linux is a confusing fucking mess of 30 years of random decisions by lone programmers.
More like 50 years with all the stuff from Unix
@Bene7rddso @dingus pretty much like any tech stack, once you’re taking a close look at things. Since it’s open-source they have no interest whatsoever lying about the quality of their system - not to mention that any serious service cannot but run UNIX/UNIX-like. Proprietary stuff, most of the time, also require qualified workers to maintain their own mess. And if it looks messy, blame it on ignorance.
I like that you bring up Android. I went with Apple forever ago and kept in the ecosystem as I got my software engineering degree, and still am fully into the Apple ecosystem. I spend my days debugging things for work. I don’t want to spend my nights tinkering with my phone as much. I want it to just work.
I used to jailbreak for that freedom. Now, I have other things to worry about and just want my phone to be reliable and safe.
Cheers, mate! I don’t use Apple stuff very often, but I do strongly respect their engineering and the fact that they’re certified UNIX for macOS.
There just needs to be far less gatekeeping and acting like one solution fits all in the PC community in general.
As someone who knows how to take apart and put back together both computers a day cars, your post is 100% accurate in explaining why people might not want to spend the time to learn something they have no interest in and do rarely.
Hey, I don’t know anything about cars.
I wanted to ask: what could happen, in theory, if I simply unplugged the SIM/eSIM/radio transmission chip in my car?
Results may vary but you can always plug it back in after testing.
Toyota’s have no negative effects beyond obviously no cellular functions and the microphone ceasing to work.
I recommend figuring out what the opt-out procedure is too. If I ended up with a Toyota, calling in via the SOS button will start the process of disconnecting the system.
Also note that some may have 3G radios, etc. which are already defunct.
Edit: Fixed typo
Thanks!
In general unplugging anything in a car means that thing stops working, and unplugging parts of the radio makes the radio stop working. Beyond that it would depend on the car maker as whether it would just make some features stop working or a whole system requires it to be there to save data and settings.
Thanks!
So, how often do you take apart and put together cars?
And how often do they take a car apart and somehow end up with a computer?
It’s easy to take a car apart and end up with a computer (at least in cars from the last 30 years or so.
The trouble is putting them back together (I started on computers, and now take apart and put back together cars too).
Regarding the Android bit, it’s so cancerous because everything is locked down and users have no control over the OS. They don’t have admin rights on their own device. Nothing to do with Linux, that’s jus the kernel. Android + GNU utils & root access would be completely different.
People shit on the GNU/Linux meme, but Android actually proves that just the Linux kernel can be put in an OS that’s just as hostile to the user as anything proprietary.Not having root is done on Android for some very good security reasons to be fair, it opens up a giant attack surface and risk for all kinds of malware and nasty stuff to take advantage of. I don’t think it’s done completely in malice as you think. Its a very important part of the app sandbox and Android’s security model at large.
With that said, I do think that people should have the option to root if they want to, I’m not a fan of OEMs like Samsung and whoever else purposely preventing people from rooting at all costs. I think people should be able to do whatever they want with their own device, root just certainly shouldn’t be the default, and users should be aware of the risks if they choose to use it. But I do think it should be a possibility for those who really do wish to do so.
With Android, it all just comes down to the OEM and variant of it that you’re stuck with. As a whole, I think its an amazing project and OS, though unfortunately Google, and especially OEMs, tend to make a lot of bad choices. It’s similar to Linux as a whole in that aspect. You’ve got options like ChromeOS which are a nightmare for privacy and user freedom any way you look at them, but then you’ve got your traditional distros like Debian, Arch, Fedora, etc, which are the exact opposite. Its an important distinction.
To be more fair, it should be way easier to use root on Android than it currently is, and it could be done without compromising security.
Like, I shouldn’t have to dig through mountains of unofficial documentation from weird sources, only to the find that, whoopsie, this method doesn’t work for your particular submodel of phone, you have to take this ultra-specific path that’s prone to issues and may not work. Oh, and make sure you backup your entire device, because rooting will wipe it and now you have to spend your entire fucking day restoring everything.
