MystikIncarnate

I'm pretty sure they're saying that customization, while present in Linux, is not accessible to most because of a lack of GUI options to configure a nontrivial number of the customization settings.

This is correct. I work with the "average user" of technology daily as IT support, and honestly, they don't give any shits at all about why it's messed up, or what needs to be done to correct the problem. Box broken, make fix.

The argument that I think the poster is trying to make is that, if a user needs to do any self troubleshooting, which is basically inevitable with technology at the moment, having to use a CLI to get things done is undesirable for the average person. They barely want to bother opening control panel in Windows (or the new "settings" app.... Ugh.) nevermind understand any of it.

Box broken. Make fix.

IMO, this is a demonstration of the problem. You're blaming the poster/their equipment. Rather than any real solution to the problem the defacto answer is "well, it works for me so what's wrong with you?"

I've never heard this kind of toxicity from other communities (like the apple/Windows crowds). Often you'll get useful answers indicating what to check or pointing to another resource. There's always the chance that the hardware is busted, but let's face it, in the modern era, that's far less likely to happen now than it was even 10 years ago.

Immediately blaming the user for their issue isn't going to solve the problem, nor does it endear any average user to the Linux community or the Linux OS. This attitude is not going to help adoption even if the posters concerns are invalidated by newer/better drivers/software, and all they need to do is update, and/or try again.

This kind of statement actively harms Linux adoption.

Exactly this. And pretty much everyone here is a techie in some way, shape, or form.

Why does anyone think that a non-tech would take the time to troubleshoot their system the way we do? A user would hit their first issue and in the process of trying to solve it, just go and buy a MacBook.

This isn't going to endear people to Linux.

We will not win the majority of the market with Linux in it's current form. We need better integration and package management. Self repairing subsystems. We need Linux to basically fix itself when these ridiculous issues come up that non techs simply can't be arsed to try to fix.

There's a long way to go before pushing Linux on anyone outside of tech circles. Unless you want to be the 24/7 free tech support, it's easier just to throw a cheap Windows system or Mac at them and let them deal with it instead.

I hate the term "it just works" because it's almost never true, but I can say that for non techs, Windows and Mac "just work" more often than Linux does.

I love Linux. I love everything about it. From the origin story, the ability to make your system lean and clean, running at optimal performance, and being able to adjust every knob and setting to my heart's content. I love it. But I'm a realist. All the things I love about Linux, are largely reasons that non techs would hate Linux.

I can't tell you how pissed I was when they did they. They invalidated so many links to solutions.

Granted, there was a lot of useless slop on there too, mostly from eol versions of Windows like 2000, millennium edition....

They threw all of it away, both good and bad, without warning. Without any opportunity for anyone to archive it. WTF Microsoft.

To their credit, their new documentation seems to be much better, they actually have useful help articles on not only how to do something, but also explaining the mechanisms, requirements and limitations of things. Not everything is in their new docs but I have to give credit where it's due, the technical document writers are doing good work.

With all that being said, it doesn't mean that Windows, or Microsoft are on a good trajectory.

Their new operating systems and updates are some of the worst updates and changes I've seen to their systems. Adding ads and basically spying on paying customers...

There are some controversial changes I'm in favor of, like the TPM requirement. A lot don't realize it but Apple integrated a TPM in basically everything they make over the years. The migration was slow but it happened almost silently, without anyone really noticing. All major smartphones have some version of a TPM, so the last bastion of not having/needing one is the PC market.

The PC market has known they should include this stuff for years before Windows 11 was released. If you go and look at mid to high end motherboards, even for custom/retail units, there are at least TPM headers on most of them. OEMs knew this was coming and instead of just integrating it into their product, like everyone else did, they made it an optional feature. Since nobody knew what the fuck a TPM is, nobody bought into that option. Now millions of computers are destined for ewaste because manufacturers couldn't be bothered to add a small IC to the system without being obligated to do so by someone like Microsoft. An entire industry of technology has this one thing that nobody even fucking knows exists, and they're the hold out.

