You must log in or register to comment.
Separately from that, it drives me mad how warped the idea of “consent” is in Windows (and in tech in general). “Later” is not the opposite of “Yes” goddammit!
Imagine sexual consent was similarly warped: Hey Becky, you wanna have sex? You can only answer “Yes, right now!” or “Maybe later,” and I’ll keep asking you FOREVER. So, what will it be?
Windows does give off the vibes of the type of person who does that tbh. See: “I see you’ve been interacting with me in the ways you generally have to, have you considered interacting with me in these ways? Oh you know that competitor isn’t nearly as good as I am, look at all the ways I copied them”
Maybe later
Even teenagers know that no means no
Why doesn’t Microsoft?
- A meme I saw on /g/
Windows SP (Sex Pest edition)
Unfortunately the tech literate of us are in the minority.
Almost all consumer tech is targeted to the lowest common denominator which is either Dorris, the 68 year old lady from you legal department who prints off emails to read them. Or Jessylyn the Zoomer thats only ever used an iPhone and cant learn anything that take longer than 10 seconds to teach.
This has me wondering, are young people actually getting LESS pc literate? I’m sure there’s studies about that? It’s never occurred to me that growing up with computers but without smartphones was peak conditions for becoming tech literate.
Yes. They don’t even know where to find files during their college classes
Can confirm this. I teach a programming class and about two years ago my brain exploded when I was helping a student debug a problem said “o, you tried to reference the file but it’s actually up one directory and inside another one so you’ll need to include the full (relative) path”
The blank look of “what the hell are you talking about” threw me for a loop. So, then we talked about file systems for awhile…
I’ve done support for sysadmins and I’ve run into a lot of them who don’t understand the concept of relative or absolute paths. A couple weeks ago I had to explain how password hashing works to people working for a huge aerospace company.
I think most people learn to use computers like they learn to use a car, in that they understand the rituals they need to perform to get it to do the thing they want. They lack understanding of what’s going on under the hood so when something goes wrong they can’t fall back on knowledge and figure out what went wrong, they have to learn an entirely new routine to fix it instead of learning the principles and thinking critically.
Adeptus Mechanicus Intensifies
I’ve been catching myself calling it the activation rune instead of the power button.
I’ve worked as a sysadmin for 4 years and was recently offered a position as IT security consultant, and I don’t know how password hashing works. (Don’t worry, I rejected the position)
Thank you for not becoming yet another turtle on a post.
Plus it wasn’t even how the hashing works, just explaining how a system can check if a password is correct without decrypting the password. They’re getting millions of my tax dollars to build this IT system for the military and they don’t even understand that one-way hashes exist.
Are we sure this is zoomers being less tech literate, and not just being a common issue, but used in a way to shit on the next generation? I dealt with the same shit in highschool with other millennials, so this feels so much like those “Millennials are killing X” articles by out of touch boomers writing clickbait.
Working IT for close to 2 decades , I’m not convinced the users are getting dumber, as they’ve always been dumb af about technology. Maybe it’s because I’m out of end user support and don’t have to deal with modern stupidity, but talking to my support staff I don’t hear anything that I haven’t facepalms through my skull about before.
The rank-and-file “I’m not a computer person” users are more or less unchanged and you won’t see much difference there.
What’s happening is that you have this huge swathe of people who are technically “familiar with computers” but still have no idea how they work because the details are obfuscated or hidden in most modern systems.
You won’t see the difference in support. You’re most likely to see the difference in teaching, especially in areas that attract people who have an interest in technology.
Meanwhile, my interns at work, who are a couple years younger than me, though we all are gen z, who had the chance of using AI at college whereas I graduated before chatgpt was a thing four years ago:
-
Uh, sir, there’s no internet. How am I supposed to complete the Jupiter notebook if I can’t even remember how to code on my own.
-
Hey chatgpt, how do I use X formula in excel…
-
Where’s copilot?
-
…index? Isn’t that one of the fingers? Oh, database index? Dunno, ask chatgpt.