Like, just give me the option to enable root access somewhere in the developer settings. It can even be an obscure (but simple) process like it is to enable developer settings in the first place by tapping “about” a dozen times or something. Put up a half dozen warnings explaining why it’s “dangerous” for mortals to enable root for all I care, just make it work.
I’m OK with root not being available by default as long as the bootloader remains unlockable. This is bigger than root. I own the hardware so I should be able to use it for whatever OS I desire. If the bootloader is unlockable then I can flash a root package myself. This is fine. If the bootloader is unlockable then I can install non-Android Linux if I desire.
I’m not sure if it could be done without at least compromising security to some extent (at least in Android’s current state, but maybe that could be changed or worked around in the future), but yeah, overall I do agree, that’s what I was trying to get at. I definitely support there being an official and easier method to root on Android, as long as it isn’t the default, and as long as the risks are clearly explained. People should certainly be able to do whatever they want with their own devices, it is unfortunate, and definitely an overstep from Google and OEMs.
Strong feelings.
man -k will do the exact search you are asking about. Now I have found that some systems aren’t setting it up properly lately, but that command and -k option have been there for decades. Maybe you should try: man man to see what all options are available.
Thanks, I think I’m on a distro where it’s not set up properly (or I broke something, heh), since that has not worked for me. I did some search and saw some working examples though, so I get it. Although I’d still say the naming conventions for the programs in Powershell makes them far easier to sort through than they are with the
man -kcommand.Linux is great, but obtuse, not straightforward for a beginner. The fact that something like this can be broken out of the box is sort of proof of that. Linux expects a lot more of its sysadmins.
Yeah, I agree with you mostly, and hope my reply wasn’t coming across as dickish. As a long time *nix user, I find the commands in Powershell to be equally nonsensically named at times. I do remember the times when it was joked that unix commands were usually named after the author’s dog, but I think over time that has changed. I am sure if I had to use Powershell just a fraction of the time I use the linux command line on a daily basis I would get more familiar and comfortable with it. But you are correct that overall, this is a human issue, and not something that can easily be solved. Not everyone wants to delve into suspension tuning, some people just need to get in the car and reasonably expect to arrive at their destination.
Nah, not dickish at all. None of us can know everything. I’d rather be informed that I’m wrong than continue walking around being wrong.
Don’t forget that you can set up alias commands. So if you don’t like the name of a command, or don’t want to keep typing things out, you can set up an alias. For instance, I have to continually switch to another user. I set up alias so I can type gouser instead of “sudo su - user”. So if the name of something isn’t easy or hard to memorize, you can just make it whatever you want within limitations.
This post feels like elitism and gatekeeping to me, as someone who thinks Windows sucks and prefers Linux.
I think it’s the opposite. There are, of course, Linux elitists, but they don’t want normies using Linux. They love to talk about how Linux isn’t ready for mainstream usage, and it’s so difficult and only super-smart people like them can use it. They’re like those hipsters that don’t want their favorite band to become popular because then they wouldn’t be underground and cool to listen to anymore. If ordinary folks were using Linux, then they wouldn’t feel so smart and special.
It is gatekeeping and elitist to say that Linux is hard to use, you wouldn’t understand it, and you should stay on Windows.
People don’t want to learn more because for most people not knowing more doesn’t impact their fucking life. Just like me not knowing more about my car doesn’t generally impact my fucking life. Because I’ve never had trouble finding someone to pay to fix it for me.
Surprise, we’re the people who are paid to fix computers for the people who are just using them as simple tools. Maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about that.
It isn’t about every computer user becoming a computer engineer. It’s about learned helplessness. It’s about being afraid to try anything new, even something that’s only slightly different.
To use the car analogy, it’s like somebody who will only drive Fords, and is terrified of the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a car made by any other manufacturer.
EDIT: I gave you an upvote here because you don’t deserve downvotes for your well stated opinion.
