this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
1413 points (95.6% liked)
Linux
48731 readers
1433 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My grandma never lived to see Windows or Linux. But my mom who's in her 80s learned Linux pretty much instantly when moving from XP to Mint.
Yeah, but XP was on the tail end of operating systems that still needed their users to understand what's going on. Back then, you HAD to be "tech savvy" (at least relative to today) in order to get your computer set up. People understood what a file was. What a file format was. They needed to understand what folders were on their computer and how to get to them from different applications. The kind of knowledge that you'd think people still have.
Since then every single UX designer has been working towards making everything "just work". So, at this point people just assume that technology is doing what they intend it to do in their heads. Everything auto opens, auto updates, auto installs, and auto syncs. In modern operating systems you don't control over anything, but everything is done for you. Obviously that's not really the case, but that's the design. And now, most people don't even have a desktop in their home. Most people do everything from their phone and use a tablet for anything that the phone is too small for. And because of that, many people coming out of school don't know what a "file folder" even is. What it means to put a file onto a flash drive and move it to a computer. It's old people nonsense to them.
I hope that we can bridge this gap, but I don't know how that would work.
You make a very valid point, I didn't think of that problem before. My mother learned how to use a PC back in 1988 when we had XT and Wordstar. It's obvious that she understands the basics of OS and filesystems, but I guess that skill is now becoming quite fringe.