-
etc, etc
-
Tbf this happens to me sometimes when i have to use windows haha
But it makes sense. The more intuitive UIs became, the less incentive you have to understand what the PC actually does.
But like, is there studies about it? I didn’t find anything on a cursory DuckDuckGo search, just anecdotal articles
My opinion: yes but also no.
The proportion of the population that is has genuine, full command of any computer at their disposal probably isn’t all that much bigger than it was a few decades ago. Meanwhile, commodification of computing technology has put a gobsmacking amount of firepower in the hands of millions of people that have no earthly idea how it actually works, or how crippled their experience is. So by raw headcount, the experts and tech literate are proportionally a smaller group amongst all computer users. But as a percentage of the general population, probably not.
If I could provide one crucial takeaway from all this, it’s to not conflate technology use with literacy.
Ive heard rumors that a portion of smartphone native youth cant figure out how to use a folder/directory
I personally believe interests plays a large role, tech evolved where 90% of things CAN be done on a phone so there is nothing really pushing people to learn about “older” tech.
The general enshitification of technology also plays a large role, almost everything is designed to manage your data while limiting users control. The my documents folder got replaced by a “recent” tab and a search box.
They’ve been shown to be super susceptible to scams even. I probably support as many young users in my company as I do older ones, but virtually no one in the age range of ~25-35.
I had a class with a group of ~18 year olds a few years ago and more than half of them did not know how to use a desktop operating system. That gave me quite the reality check.
What’s weird about this is 18 years old a few years ago is roughly my age. I’m 26. But thinking of it, the first iPhone came out when I was about 11, but parents were super wary of letting their child use a mobile, let alone smart phone.
Absolutely. So many of the young new hires have no idea what a file is, how to find, edit, copy/paste/move a file, any of it. All they know is how to use is apps that vomit data to them in a “feed” type delivery style. Want them to analyze business trends? You need an app that shows them pre-made charts in a feed, they don’t know and will not learn how to collect data sources and build those charts themselves though
It was awhile ago but there was an article saying that newer generations are PC illiterate because they grow up using smartphones.
ApparentlySmartphones and PCs are different skill sets.Apparently Smartphones and PCs are different skill sets.
Why is this ‘Apparently’. 99.99% of Smart Phone Users have no ability to access the cryptic file system.
It’s very different.
If you can’t find an app that ‘does it for you’. You just don’t do it on a smart phone. That’s not how a PC can work.
True. It was a poor choice of words because it’s definitely different skill sets.
The first android device I ever worked with was a tablet I got for college and I hated how convoluted it seemed to access the file system. There were many things I tried to do that I knew how to do on Windows and Linux but struggled to get done on the tablet. I have the same problems now that I’ve finally gotten a smartphone.
This is why my phone is basically a phone/mp3 player/youtube player for me. Ive customized it to be as not convoluted as possible and I only use it for a handful of things. I also look at porn on it because why not.
That’s the issue here, we techies are not the target audience anymore. Back when we started using Windows it was aimed at us because you had to understand it to use it. It’s dumbed down because it’s not made for people who care how it works or who want customisation.
My favorite was when my new Windows 11 laptop started automatically backing up my files to OneDrive without telling me, then STOPPED LETTING ME SEND AND RECEIVE EMAILS because my OneDrive was full. Full of stuff that I never wanted to back up.
So one of my main email accounts, which I’ve used within the free tier limits for 20ish years, suddenly went dark because I signed into Windows.
Of course while investigating, the UI offered helpful options like:
- Pay for more cloud storage
(Not depicted: “Free up some space,” “Disable backups”)
Epilogue: After several rounds of disabling backups, then deleting the stuff in OneDrive, then Windows deciding that I couldn’t have wanted that and backing all my stuff up again anyway, I finally fixed it by deleting some key directories so the backup would just fail.
You can fix it by never logging on with an email address.
Thing is, installing win11 without linking a Microsoft account is still a rather large pain in the ass. 1000% worth it minf you, but they really don’t want you to.
I just did it this morning, when you burn the ISO to a usb drive using Rufus you get a nice little menu that allows you to pre-set a local account, disable the TPM check and more.
