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The indoctrination of windows is extreme. Windows is just as hard as linux, harder even with all the layers of obscurity.
And yet... linux is hard, and users decry RTFM as "not growing the userbase"
Since you find some motive to rebuild the kernel in your own way or correcting bugs from 80s cli applications you'll be quite there...
RTFM is not a working formula. Because most people skip reading the manual for one simple reason, the manual is hard to read.
I remember my early arch days when asking a question about an issue I'm having was always met with a wikipage I already read but did not understand.
Rather than pushing for a magic manual, the best is to provide sane default or point to tutorials.
The best is when people tell you to RTFM and the information you need just straight up isn't there.
just google it and the google is just a reddit post that says [deleted]
Or "if you're having trouble there is no manual, FAQ, or wiki, just join our discord troubleshooting channel" vomit
Those cases where the users didn't WTFM
It's the same way you gotta ask if they turned it off and on again. Too many don't even look up the manual, now yes. Some hostility is just plain hostility, but the phrase is there for a good reason.
Maybe if the people giving advice would RTFM, they'd know what isn't in it.
Aaaand why is that? It's hard to read because..?
We need individuals like you to help it out. It's like wikipedia
It's hard to read because people lack background knowledge. Man pages were horrible for my first 15 years or so.
Once you have the skills that you hardly need to read them they're fine.
That's why everyone wants to look it up on stack exchange, they want the answer, not an unending series of lessons
Man pages are still not great on Linux. Very few examples with common use-cases and explanations. I shouldn’t need to visit the Arch wiki.
OpenBSD man pages are a delight in comparison, and really all you need to learn how to manage the system.
They are hard to read because they are written to explain concepts to people who already understand them. Handy if you just need them for reference. Useless if you are trying to learn. Which is why RTFM is often bad advice
I'm currently trying to migrate my stack on my VPS from docker to podman. Bonus points if I get it running rootless.
Somehow, podman compose just wouldn't work with my existing docker compose file. I quickly found out that podman has many options, but quadlets are preferred. It took me a while to understand what they even are and their concept. I did get the idea and the concept from the docs, but everything else was demonstrating how to set up a very simple one (think a hello world container). Or I found some blog posts with ready made complex examples for some random stacks that were way over my head. But a simple tutorial on how to map the fields/parts of a docker compose to a .container, .network or .volume file for my stack consisting of several containers in a few networks with a reverse proxy in front of it? Nope.
I'm the end I found podlet and used that to convert a docker-compose. While the result wasn't completely working (e.g. a problem with some environment vars that got passed and switched in a few "layers" that podlet understandably messed up), it was enough to understand all of it with the docs and complete the quadlet. Now I just need to experiment with the rootless part.
Currently, my first and foremost pet peeve is, that different distros use different approaches and utilities, but many blog posts or guides don't tell you what distro they're for. If you google the problem and find the fourth guide on how to solve it and realize halfway through, that it's again e.g. for Debian based systems, while you're running on SUSE or RedHat or Arch or.... can be very frustrating.
Windows is to Linux what McDonald's is to cooking your own food.
More like a restaurant that has Korean BBQ / hot pot on the menu. Most meals are completely prepared, but for some you need to do a small part yourself.
10/10 analogy
Literally had a former co-worker who has taught computer science classes at universities, ran his own PC repair business, and avoids the command line like the plague. Says it feels ancient.
If you're under 30 and read this and have been on the fence about getting good with computers... Just setup a Linux VM and play around with the terminal. You'll be leagues beyond so many active professionals it's scary.
It’s okay to have a preference. In my. 20+ years with Linux, I’ve coded with and for it, did low level embedded development with it, used it at home for school and entertainment, used for amateur photography, even managed a small server for a startup.
I still would rather use a GUI, because I have not specialized in most of the tasks. It’s less powerful, but it’s just more intuitive. It’s less portable between DEs, but it’s easier. And if your only doing that once in a blue moon, it’s more than enough.
It's absolutely fine to prefer a GUI. At a professional level it is not fine to not understand what is happening beneath the hood.
Full stop.
If you don't know how to use TCP dump, I don't want you using wireshark on my dime.
I don’t agree with the full stop. Eliminating nuance is rarely good. Most tasks an IT professional will execute will be done several times a month, so memorizing the tar command options might be useful if that’s something they do all the time. But demanding that a person is proficient with the CLI as a way to prove familiarity with how things work under the hood is just fallacious.
I coded in vim and we built our own makefiles to deploy our code into our proprietary microcontroller. We also used JTAG to connect gdb with the microcontroller, and not even the guy that coded the JTAG interface would be able to write JTAG commands by hand.
I disagree entirely.
Abstraction away from what is happening never adds value in the long run.
Full stop.
Vibe coders be damned.
Windows is just as hard as linux, harder even with all the layers of obscurity.
Windows used to be easy. Now, it's so obscure and locked down that only Microsoft can maintain your computer. And they maintain it for their own benefit, at your expense, with mandatory ads and lockouts.
I disagree about how it used to be easy. And agree with everything else.
Ive used Windows since the 3.1 days (MSDOS as well?). Its never been "easy". You just learn the magic spells on how to fix a printer, get the right drivers installed in JUST the right way, or which hardware magically doesn't work for some reason and avoid it.
With Linux, at least we get good logs most of the time.
i remember my first family pc was a tandy sensation which had it's own built in ui - winmate - because windows 3.1 program manager was so frustrating.
