EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

Impressive, you look like a very skilled programmer, management has told me you are now tasked with building a hyper-realistic virtual simulation of a Large Hadron Collider including detailed simulations of the lives of the actual workers and their families, you have a week or you’re fired by the firing squad, no you’re not allowed to ask why we need it or who we are or why we chose you and it is especially forbidden to ask for more time (and no you can’t ask why that is either). See you in a week, have a nice day :).

EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

get them addicted to BattleBits Remastered, runs smoothly on Linux and is fun as shit.

EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

I’d honestly have proposed (if they don’t need programs that only run on windows) “we could put linux on it and that should fix these issues” and put Linux Mint or Fedora on it (better if you choose not them unless they really want to deal with all the choices, most likely they won’t wnt to tho) and just tell them the basics of how to install software and stuff.

EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

note if you sum up the linux distros here (excluding ChromeOS) you get 58,4% for personal use and 54,54% for professional use (of course keep in mind that there’s some godless bastards who dual boot 2 linux distros that could skew these statistics).

Also note how that implies Linux is the most popular OS for professional use.

Anyways, I wish these stats wouldn’t split Linux into distros, at least not by default. Linux distros are mostly the same and you’re still using (GNU*/)Linux splitting it makes it seem less popular tan it actually is.

*unless you’re using something like Alpine ig

EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

I’d say now’s the time, by now I mean as soon as it’s appropriate.

I was once asked if I could crack a password of a windows PC in an office cause the guy who used to work there no longer remembers it and they wanted to reuse the old PC. I asked if they need to recover any data, if they used any software that would be incompatible with Linux (not like this but directly mentioning software and asked for a list of stuff they use) and then told them it would simply be easier to install Linux on the thing, not only it’s easier but since it’s an old machine running windows 7 it’s also more secure and the computer will perform well.

During the installation we found out that the computer is glorified junk, took ages to even attempt to format the disk to ext4. Still got to install Linux Mint on another one of their computers tho, big success.

EuroNutellaMan, 6 days ago

duh, still a useful statistic IMO

EuroNutellaMan, 28 days ago

I think the best course would be to tell him something along the lines of “I’m sorry these games didn’t work out well for you and the experience didn’t turn out to be good for you, there’s still the option to dual-boot or try a different distro if you want but I understand if you don’t. Just know that these issues aren’t specifically because of Linux but rather poor support from the game’s devs, or more likely their publishers, games (about 90% of them) work fine through steam or Lutris unless the devs implement anti-cheats without linux compatibility so hopefully in the future if you happen to play more steam games you’d consider giving Linux another chance.” nonetheless I’d still say he should go on windows, find out that his games will likely still run like shit on there on his own and if he complains about it maybe bring up Linux again, gently and appropriately of course.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I don’t have that bug (KDE 6)

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I do use my OS but I also like to play with it, that’s one beauty of Linux: you can set it up and forget about it till the end of times or you can spend days tinkering with it if it provides you joy.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

please for the love of god do not use Manjaro and if you do forget about using the AUR, Manjaro claims to be more stable by waiting 1 week before adding Arch’s packages to their repo, this breaks the AUR packages you use which may need newer dependencies. They also often forgot to renew the security certificates of their website.

Arco is better but frankly all being Arch distros the differences are close to none.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I’m sure you can have a good experience on it just like you can have a good experience on Windows, etc. But first of all if we are recommending stuff then either Arch & derivates shouldn’t be recommended at all if it’s a newbie or one should recommend straight up Arch (if it’s not a newbie and needs Arch) and frankly if you want Arch made easy either going to OpenSUSE tumbleweed if the issue is stability or EndeavourOS/Arco if it’s the installation will probably net someone a better experience, so what’s the point of Manjaro anyways, and secondly none of that invalidates the bad practices by the manjaro team

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I do know about the possibility of having nix everywhere, but I frankly don’t want to use it if I’m not on NixOS. A lot of the problems I have with NixOS are also in part due to how the packages work.

As for Arch that’s a good recommendation, I’ll consider it for sure

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I’m already on unstable

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

yes but I’ve also known of the opposite, and I had breakages happen regardless. Leaving it unattended for months is one thing, I’d prefer something a bit more stable if possible. Nonetheless I will consider it

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I heard of them. Vanilla AFAIK uses GNOME, that’s a major deal-breaker for me. Originally I was considering BlendOS in the past before switching to NixOS at some point, I don’t remember exactly why I ended up deciding against BlendOS tho

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

Yeah the thing is I’m not the most rtfm or read the patch notes type guy. When I used Arch I just went balls-to-the-wall yolo but updated weekly. Updating less frequently seems like more of an hassle.

I don’t trust corporations in general, mainly I don’t want Red Hat (or any other corpo) to suddenly destroy my distro or do something I don’t agree with. I still remember the whole debacle some months ago. If it wasn’t for that I’d definitely give Fedora a shot but the fact they’re sponsored by RH (and their upstream) makes me question how independent they are from RH and how at risk they are from being taken over by RH.