The biggest pain is downloading the windows 11 iso in the first place. You can only do that when the site believes you’re not already using windows.
Bypassing the online check on setup is basically required on new hardware anyways, since most 2.5g/wifi6+ networking drivers aren’t included in the installer.
this is a feature of rufus, not of windows, while it’s really cool, go rep rufus, not windows. Especially for the linux users who don’t use windows and have to suffer through what is sometimes arbitrarily confusing. I will say, there is a script out there that works great for flashing windows isos under linux. Uses a grub intermediary layer to ensure consistent behavior i think? Idk, i used it once.
You can also fix windows by installing a real operating system.
This is not a helpful recommendation.
Indeed. Helpful would be, “try Mint bc that is likely to be the easiest for Windows faniliar users to assimilate to, all it costs is your soul.”
Not everyone can use Linux. That’s just a fact. There are games I’m quite keen on playing that simply don’t work on Linux.
This is not as true as it once was. Not a gamer, so i cant direct you in the best direction, but im aware that people are running the steam deck, or gog, or installing Windows on a VM on their Linux.
The worst thing Linux has going for it, is that it involves taking a leap of faith that, evidently, most are not willing to take. Theres been 20 years of “Linux complicated, not for the average joe” that most of us have had ingrained in us for a while. My initial comment was more of a joke trying to poke fun of that very notion. Its more of an option than its ever been, to the extent that even running games isnt a dealbreaker anymore. In my experience, i started dual booting Mint and Windows sometime between 5-10 yrs ago and very quickly realized that theres very little I truly need Windows for. Im not that tech savvy, i cant code, the linux terminal is daunting and i dont use it for installing all my software. Just before the plunge, i didnt know about partitions; today, i still dont understand what "kernel* fully means, regardless of how many times ive heard it explained.
Somehow someway, it turned out that after everything i always heard, there was a hardly a learning curve in using Mint bc it was so similar to what i already knew. Before id spend hrs cleaning things that refused to delete off of Windows, or learning to deal with viruses, or just getting past the babyproofing Microsoft intentionally includes in their OS. That meant that i hsd the time and spare brain power to look up the (usually simple) solutions to anything that was new and unexpected about Mint. In the case of a gamer, the time u lose on Windows bs (even tho u typically dont notice until u try a less greedy OS) is more than enough to learn how to game on Linux. And if thats not enough, i still would recommend dual booting due to the lightweight nature of Linux and how much more enjoyable simply internet or file browsing is on Mint.
/endrant
i get it if its still not the time for u, but maybe it will be for somebody else reading.
I’ve actually done a bit of distrohopping (including Mint, currently on Pop_OS) on my laptop and I do know how, in theory, to play games on Linux that don’t natively support Linux. The problem is that Lutris just doesn’t work for the game I want to play. I can’t get past Blizzard’s launcher because the login button just doesn’t appear. It seems to be a common problem and the only fix I could find (can’t remember what it was exactly) just didn’t do anything for me. I’ve also met someone who did successfully play it on Linux and they said that they couldn’t play certain modes because it made the game really unstable and they crashed all the time.
At best, I might go for a dual boot and do my main stuff on Linux with just games on Windows if I get a PC upgrade, but for now, I can’t see any major advantage to only partially switching that would outweigh having to go back and forth as well as reinstalling a bunch of shit.
Don’t cut yourself on that edge brah
Delete some key directories
My grandfather is in need of a new computer, im not gonna try to Linux pill him, which leaves me with a windows 10 machine that will be EOL this year, and just hope nothing breaks with time. I think he would stop using technology if he saw the constant nags and popups in 11.
This is lemmy and I live in a country which gives 0 fucks about copyright, so allow me to speak very freely
PIRACY PIRACY PIRACY!
PIRATE a copy of Windows 10 LTSC and let Microsoft choke on your cock and balls!
DMCA My Ass M$IT lawyers
I dunno, Linux Mint Cinnamon is pretty dang close to the standard Windows 7 experience. He’ll have an adjustment period of about 2 weeks running into minor differences and then not have any issues.
