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It's a horrible day on the Internet, and you are a lovely geuse.

Adult - Plants-liking queer menace - Front-desk worker of a plural system - Unapologetic low-effort poster

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[Extended About]

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Three pixel stamps: a breaking chain icon in trans colors against a red background, an image of someone being booted out reading "This user is UNWELCOME at the university", and a darkened lamppost.(fallen london stamps by @vagorsol)



feelings on Linux this morning: wonderful!! but keenly remembering how even newbie-friendly distros like Mint can still be super daunting to non-technical people, and for good reason.


just this morning, the built-in software manager was poking me like "hey, you have a bunch of updates to install" and I was like yeah sure whatever. what I didn't pay attention to was that there was an nvidia driver update included among all the stuff, and my screens went black. I waited a few minutes, then force-rebooted, only to discover that my graphics were fucked up.

thankfully, being as desensitized to Computer Bullshit(tm) as I am, my reaction was to just go "eh" and restore an older version of everything using Timeshift, after which everything worked as before. then I combed through the software updater for the offending package, confirmed it was The Bastard by trying to install it again and getting Issues, restored via Timeshift again, and right-click ignored the update.

but wow like. literally several minutes earlier I had been walking a friend (on Windows) through installing a thing from GitHub, and they mentioned being spooked by the terminal booting up and spitting a bunch of stuff at them about installing .NET. and like, it's easy for me to go "lol, good thing I have snapshots" at my computer deciding to Rescue itself off the metaphorical arena but this would have easily been Beyond many people out there who just want to Play Game, Read Internet, and Draw Picture. yeah, Windows breaks shit with every update too, but not to the extent that it rendered my displays 75% unusable and I had to restore a snapshot to get them in working order again.

what frustrated me even more was looking up this issue with Nvidia drivers on the Linux Mint forums and finding people going "well you should always take a snapshot before installing" "well you shouldn't install new Nvidia drivers unless you Need to" and like... yes, correct, but this is missing the point that this is a really easy mistake to make if you're an Average Not-Computery Computer User. this was in the official updater, which will by default install every available update unless you go through and specifically uncheck ones you don't want, with The Bastard in question marked as a "security update." even if it wasn't intentional, it's still kinda rude for the response to "hey, can we do something about these bear traps lying around" to be "well, have you tried not stepping in bear traps?"

and to be clear, I do think there should be more computer literacy, but it's really frustrating when this is put on the individual instead of recognizing it as the shitty layer cake of structural factors that it is. there's no useful computer literacy being taught in schools and it's not that easy to pick up independently for a lot of folks, especially folks who are already low on learning-things spoons, and Windows has conditioned a lot of people to expect things to be a Certain Way (along with teaching you to think that if you disagree with it there's nothing you can do). I hope that as Windows gets progressively shittier and people start wondering what other options are out there, we focus less on saying "lol why are you using Windows" and more on understanding why they might still be using it; less on telling them to not step in bear traps and more on having there be fewer bear traps to begin with.

all that being said, despite these pain points, I'm still very happy with Linux Mint and have moved pretty much full time to using it, with Windows there just as a backup in case I Need FFXIV plugins. there are def some things I have to do differently than on Windows, but overall it's a lot cleaner, a lot more customizable, and I don't get constantly nagged to give Microsoft more of my information. I'm glad to assist anyone who wants to get it working as well, though with the caveat that I'm a Linux newbie in the grand scheme of things and do not know my way around the bear traps myself.


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in reply to @bazelgeuse-apologist's post:

It's also always wild to me that "computer literacy" gets roped in with learning a bunch of super complex things too because like. Imagine if the response to buying bad food at the store was "well go learn to farm then" - computer literacy is good to add but that also doesn't and shouldn't entail every person learning every facet of computers. It's wild that somehow computers is the thing people get elitist about when I know those people don't have perfect knowledge of other industries and things they enjoy.

(Also like... I had to run a friend through installing a specific Java edition to fix Minecraft issues last night and that's a.) theoretically simple to do but b.) they sure like... do not make this user friendly at any point! People who make these things just assume that everyone knows the formula for quartz and tell people who don't to adjust.)

this honestly raises a really good question of what "computer literacy" is, because you're right - it's impossible to learn every facet of the Accursed Math Rocks, and unrealistic (and unfair) to expect everyone to be fluent in Command Line.

I think like... if I had to teach computer literacy, it would be less about a bunch of individual complex things, and more about a kind of mindset? general skillset? the ability to break down problems into a series of yes/no questions to root out the cause, to read output for what it literally is without getting your own expectations mixed up into it and confusing yourself, to hunt down documentation and trustworthy sources despite the enshittification of the internet. (along with some safety practices like setting up and restoring backups/snapshots.) but that kind of thing is even harder to teach than "how to do x, y, and z," and it's very depressingly possible that some of these things are things you just get and take to naturally after some initial confusion, or you don't and struggle upstream all the way.

The reason I have not tried to get into Linux is purely and 100% the primal dread of knowing it would be a full-time job I don't want. I'm not even computer illiterate– I'm a freak who doesn't memorize system specs because that's what dxdiag is for! But Linux, even the "friendly" distros, are non-optionally a part-time job or major hobby. I want the box to do things, not fuck up, and not require further investment from me after setting it up approximately once. Linux is good and it does things, but I have never once in my life heard someone suggest they unboxed it once, configured a few settings and have been running smoothly since.

Well, alright, 98% that and 2% "what do you mean some of my core programs don't work on Linux" but that also makes me angrier at Microsoft so it's a wash in terms of motivation.

But Linux, even the "friendly" distros, are non-optionally a part-time job or major hobby.

YEAH this is the perfect way to put it, honestly! And as much as I enjoy suffering, sometimes I'm all Suffered Out and Also just want to Play Game/Read Internet/(not draw picture). Or, y'know, I've just woken up at 6 in the morning and am Not Amused. As allergic as I am to Windows, and as hopeful as I am that I'll one day be able to discard it completely, I definitely would not have started on this venture without it being a backup.