99
foss nerds stop being condescending to those who don't know the same things you do challenge (impossible)
(files.catbox.moe)
alt text
An edit of xkcd 2501, "Average Familiarity":
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked "who still uses google these days?")
made with this neat tool
Yes? The number of people I met in college that doesn't even heard about firefox was surprising.
These days I'd expect large number of people in college to not even know what a file system is. I've read articles where professors complain about this.
No no, not like "NTFS / BTRFS / ReiserFS / TempleFS / EXT4..."
...like..."Folders are how you organize files. And you can rename files. The extension tells you what the file is."
That's wild. I remember when i was in high-school there were quite a few people that installed firefox on the school computer just to be quirky, since it was one of the few programs they would let you install on it lol.
Some people also don't care much one way or another. If you swap the icons and set the same home screen, they'll happily use any browser.
This is my take on a lot of Linux distros nowadays. Give them Ubuntu or Fedora KDE and a windows skin and most people won't realise anything's changed.
I tried that with my mom's computer (with consent, ofc). The only thing keeping that machine on Windows is a niche embroidery software that apparently is missing a custom cursor when running through WINE. It's called "Embrilliance" if anyone wants to look into it. I've also thought about running it through WinBoat, but I've been too busy to test it, as of current.
You can't use it without the custom cursor? Doesn't seem important
It's actually super important, the cursor in question is the one that you're supposed to get when you select "Freehand draw", without it you'd basically just have stock designs.
It could be worth trying to run it using Proton instead of just stock WINE. Obviously no guarantee it would work but there's a lot that's been put into the Proton project to make games work better and something like a custom cursor seems in the realm.
https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher
I'd try it in the umu launcher project.
I did try running it through Steam, but I'll give umu a try as well.
One relatively bright person I knew in college asked me "what's this Linksys you're always talking about?" I had recently setup my laptop to dual boot Arch alongside Windows, as this was back when you couldn't really play most games on Linux.
I'm going to assume that you didn't study a STEM subject?
I can assure you there are lots of people in computer science that don't know what linux, foss or firefox are.
Oh man... I mean, I thought everyone knew about Linux at least. Firefox, I mean, maybe yeah I've definitely met people that don't know about Firefox, but I think a lot of people have at least heard of Linux. No? Damn...
I've tried explaining what Linux is to people, and when I mention it's an operating system, its not uncommon to hear the response, "What's an operating system?" π
You overestimate the amount of people who actually use a computer.
I don't think so lol. I'm not a super techy person and the only reason I know Linux is because of my high school boyfriend lol, 20 years ago, who used it. I think he set it up on one of my computers at one point too. I don't think I've ever heard anyone else (offline) talk about Linux π definitely not a common knowledge thing.
It's actually been pretty interesting watching some of the stuff he used back 20 years ago that has started being spoken about more commonly that were just "nerd shit" back then lol. Vpns are common knowledge now, they were definitely "nerd shit" back in the day. Plex is widely used. I'm also glad I still have access to the private tracker he got me onto because that's grown big too, easy as.
But Linux? Nope. I don't think that's entered the common knowledge base. People know windows, android and maybe iOS. I don't even think a lot of people would know what "open source" means.