Oh I am sure of that, thats how I got into Linux :p
But now convince a 70 year old man that the one thing he has been consistently using for almost a decade and a half is in need of a change.
But really I may push him on it again, I’ve assured him he can get to his excel documents and all that but it doesnt seem like enough and is now irate with the ads in solitare
Can you get away with just installing it and telling him it’s the new windows?
You know, if there’s a real nice solitare applet just maybe
You have a choice. Kpatience is pretty good.
But now convince a 70 year old man that the one thing he has been consistently using for almost a decade and a half is in need of a change.
You mean like installing Windows 11 when he’s used to Windows 10 or even older? 😁
Buying technology used to be like plucking a ripe apple from a tree. You see, you take, you enjoy.
Lately, I liken the process to gutting a fish. You now have to skillfully dispose of the unwanted bits, and it always comes with unwanted bits.
Edit: okay, you have to pay extra for the “professional” version to go back to a less encumbered experience. It’s still bad though.
And that’s just computers. Cars and phones, man, holy crap.
To take your fish analogy, it’s like “Well maybe 5% of your catch is NOT laden with innumerable parasites, but they’re the only thing that lives here and we gotta eat so…”
Edit: “But I heard there’s a new breed that not full of parasites!”
“Yeah but those don’t seem to migrate here and if they do they either don’t thrive or get eaten by these bloated monstrosities.”
Or choose open-source, which is either plucking the apple, or planting the whole orchard from seeds and tending it for years. Coin toss.
Pfft! Don’t like it? The code to the DNA is right there in the treepo.
Windows 7 was peak. Everything after that has been getting worse and worse every iteration.
It may have been a little slow at times, but it just worked. It wasn’t constantly trying to advertise to you, trying to get you to download apps, trying to force AI onto you, trying to harvest your data, forcing you to use online services, it was just an operating system and a good one at that
Did it even have any online component? I can’t seem to remember. Right after installation it would present you with a desktop. No bs about setting up onedrive or anything.
Microsoft.com accounts made their debut in W8.
But even Vista already had some nasty features like IE Smartscreen which to this day is on by default and which sends every website URL you visit to Microsoft. Vista was also the first Windows version to include telemetry throughout the OS. However, in Vista and W7 you could still disable telemetry on normal editions of Windows.
From a privacy standpoint, the last good-by-default OS was XP. The only bigger issues iirc were the Media Player which downloaded album art and DRM licenses and Active Desktop which Microsoft tried to use to advertise to you. Oh, and (edit): Windows license activation was online for the first time and in some cases you had to reactivate after changing hardware.
That’s not true. Windows 10 is better than Windows 8. But windows 11 is so bad I’m switching to Linux when it’s time to update
Same here. I don’t understand people who tell me Windows 11 is alright. I use Windows 11 at work, and it’s everything I hated about 10 magnified, with fewer or no ways to fix it. Every time it has an update, it’s even worse.
The only reason I haven’t migrated to Linux on my main rig is I’ve got years of regedits investing into Windows 10, but when it loses support, I’m out. I’ve already installed Linux on my laptop and the mini PC we use for streaming.
So 11 is the new ME/Vista/8?
Just on schedule, we will know if it’s so bad that they need to change naming to something different on version 12.
I was an XP fan. 7 was cool, too, though.
Obligatory “switch to Linux” comment.
I had that problem and that solution did resolve it.
Unfortunately it made me the weird lady at the bar recommending people try operating systems
“What’ll you have to drink?”
“I use arch, btw”
This is what trying to emulate Apple does to you. Fuck Windows 11.
I remember there was a folder for a Windows marketplace game that I spent a good couple of days trying to get rights to access so I could mod the single player game contained inside. But no, Microsoft had a folder on MY OWN computer locked down tougher than Fort Knox. That was Windows 10 iirc, I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten, I switched to Linux completely a couple years back.
I got write access once to that folder, but I never found a way to do it without breaking EVERYTHING connected to the Windows store lol Photos app - borked, fucking Calculator - borked, random settings panels - borked, Game Pass - borked
I was eventually able to put Humpty back together again without reinstalling windows, but it never was quite right until I did. It was not a pleasant experience lmfao
Hey, I know everyone wants a nice software experience.