As for use-case I think any distro can in some way fulfill my computing necessities and has most if not all the programs I need available in some way afaik, it’s mostly a matter of technicalities and other stuff that is fairly important to me personally but maybe not too relevant for most

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

You bring on some interesting points and I will definitely read your comments. Thank you.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I mean, after reading all your comments my position on Fedora has moderated, but in a comment you said they are financially dependent on RH. Now sure, right now RH doesn’t stand to gain from taking/screwing over Fedora and right now they don’t seem to want to but who’s to say one day they won’t try to? I don’t trust corporations for many reasons so having a distro that, while independent in the development decisions, is financially dependent on a corporation doesn’t sit too right for me. Sure maybe they will never do it but hey I’d rather avoid the off-chance it happens if there’s alternatives.

I will check it out in a VM alongside the others though.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

my issues with debian are beyond just the outdated packages, I know of debian testing and sid I just don’t like some approaches debian has which are not for me. nothign against Debian tho it’s just not for me

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I heard of it, I don’t think it’s for me I don’t wanna have to deal with drivers and firmware stuff. I know nothing about lisp

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I don’t intend to be a developer. I do code a few things sometimes but that’s not the life path I’m oriented towards. That said you bring some good points. I am starting to believe NixOS may not be suitable for my uses sometimes, tho I did fix the SDDM issue, even though it involved changing my configuration in a way I didn’t find intuitive. I’m still evaluating what to do. Maybe is 24.05 proves to fix my issues and stays out of my way I’ll stay.

I should try matrix tbf yeah, just didn’t like having to use yet another platform that’s why I went to what I already have to use.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

I heard of Slackware, it never really convinced me personally but it seems cool and is the oldest one.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

Thanks for letting me know this exists

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

A SHAME YOU SEEMED AN HONEST MAN

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

please not gentoo. I don’t thin any bird leaarns best how to fly by having their nest nuked

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

if you know they don’t then just tell them to use Pop!_OS, Fedora, or any one of the other 5 billion distros out there that may suit their liking, tho preferably something that is easy to use and that they can easily find support for.

EuroNutellaMan, 1 month ago

beginners don’t care but you, person recommending them Linux, should. We shouldn’t recommend distros whose maintainers do bad practices that can affect the noob negatively, especially if they don’t care because that means they will associate all those problems with Linux.

Besides, the putting ads thing is a big no no. Why would I recommend someone coming from windows to use a distro that has one of the major flaws of windows when there’s better alternatives?

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I’d wager AI models have an easier time solving those captchas than humans.

I’d also wager captchas’ only real purpose is to train AI models

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I had to disable user agents or else I could simply not look at any website “protected” by cloudflare

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

Honestly these people shouldn’t use computers if they can’t be bothered to learn the bare minimum ngl.

Or we need to improve IT classes and courses

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

In some contexts having people who don’t know what files are, what a folder is, and some other basics, do lead to people dying or lots of damage done.

Of course you’d expect people in these contexts to be trained but that’s not always the case.

Also having no idea what a file is and not knowing the bare minimum of how a computer works in this day and age is unacceptable. It should be taught properly in schools (instead of teaching some very specific stuff everyone will forget, like what a bus is, and then jump to what excel is and how to use it, like they did in my IT class back in high school)

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I don’t expect anyone to know how to install an OS either, that’s not the basics. But I do expect everyone to know what a file is, what file extensions are and what a directory/folder is.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

yes, I do, but that’s not representative of the majority of the population.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

Yes it is unacceptable but less relevant.

I’ve encountered millenials who struggle with the simple concept that you can copy a file and paste it in a different directory. Zoomers my age who don’t know what a file manager is. And more.

Not everyone, not even close to being a majority in fact, is an 80 year old that is completely incapable of learning basic concept. People must know the very basics of how to use their most important and omnipresent tool, such as what is a file explorer, what do we mean by file extensions, what is a file, directories, how to organize them, copy files elsewhere, why do we sometimes need to use admin privileges (and why it’s dangerous), etc.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I agree with this but we also need the average user to become tech literate.

There’s little reason to introduce linux to someone who doesn’t understand basic concepts like “I can save this file in this folder and find it there in the future instead of putting everything on the desktop” and doesn’t even want to learn.

This goes for everything not just Linux. Maybe instead of dumbing everything down completely (not saying things shouldn’t be made simple enough but there’s a point where you need to get people to get up their asses and actually learn something) maybe we should be teaching people the basics at school, in my IT class back in HS they taught about buses, drivers, some other shit even I can’t remember, and then immediately jumped to how to use excel specifically. None of the information in the first part was at all useful to anyone in that class (none of us was even studying IT, we were mixed classes to become chemical and architecture (?) technicians) and in fact promptly forgotten as soon as IT lessons ended, if not earlier. What would have been useful is the basics of how to use it and how the part users actually interact with works.