I have done computer work for a bunch of little old ladies, and when they couldn’t afford to upgrade to new hardware, I would put a lightweight version of Linux on their computers for them.
Only one of them really struggled with the difference, and she wasn’t against learning, she just struggled. The rest handled the transition fine and didn’t do a lot of complaining that it wasn’t what they were used to. (Probably partially because I made clear what apps were what and put shortcuts to each on their desktop, each shortcut well labeled.)
I don’t think it’s unusual for people to “get used to” how certain things work and expect that. In fact, I’d say that’s pretty normal.
But I think there’s far less fear of change from regular people than you seem to think. I see far less addiction to the “brand” of Windows than you might think.
To use the car analogy, it’s like somebody who will only drive Fords, and is terrified of the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a car made by any other manufacturer.
I mean, lots of people are scared as hell of driving a stick shift and refuse to learn… soooo yeah. I’d say that’s a closer approximation. Because a Ford and a Chevy both have steering wheels and pedals all in the same place. You add that extra pedal and some folks lose their minds. Which at least makes sense because it is different.
Only one of them really struggled with the difference, and she wasn’t against learning, she just struggled. The rest handled the transition fine and didn’t do a lot of complaining that it wasn’t what they were used to
When my granddad was born everyone in his village made their money doing manual labour for the local lord. Old people have handled a lot of transition in their lives, arguably more than any generation in history. I’m patient with him not knowing how to use a computer he was alive when computers were invented
throw in “wanting to do something” versus “having to do something” – I want to build my own keyboard so I spend the time to learn about them, I have to use Windows at work but as long as it doesn’t catastrophically break I’m not spending any more of my time on it than I have to – if it does break, there’s the paid IT department who’s going to be oh-so-thrilled that Amateur McJones decided he could fix it himself …
Tldr: something something Microsoft bad
Now that is a good argument!
Weird company to target, these days I feel like Windows PC users are on average far on the “knowledgeable” side of the spectrum, not as far as Unix system users of course.
Apple and mobile OS users are the ones who know nothing about their system.
Yeah like at least windows gives you an error code, Macs basically just say “uh-oh, we did a fucky wucky and your device has failed, contact apple” and now your stuck searching up the exact text and trouble shooting a dozen potential issues and dozens more potential fixes.
The spirit of hacking has to be revived. Not just for software but also computer hardware and hardware in general. It is just a dream, but curiosity about how things work would make people long for free software and the right to repair. So that is why hacking is discouraged by big profiteering corporations, I guess 🤔
MS products are closed-source, so the error messages don’t need to be meaningful for the end user, because they can’t do much with them, anyway. The error messages are for MS engineers who have books they can look up the secret codes in.
Since Linux is open source, error messages need to be approached from a different angle. Every end user is a potential contributor to the project, so you want error messages that are meaningful so they can troubleshoot it.
I don’t know, I’d like to know if error 0x838473839 is the graphics card or a failed hdd. Because they print the same shit errors for hardware failures.
On a second thought, maybe it’s because error 0x848382920 means you need to buy a new computer
While that may be true, I’ve found Microsoft’s Troubleshooter almost seem like magic in finding and fixing some issues, where as with arch (or any other distro) I would have to hunt everywhere to fix some issue that happened randomly or because some dependency of some dependency of some new package I installed broke something.
I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. I don’t use Windows often, but the times that I have, Microsoft’s troubleshooter has always been zero help. It’s always the most basic shit that a Tier 1 tech support guy will run you through on every phone call. It’s like “Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again?” Yes, yes, and I tried that, too! Oh, what a surprise, it’s ran out of ideas, and I have to go on the Web and search for help, just like I would with an issue on Linux.
It’s like “Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again?” Yes, yes, and I tried that, too!
And the reason why this is a universal T1 tech support tactic (to the point of being a meme) is because there are plenty of times that this does do the trick. Definitely not all the time, but as someone who worked in internet tech support at a call center the solution often was “Unplug the modem, unplug the router, give me a moment to do something on my side (which sometimes was nothing - but it made sure that they actually unplugged it), now plug both back in”.