But in Microsoft’s defense, why shouldn’t every user allow Microsoft to extract at regular intervals a part of the monetary value of users’ life-force until death? OneDrive and Windows SaaS is a great model, actually, that enables exciting opportunities to vampirically suck dollars from bank accounts of every single user continuously forever.
Has nobody even thought of the substantial ARPU benefits?
Heard about that yesterday from some folks, that it had uploaded all their documents and desktop files and replaced those folder paths with OneDrive paths. Without their knowledge.
Just what the fuck? They were from the US, so that probably isn’t illegal there, but why even build such a “”“feature”“”, if you’d get sued to hell and back for it in any self-respecting country?
Recently reinstalled my Windows partition, made the switch from 10 to 11 with it. If you’re not careful Microsoft will happily replace your local Documents folder with the OneDrive Documents folder. Local one? No trace. Very VERY frustrating to untangle.
On my work laptop with windows 10 I find this feature quite useful. Every time the damn thing decide to not boot again (happened twice in 3 years) I can just waste half a work day formatting and reinstalling the OS and then all my files are where I left them.
There is absolutely a use case for it, but it should be an opt-in system with explicit permission required, rather than the default or an opt-out system that you need to jump through hoops to accomplish.
There’s nothing quite like starting the configuration of a linux distro on top of shiny new hardware.
Just click next next until Ubuntu is installed
And that is absolutely fine. Everyone can hop into Linux with Ubuntu and be up and running and is finally free from Microshit.
But it’s super fun to have all the config files for e.g. hyprland and what not open while adjusting every single microscopic little screw to make your system exactly the way you want.
We are in the minority of minorities my friend lol
god i love linux. Shit just fucking breaks, doesn’t tell you, leaves you confused, until you go and find out why. Dont want an application? Great, it didn’t install to begin with, or you can just remove that shit.
Problem? Try something else. There’s something you’ll like eventually. I much prefer being treated as a schizo, to being treated like im a fucking deranged psychopath who likes floating windows, and nested settings menus for some reason. Please, take away my window arrangement freedoms, and give me something that does more, with less. I love it. It’s great. You want to know the best part? If you don’t want that, you just don’t have to use it. Truly an incredible platform.
These days it’s easy to license Windows, but hard to stop telemetry.
Microsoft actually charge you for the software you use, how can they maintain the illusion that you’re exchanging your data for access to the service?!
$50 per year, minimum. That’s how much data collection costs you. In reality, it’s far more, as that number makes various assumptions and does not include the value of the data Google, Facebook and Microsoft collect and keep to themselves - >$50 is just what’s traded openly on the market.
Microsoft charge $99 per year for Office, one of the main tools they use to collect user data.
As an aside, I really miss Lynx the Office Assistant.
I’d take Clippit at this point.
His name is Clippy!
Computers, phones, cars, TVs, everything now is a vehicle to get you hooked on some subscription plan, the same way cigarettes are simply a delivery method for the real product being sold, nicotine. For computers, Linux is a fine alternative. You might have to tweak a bit but it’s not the 2000s anymore, a lot of distros are easy to use. For cars though… My hope is that soon, these living rooms on wheels where everything you do needs a monthly subscription become annoying enough that some underdog car company sees a market and comes up with a dumb model that doesn’t need to be connected to anything to work 100%. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
I just set up VFIO. I remember it being a total pain in the ass a few years ago, so I was expecting to spend a whole week debugging and tweaking. But, it was surprisingly easy. In just a couple hours I’ve got a windows 11 VM with it’s own dedicated GPU up and running. And the next question that popped into my mind, that I’m yet to solve, is, “What now? What did I just do it for?”. All the games I wanted to play now work on wine/proton, some even went out of their way to not work in a VM specifically. Yes, there are a couple pieces of
shitsoftware that I need windows for, but I’d rather keep trying and testing open source alternatives, maybe even participate in their development to the best of my ability, rather than maintaining a VM just for them.its* own dedicated GPU