One thing I have noticed a lot of lately is that people just don't want to have to fucking read at all anymore and it kind of is wrecking my faith in humanity. Asking people to read isn't a big ask.
“I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”
- Hayao Miyazaki
It’s not just reading, people don’t want to mentally engage with things. There are people who would rather read movie reviews than go watch a movie and form their own opinion on it.
Engaging with material will always require something of the audience. We can try to make things as accessible and easy to understand as possible, but that doesn’t “solve” the problem, it just lowers the bar. Lowering the bar isn’t bad, but it seems like the wrong strategy for the current era. I think a better strategy is attempting to foster and enthusiastic community at a local level. Get together with friends on the weekends and mess around with stuff in person, talk about it.
Every moment of our lives is filled with stimulation.
Every moment we aren't forced to focus we disassociate to recover from the constant never ending focus.
We are Great Apes, huge fucking mammals, how do other huge apes spend their time? Literally napping and eating for most of the day. If you forced a fucking gorilla to work a 9-5 they would get zoochosis and all their hair would fall out and they would get depressed and die.
Our bodies and minds aren't evolved enough to handle this rapidly complicating society, it's stressing us out to the point where we lash out at each other and burn out.
Our society is to blame for all of the malbehavors.
Make the manual super short, pretty, interactive, unobtrusive and spread it around the system contextually. Then users might “read” it.
Sounds like a great plan! The arch wiki is waiting for your help ❤️❤️❤️ looking forward to seeing a new take on the manuals 🥰
They’re basically describing a good GUI.
Sorry, I love Linux and wish everybody was on it but no way is Windows “just as hard”. Maybe if you want to look behind the curtain and start tinkering Linux is easier but on the face of it I’d say Linux is somewhere around early Windows XP when it comes to usability for a normal person.
If you had to install Windows every time you bought a PC you'd think that Linux and Windows are comparable. That is the issue, tbh. It's not the RTFM; its because the average PC user had NEVER NEEDED to install an OS. Windows just comes preinstalled on 99% of consumer PCs! For the "year of Linux" to be a reality, there needs to be an easy way to get a retail PC with Linux preinstalled. When I show my Windows-only users my Linux laptop, how quickly it boots up, how many apps I have installed, how easy it is to install and update apps, etc., most say: "Oh wow! I can use this". But when I demonstrate having to choose the boot loader, partition setup, etc., they say, "Nah! I'll just go buy a laptop with Windows!"
Tech nerds have a really hard time understanding technophobia.
Yes everyone can use Linux if they just jump through the right hoops.
The average person does not ever want to jump through a single hoop EVER when it comes to learning a new tech.
Either it works or it isn't worth the time/hassle to learn an entire world of information that is required to use different computers to the extent that linux nerds do.
No, tbh it is.
The thing is that windows has "become the standard"
Where options are, how to fix any problems? You learn windows like you learn a language. German and danish isn't too different, but if you grew up with danish it's going to be harder to learn german.
i picked up linux mint in a weekend; it was incredibly easy to come over from windows.
I know some of the issue is the manuals themselves are out of date. Ive literally had to have something explained to me via the developers Discord. I hate going to a projects Discord in order to find out crucial info.
Sometimes manuals are in 5 different places so you don't know what applies to your specific system.
I usually try and improve the manuals when I do come across this with a quick PR, when I have time.
One of my main problems with Linux is the obsessive amount of text things have to learn or understand it, I have to sig around online for someone who doesn't say rtfm because the manual is extremely long and it's usually a pretty small easy problem. Or I find someone who has the problem and no response or a response that doesn't work in the current version. It took me a couple of days to setup my home Linux entertainment system because of these reasons.
Accessibility matters,it's good to have proper documentation and it also good to make it accessible to everyone and not just the hardcore Linux people.
One of the things I had problems with is with my laptop turning off my external display with the lid was closed, took me a couple of days to find it was in some text file in systemd instead of idk in the power settings?
Linux is hard and it's not user friendly. But better then Windows for me at least, mainly because Linux has more accessibility options now then windows.
Feels like this implies that software is broadly maintained by its general user base when that's simply not how it is outside of really niche projects. Most FOSS software is maintained by a dedicated few who are but a tiny fraction of the user base and are far from being your "average user".
I mean, this is why I have been using Mac since 1984. It's not hard and it pretty much just gets out of the way and lets you do stuff. (Caveat: Gaming. It really doesn't let you do gaming without jumping through a number of hoops.)
The fact Time Machine immediately hassles you to set up a drive and back up your stuff is so great for the average user. I'm sure both Linux and (I know) Windows have something similar, but it's not immediately active and trying to get you to save your stuff. TM has saved my bacon numerous times and I love that it's one click and a fresh HD for users to get it set up.
I will always remember my first experience using MacOS: I am comfortable with computers and a relative needed help with their recently purchased macbook. I had plugged in a USB stick to transfer some files and was done and wanted to eject it. I spent way too much time than I care to admit, trying all possible options, right-clicks, settings, everything imaginable, to eject the damn thing.
It was impossible to me to find the simplest operation with a USB stick, something required to operate it. I capitulated and looked online. The solution? I had to drag and drop the USB stick icon into the trashcan!?!?!?
To this day, I will never understand the absolute ridicule of this and I will never comprehend how anyone is expected to figure it out on their own. And this is from the OS touted as the most user friendly and intuitive. Go figure.
Edit: this was a long while back, no idea how it is nowadays.
Linux is nice, but I wish there weren't so many distros. The entire project should be managed by a central authority that uses violence to punish deviance, like Lenin said.