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A study on tech literacy (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 164 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm currently training a new employee who comes from the "My school handed out Chromebooks" generation, and hol...eee...shit... Its frustrating as hell.

Literally every single instruction gets followed up with "no...double click"

FML

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  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I am that generation, but I was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home, and my mom got me a HP laptop later because she knew I was gonna be going to a tech school program in my Junior year, and knew that Chromebooks were dogshit.

    My tech teacher would constantly complain about the kids who had like zero Windows knowledge, and couldn't do shit like open a PDF in word, or simply find the terminal. I knew this shit would happen when I was in school, I literally told my mom that anyone who can't afford a windows device at home is fucked in the work environment. Compounded by the fact most teens are iPhone purists and make fun of Android, they're just too used to "shit just works"

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    open a PDF in word

    Hmm.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/opening-pdfs-in-word-1d1d2acc-afa0-46ef-891d-b76bcd83d9c8

    Word can open PDFs in word for editing them.

    It's honestly more intuitive than opening then with the internet browser (edge).

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thank you, I literally switched over to my Windows partition just to try to prove that (but you gotta pay to download it anyway...)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They've got an online version of word and Excel for free, not sure about editing a PDF on there but the online Excel works really well.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    LibreOffice has free editing of .pdf files in writer. So glad I switched to Linux last year. Games are pretty seamless too.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    but was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home

    "Blessed" and "windows" on the same sentence only make sense of there's a fire and you can jump from one.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago

    I get it, Windows is trash, but at least using Windows and Android got me to care about what my device does and can do, eventually leading to me getting Fedora.

    The point is that I have experience with having to fix the occasional issue and know basic computer skills due to using Windows.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I switched to Linux with Ubuntu 8.04 (April 2008). I assume your comment refers to a time before that.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I started using Linux maybe 10 years earlier than that and stopped using Windows at all around Windows 7 (at which point it was just the occasional dual-boot into Windows for a few games every couple of months) and at no point can I remember a time when Windows was good in that time period.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Hardy Heron gang rise up! Me too! I'm now in my late 30's and still need to venture into the world of PGP encryption. And my daily driver is Debian. Distro hopped in the early years... Fond memories of BunsenLabs #! (Crunchbang) and Slax. Had many toxic encounters with OpenSUSE forum users, twas a major turnoff for a young penguin.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah, I'm having a lot of trouble working with younger hires, and I'm not even 30. If I had to summarize, they're able to do things like memorize button combos, but there's just no comprehension about the how the buttons were only pressed to achieve larger goals.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I can sympathize from both directions. Teaching my iPad generation nephew to use a Windows PC is a challenge.

    At the same time I look like a total incompetent when trying to do anything using the GUI on a Mac. My muscle memory is just plain wrong after 20+ years of Windows and assorted Linux variants I keep clicking in completely the wrong places

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Over the last 40 years I've used Mac, Windows and various Linux desktops as well as the Atari desktop called GEM (used it in an early music studio), Amiga and BeOS. Probably a few more over the years.

    I always go back to Windows because it has support for pretty much everything I throw at it and the OS isn't as bad as nerds want you to believe. Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    " Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does. "

    ** Debian enters the chat **

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Debian can be just unstable as everything else. Sorry.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Haven't seen it. Only with NVidia stuff. And we all know why that is. I've been rock solid since my twenties. Come at me, bro!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    OS religious fanatics are weird, bro.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Everything does, indeed, crash; but the rate on windows is ridiculous. I was thinking the same way as you, but a year ago was given a windows laptop at work, which was my first windows device in close to 5 years ar the time.

    It is, without any exaggeration, completely unusable compared to my tiny sway or hyprland desktop. Got a replacement laptop about half a year in - same nonsense. So hardware faults are ruled out.

    Eventually made a deal and set up my favourite distro on it - all insanity went away. It might not run photoshop, but I don't need it. At least it doesn't crash every few days.

    Many words to say a simple thing: people get used to software being shit. It's really nowhere near that bad if you leave windows environment.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I hate to say it, but maybe you just didn't take the time to learn Windows?

    I've had the same pc running windows 10 day and night for 5+ years (I think I've literally had to reboot it 9 times in all that time), and it has never crashed. And I have RUN that thing ragged.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I had used windows for decades prior to that. Never been a windows admin professionally, but definitely new my way around.

    I've had my desktops with reasonable uptime as well, but it was on win7 (and probably 10). However, system uptime is not everything. Things running within that system have to keep running as well and they don't.

    I think thr closest comparison I can give is upgrading speakers - you can't really tell a higher quality speaker plays your music any better until months pass, you get used to it and then hear the same track on a previous set. It's night and day.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm as much as a Linux guy as anybody else, but this really just seems like an interfacing issue. I've never done anything professionally with computers, but I run all of my self hosted stuff right on my windows machine (no virtualization) with no issues. The only times things MIGHT go down is when I'm updating. I've never used Windows 11, so if it's as bad as Windows Vista then that makes sense, but then why not just use Windows 10? It exists and you can use it and it works

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I started dual booting Ubuntu and Windows when I was 19 or so and when I'd go back to my Windows partition to do something I realized I had either forgotten or never learned a lot of how to navigate it. I opened it and went "Where is my terminal?" and then remembered cmd and started using it to look for a directory before remembering that's never how I'd done things on Windows. It was an odd experience.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Funny. We had a bunch of Lenovo laptops we ordered in for the developers. A few stayed as Windows and a bunch got various versions of Linux installed.

    The Windows laptop chugged along and did their thing, We had a problem with some of the Linux laptops overheating. Some just were unusable unstable.

    Ideally we all use what works best for us. I'm not going to get into an argument over which OS is better because clearly it has to do with what hardware it's on, how it's setup, and who is running it. I also think it's pathetic to make an OS part of my personality. I use whatever at work, but at home I use Windows so I don't have to mess with things. I get it installed on good hardware, update some drivers, and the thing chugs along fine. I can't remember when my workstation at home has ever crashed. My Windows laptop does from time to time because it's a Asus ROG that it a bit dodgy. My Apple laptop and my Chromebook are buggy and crashes as well so maybe I just have bad luck with personal laptops.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago
    • You're right about hardware - sometimes it just is dodgy. But a tiling wm is a tiling wm.
    • Developers looking after their laptops? That's asking for trouble. They know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to dig themselves out of the holes they're creating.
    • I've never made linux as part of my personality - I've discovered it. We naturally lean towards things we're good at and get good at things we lean towards. I'll (hooefully) never initiate preaching of linux and its userspace, but if a conversation happens to go that way - I'll happily chime in.

    Have a nice day!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I wonder if it’s really a computer issue or a more general lack of problem-solving skills. In your 20s you should still easily and quickly be able to switch to any OS and understand the logic. If you don’t the issue is likely not limited to computer-skills.

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