And before someone jumps me for lying about the “do something on my side” part, when you can clearly see someone’s port uptime is 200 days despite them claiming they reset their router minutes before calling in, you tend to learn very quickly that people lie (or are wrong/misinformed) whether that’s intentional, or because they thought they unplugged their router but instead unplugged their PC/monitor/etc - the end result was the same. We had customers on all sorts of different infrastructure, some of them I could do a port bounce from our end (and I did for those cases), but others the customer had to unplug it from their end.
So even if the troubleshooter only fixes say, 25% of people’s problems - that’s still 25% of problems resolved right away, and without needing to go search online. I do not think I’ve run into a Linux distro that has any sort of built in troubleshooter that could at the very least help those 25% (or whatever the actual percentage is) cases.
Isn’t that making the problem worse though? If you have a tool that resolves your problem for you, wouldn’t that make you dependent on it, and thus, be even more helpless when moving to another ecosystem (like, yeah, Arch)?
Arch is built for a particular kind of Linux user though, btw. It’s probably the worst choice for a “not a computer person” move into, issues of dependency hell aside.
I find Linux, especially Arch or Arch-based distros, easier to troubleshoot than Windows. The documentation is decent a majority of the time and the community seems more willing to tailor advice to your specific situation.
By that I mean you can post a log and if someone recognizes it they seem more willing to help you out or at least send you in the right direction.
When I have issues on Windows on the other hand a lot of the time I see the same generic advice over and over again and it usually ends with user being told to download software from their obscure site. Maybe that’s just my poor utilization of search engines though.
A lot of people have already made good comments / replies on this post, but let me argue against the third point (“MS discouragestrying out something new”). This must have been made by someone not even working in a MS ecosystem, because there’s a shitton of doing the same thing with a lot of different tools. Or GUIs.
Want to take notes in MS365 echosystem? You have word, Onenote, MS-Teams wiki (that is being deprecated, thank god), Loop components.
Want to save/share a file? You got Onedrive, SharePoint document libraries or MS-Teams (fun fact: they’re all using SharePoint as the underlying technology, but depending on the GUI you choose, you get diffrent representation of the underlying files).
Want to manage your tasks? You got To-do, Planner, Flags in Outlook, Tasks in Teams and, drum-roll, MS loop (again!). Thankfully, they all “talk” to eachother so you can at least see all tasks assigned to you when you open your To-do app.
So no, MS does present a lot of different ways to accomplish someting (almost too many…). Whether that is good or bad, I leave it up to the reader, but the new Microsoft certainly is more daring in trying out new things.
Seeing that you mentioned MS365 imma just have my mini vent here, my mum is over 60 and her work has just started using MS365, so far run into a bunch of minor frustrations, but two big ones that she wasn’t able to figure out herself, and damn near stumped me:
First was trying to create an email group, so it’s easier for her to mass email her different classes, go to create the group, realise there’s a bunch of other junk like chats and shared files as part of the group thing which isn’t needed (and can’t be used by non ms emails anyway, over half of them) but whatever, get most of the way through it then realise that two people aren’t included in any group… ok that’s odd, just says they can’t be added to the group, turns out that they’ve likely had some permission set regarding not being able to be added to groups.
45 minutes in at this point and they cannot be added at all, decide to go back and manage to find the option to create a bog standard email group (list?) hidden away under a drop-down menu, this is what I wanted to and thought I was making in the first place, then realise I cannot import or move over the already existing groups to the simpler email lists, so have to start again…
Finally get all of that done and my mum starts to send her zoom links out except nothing is hyperlinking automatically, try to search links, hyper links, linking, etc via the help and nothing of relevance comes up, turns out outlook Web doesn’t support that, only the desktop app does but nothing mentions that. Manage to track down some random forum post that states that automatic linking only works if the email is set to plaintext format, not html…
Absolutely ridiculous
Don’t forget that once the HTML 5 standard was set, they didn’t undermine it like Google and Apple did, and still do; but shut down Silverlight and embraced HTML 5.
