Looking at the comments, it occurs to me that we’re not a representative section of the online community.
Were literally people who went out of their way to not use a conventional/commercial tech product.
I wonder what the % of people on here is who have built a pc, used a raspberry pi or installed Linux compared to the outside world.
I also bet the % is very high.
I wouldn’t even consider myself especially techy compared to Lemmy, but I’ve done all of those things.
+1 though I feel like I’m more average when it comes techiness (if anyone feels very techy and qualified to host a survey, I’d be interested in average tech experiences here.)
Considering linux, self hosting and open source gets mentioned in every community here… I’d say it’s a significant amount
Well, Lemmy is kind of selfhosted itself, sooo…
A big reason I use Lemmy is because I like all the FOSS discussion lmao.
Yeah I totally don’t mind either, feels like I can say whatever I feel like here and people will understand what I’m saying
I would bet the number is extremely high. I’ve done all these things.
Hah, the joke’s one you: some of us are too cheap for using a Raspberry Pi and instead use chinese Pi clones!
Who doesn’t? Is it even possible to get the proper ones shipped most times?
Beaglebone checking in! Although I have splurged for a hardware packet sniffer.
it occurs to me that we’re not a representative section of the online community
This! I have been preaching this for years, both online and IRL with the IT techs I manage. Tech nerds (myself included) forget just how little the normal person even cares about computers, let alone how they work.
The vast majority of people just want to buy a computer in a box, and have it work mostly perfectly. Which windows and Mac’s do really really well. And yes, windows isnt perfect but neither is Linux. And for 95% of people the most demanding and complicated thing they’ll do is web browsing, and power users might do something wild like play games through steam or install an alternate browser.
And we havent even touched work computers yet, which is a whole other level of “I don’t care at all” from end users.
Remember people “Linux is amazing!” is meaningless to people who have never heard the acronym SSD let alone what it is or why it’s better than a HDD.
I like to compare it to sewing because I genuinely don’t care at all about it. But I hear people say “just thrift clothes and tailor them to you!” But that ignores two things.
- I genuinely can’t think of a whole lot of other leisure activities I’d want to do less than sewing and tailoring.
- I barely know how to sew a button or mend a rip. Do you think I know how to actually tailor something? Or what types of tools I need? Or how to use them?
Tech nerds (myself included) forget just how little the normal person even cares about computers, let alone how they work.
God I love this comic. I’ve used it hundreds of times since he’s posted it.
Once I realized that the comic was not actually about geochemistry, same. Took me way longer than I want to admit to put 2 and 2 together there
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I only knew one person with an oric-1 is that you, Neil?
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When I was a child I was trying to type QBASIC code from a magazine called DOS into my (inherited) Atari 1024ST with Omikron Basic and tried to figure out why that didn’t work so well.
The study is about kids, not ancient beings.
Did she intentionally use the word disclude to make linux autists mad?
Is the hypothesis that Windows being constantly broken forces you to learn how to fix it ? Because that’s kinda what happened to me 😆
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.
I’ll always remember when I accidentally bent a CPU pin and had to manually straighten it with pliers… it was terrifying 😭 (but that CPU is still working perfectly in my computer 7 years later !)
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 switched to Linux after my experience with Windows Millennium Edition. Many people have since referred to me as some sort of programming genius and hacker…I don’t know crap about any of that. I’ve simply followed instructions and referred to the help communities, whenever I’ve had trouble. Using the mainstream distributions (I’m guessing) has kept me from having much trouble.
Mixed messages here: “I’ve simply followed instructions and referred to the help communities, whenever I’ve had trouble.” Fellow human, those are the actions of a programming genius and hacker. The bar is remarkably low. A lot of people can’t even read what it says on the screen.
Peoples’ definition on programming is unclear.
I watched two people argue if Dennis Ritchie or Mark Zuckerberg is better at programming in comments on a youtube video about C.
And they are relatively tech-savy if they watch those videos.
It was VIsta for me!
Fun. I didn’t grow up issuing a Mac, not did I grow up using Windows… Nor Linux.
When I started on computers, we used DOS.
I’m old.
I’m not old enough to remember punch cards, I was solidly in the x86 generation, but still.
For the record, I do IT support now. I’m the one that helps you with your printer.
back in the 80’s, whole rooms of Apple Computers sat empty, all day, everyday. At all the different schools i went to as a child.
I assume it’s because none of the teachers wanted to learn them, it was real fucking shitty growing up surrounded by so many stupid fucks.
but now, soon, AI will be x1000000000⁷ better teachers. So at least the children will have an actual chance in this world, and so many of them won’t choose liberal arts as their course of studies. -all that time they were just disciplining the children
Can we stop throwing around “autistic” for anything? Have people actually ever met autistic kids? It as nothing to do about having uncommon interest, it imply much more things then that.
I started on Commodore (Vic20 that I don’t remember much, C64, and A500) mostly with a tiny bit of Atari and then was on Windows at home for decades (I tried installing Linux (Mandrake and Redhat) back when it fit on a floppy, but without a lot of success). I guess I’m too old and not neurotypical enough?
Mac not being able to play any games forced me to mess around with other operating systems on it
I learned because I was torrenting and broke the family windows computer. It was either fix it or get grounded.
The Picard Maneuver, inciting violence once again, I see. tips fedora
A home-built (from a set) one-board computer counts as what?
My first experience with Linux was at 10 years old or so. I had a netbook that I’d installed Ubuntu on.
Flash forward nearly 14 years and I use Arch as pretty much a daily driver these days.
Is Dragon 32 a Mac or Windows computer?