.... And everyone is mad at Microsoft about it.

I'm not. TPM chips are a good addition to systems. It shouldn't even be a debate. I blame OEMs for not bothering to add them when they could have/should have, and making it mandatory on all prebuilts, all retail motherboards, all boutique systems, all custom builds... Everything. The cost difference would have been into the tens of dollars at most. It would have barely made any difference at all.

Anyways. I'll stop now.

This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.

It's great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you'll have to do is remove it and re-add it.

If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there's a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.

Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks.

Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it's Windows... It works, but it's not great.

I'm all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I've stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can't justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.

This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it's simply more work that I don't care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that's another discussion entirely.

Please don't take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there's a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems... More that printing doesn't work or something like that...

It's hard to comprehend how things have simply inflated over the years. We're dealing with massive numbers now, compared to 1970-1980....

That being said, even with the much higher numbers, we should consider the fact that as the numbers have gone up, so has safety technology.

So the cars should be expected to be safer year over year. The percentage of failures should be less.

That being said, just because it's a smaller percentage doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't care about it happening.

In the end, I find your comment to be very useful in gaining a bit of perspective. While it might not fundamentally change my opinion, or anyone else's, it's good to understand the magnitude of these numbers, in comparison to the overall volume of vehicles out there.

IT guy checking in.

The only time I've even seen drive temp sensor alarms is on server raid arrays and other similar hard drives/SSDs.... Never in my life have I seen one available on a consumer device, nor have I seen any alarm for and drive temp, go off. It just doesn't happen.

IMO, this is one of those language barriers where people call their computer chassis (and everything in it) the "hard drive".

Applying that assumption, their updated statement is: His computer over heated.

Idk what kind of shit system he's running on that 60k rows would cause overheating, but ok.

Oh, I'm not saying anything about the quality of their product. I'm only discussing the popularity of their product. Enshittification comes for every company, and when subway started operating at a much larger scale than they used to, in part because of Jerrod, suddenly, saving 5 cents on something (and making it shittier) would actually result in millions of dollars extra on the earnings sheet.

Before, the 5 cents wasn't worth much because quantities were too low to matter, and the better quality item could be a reason that people kept coming back. But they started to expand and grow before Jerrod was brought on, he was just extra jetfuel for the whole thing.

To be fair, the spider will likely be responsible for the deaths of many other insects, but honestly, I'm ok with that. They can live in my house rent free if they keep the other bugs from making my home their home.... And they don't crawl on me. That's just begging to be killed....

Spiders are bros.

Due to the limited amount of information stored in QR codes, it's generally a shortened URL, so usually that doesn't tremendously help at informing where you are supposed to end up.

If you're trying to do something unique, that you don't normally do, which IMO is the entire use-case of QR codes (go here to do the thing), and you're expecting.... Say, a website for paying for parking, then.... It wouldn't be hard for an attacker to create their own mock-up of the site, grab the URL and feed it through a shortener, and encode that into a QR code, printed on stickers, that they them plaster over the legit QR codes.

Unless you're looking at the URL, and let's face it, most people don't, the sites are similar enough that they are just handing their credit card info over to an attacker, thinking they're paying for parking.

Of course, that's just one of many examples.

Personally, I don't generally trust anything I scan. Most of the time, the QR code has a website name printed next to it, and I'll scan the QR, because if it works and goes where I want to end up, so much the better, so I will follow the link, and if it lands at any URL that isn't what is displayed on the label with the QR code, I back out and type in the URL by hand.

I expect exactly zero users to have the same caution and attention to detail.

For some reason this didn't really occur to me.

I don't see QR codes as a potential attack vector... At least, I didn't.... Until now.

It's weird because I'm usually the one pointing out issues with everyone else's plans.... I didn't realize I still had blind spots on this. Oh well, I'm only human.