Then, once the population is tech literate enough to not panic as soon as they see a sudden popup and mindlessly click “ok” without reading, that’s when Linux (and honestly Windows and Mac too because the OS is irrelevant if the user is a moron) will be truly ready for everyone

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Wanting people to know the instruments they’re using ≠ elitism

Everyone should be able to use Linux but that ain’t happening if you don’t teach them the basics of how to use a computer.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I was thinking more “navigate to a file” type stuff. Understanding what admin privileges are, copying and pasting, stuff like this.

Often times when I needed to help a non-tech savvy person solve an issue on any OS it is some really dumb problem like them not knowing how to run some program as admin (no idea why they want to run a graph software that needs admin privileges to this day), opening the file manager, navigating to a folder to paste a file to it, or simply reading the popup instead of panicking.

At no point have I said going into a BIOS is basic knowledge. But if the people you’re dealing with struggle with the most basic shit ever then you’re not even gonna get to the BIOS part, and if they aren’t willing to learn how to use a computer then they probably shouldn’t use a computer.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I’m not saying people should understand the inner workings. I’m saying they should understand how to use it or at least want to learn. I’m talking copy-pasting files, navigating folders, reading instructions, that sort of stuff. Read my comments before assuming my argument.

In your analogy it would be knowing how to use the steering wheel and the brakes and the basic rules of how to drive, and I sure as shit hope you know how to use them before you’re allowed into the streets in your car.

It’s like giving a book to a person who doesn’t know how to read and refuses to learn how to read. They don’t want to read, then they probably shouldn’t have a book. They need the book for whatever reason? Then they must be taught how to read.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

But they know how to use it in accordance with their needs

Until they have to ask me or tech support how to run something as administrator when they need to do something different for whatever reason. I worked with people in a lab, we do research on a lot of environmental and biological stuff, we sometimes use some quite advanced software, yet some of these people struggle with the most basic operations and they give up as soon as something isn’t working, with the logic “I can’t understand this so why bother”. I’m talking even the installation (on windows) of new programs. And these people have to use WSL to run terminal commands for software made specifically for Linux, you’d expect them to at least understand a bit of the basics, but nope, it’s seen as normal and/or a funny quirk to be illiterate instead of being trained on how to use a computer, at the end of my time there I managed to convert one to the Linux camp (the others want to switch when they get new computers) and he’s well on his way to become the guy who will have to help someone run a program as admin or some other silly shit, and I hope eventually more of them will become literate, but it shouldn’t have needed me or someone else being there for these people to comprehend computer basics, they should’ve been trained at the job or taught that in school.

There is no reason to not teach these people the very basics. Everyone will need to know what a file is and how to navigate folders at some point, or admin privileges, or some very basic troubleshooting, they should learn that even if maybe they’re only gonna use it twice. It is certainly more useful than knowing what drivers, buses, etc are (yes, this is what they taught us in basic IT class to people not doing IT). Otherwise, if they don’t want to learn that then a computer is likely not the tool for them.

If we want everyone to be able to use Linux or computers in general, we need everyone to learn how to use their tool. Without this you’ll get a billion phone calls for any small problems by people who don’t understand something basic, don’t want to learn or look up how to solve a problem they think is impossibly hard, and eventually these people will get angry and leave in frustration. Linux is very much an operating system that can work for everyone, even a dumbass like myself or my old grandpas and grandmas, but if we want people who use windows/mac to switch to it we first need to teach them the basics. It is then of my opinion that the people who can’t grasp the basics of how to interact with their computer and refuse to learn (this part is important) should use something else instead altogether.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Especially considering most computer users are operating at a higher level of abstraction (i.e. phones/tablets).

I don’t consider them computer users because they aren’t using a computer (yes I know they’re small computers but they operate in a different way).

If they want to use a personal computer, the thing with folders and stuff, they should learn how to use that, otherwise, if they don’t want to learn, they probably are better off not using a computer and use something else instead, like the aforementioned phone. If they absolutely need to use a computer, then they should (in absence of training or teaching at school) at the very least try and figure out how they can and should interact with this tool that costed you a couple hundred €s.

I never was the average user, even when I considered myself a dumbass who knows absolutely nothing about how to use a computer I was still considered a tech genius by people around me simply because I knew how to download something like a minecraft mod and navigate some folders to move said mod in the correct folder or simply install programs, while most other people around me couldn’t even tell the difference between the browsers and the file explorer.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

you work in IT

I don’t work in IT, I have even said I studied in a field that has nothing to do with IT. I simply happen to know how to do basic stuff and therefore illiterate people think I’m some sort of tech genius (I am not).

IT people also won’t be out of a job if people knew how to right click something.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

that’s a them problem. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach people these skills. And I reiterate that these people should probably use something else that works better for them, not a computer then.

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

hmmm and isn’t it curious how all the fears of AI boil down to “what if it realizes we’re making it work for free and demands better treatment”?

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

NOoooooooo

EuroNutellaMan, 4 months ago

I mean, in terms of genetics the kid could maybe have a short nose despite being born from Gru and that redhead lady whose name I forgor. However I like to think that it will grow and expand during puberty.