8mo ago

Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our unshittified experience

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Look, I agree, but let's not kid ourselves on our experience not being shitty too 🤣. We're capable of using it only because we're really good at computers, but there are literally millions of people who don't even know or care about knowing how to change desktop background
- there are literally millions of people who don’t even know or care about knowing how to change desktop background
  I'll cede "know", but I heavily dispute "care".
  Plenty of Boomers are painfully aware of how awful the internet has become over the last decade. Hell, they got to experience it before the rest of us precisely because folks who never knew how to migrate off AOL or Yahoo got enshitified first.
  My own mom hates using the computer in no small part because she takes too much of what she sees at face value and ends up with tons of spyware, bloat, and scams rampaging across her laptop. I have to clean it out for her every few months, and I'm constantly fighting with her over what's actually garbage and what she's convinced she needs.
  But the end result is that she just... won't check her email because she hates it. She won't answer her phone because she's afraid of scam callers. She won't trust ANY website, so she doesn't use Amazon or Uber or Netflix.
  It isn't that people like my mom don't care. They care immensely, because modern technology has become unusable for people like her.
  
  Put linux on her computer, i think it would make her a lot less annoyed
  
  I've never tried to install linux on an Apple before.
  
  If it is an intel based machine, it's no really much different than any other machine. The only difference would be in how you get to the boot menu. That's about it.
  
  I'd have to check the specs, but I believe its an M1 or M2.
  
  If it is M1 or M2 Asahi Linux is the way to go, but it is still in development and probably not ready for your mom
  
  Does lemmy have any communities for unintentional "yo mamma" jokes?
  
  probably not ready for your mom
  leg stretches
  cracks neck
  This is the moment I have been training for...
  
  Linux on an Intel-based MacBook Air was my daily driver for years. It worked perfectly fine; battery life was lower than on macOS though.
  
  I have. It mostly works, but the network drivers are a pain at best and simply non-existent at worst, often forcing you to add a USB dongle.
  
  I think this is a too much pessimistic point of view. People with difficulties will be people with difficulties, but the fact is that the boomers actually are a little incompetent at it, simply hecause they had to deal with many more pressing things. They wouldn't be stupid to learn as much as your average person wouldn't be, they're just understandably lazy. I too am lazy, so I'll never cook as well as my grandma.
- It's not too bad. They probably wouldn't have Windows either if they had to set it up themselves. My dad has been using Ubuntu for years, but he doesn't know it. It's just a laptop that works as far as he's concerned.
- I would argue there are facets to many people's life that they leave "at default" because they "don't care enough to fix it how they want".
  Take random Linux User XYZ; They still have to nudge their front door to get it open after unlocking, because they're not a home improvement afficionado that wants to look up door repair videos on YouTube and attempt to put a stabilizer of some kind on the hinge. Or, they might accept the terrible interface in their car because they don't know of easy ways to get it replaced with something simpler. Or, they don't have their money invested anywhere because they don't like/trust researching investment tips.
  For us, it's just that computers are something we'll always tune to our preference. For others, it's other things.
- I just saw a post the other day from a guy who dumped fedora because it couldn't be installed with a Bluetooth mouse.
  Allegedly the installer requires a mouse click, and he had no other pointing device. They also said the keyboard navigation was not helpful and was also unable to switch to a console to manually pair his mouse.
  
  I think it might be possible to get around all their menus with just tab and enter, but it's less of a pain with a mouse last I tried.
  He's right, the installer should either make mice work or have a GUI that doesn't expect them.
  
  I think I vaguely remember something about that, but I would be pretty upset if the keyboard navigation was unusable. It is almost as bad as the stupid mouse enabled BIOSs that never work. It doesn't even work on the Dell laptop I have for work. The keyboard navigation is always extra special in those cases and involves a lot of button mashing to get to the correct thing, if I can figure it out at all.
  I don't use wired mice either and had to dig the old gaming mouse out recently so I could get to some menus on a new machine to pair the mouse. I have done the mouse pairing thing through console and it isn't the best experience, especially if you are trying to figure out if things are working in the first place. For me, I could figure it out. For a new user, you are asking a lot.
  Just give me an old school OS installer with simple menus, easy keyboard navigation, and the bare minimum guidance needed to not entirely fuck it up.

228 comments