I dare to say most Linux users know more about windows problem solving than the average windows user
That’s only true for a time. After you stop dealing with Windows for enough years, you just forget the bullshit and you become almost as clueless as the guy asking for help. You’re really good at Linux though. So when they ask for help you are all like:
But with a less annoying and more kidnapper vibe where you’re withholding your valuable help till the bastard pays ransom. “You want help? Switch to Linux.” You don’t care if they don’t.
Just knowing how to use Google/ddg/etc to search for a solution to your problem makes you better at troubleshooting than most people. Spending 30 seconds to find a relevant link can make you seem like a genius to a lot of people.
Seriously. I work in IT (mostly Linux) but whatever OS 90% of the Job is knowing how to properly phrase problems for Google and then you just need to know how/where to apply solutions.
I used to work with supporting the general public with computer usage. It was pretty much a nightmare.
I basically decided that, were I ever to become a benevolent dictator, the words “It just says ‘error’”, barring the rare exception where “error” and “ok” were the only things on screen…would result in immediate revocation of citizenship and deportation to wherever a dart landed on the map. If they were really nice, we’d let them throw the dart, or designate a champion to throw the dart for them.
This could work out really well for them! Either way, support staff wouldn’t have to put up with it from that individual anymore.
(EDIT: No, the middle of the Atacama / Sahara Desert, the poles, R’lyeh, nor the ocean, would be valid. I said benevolent.)
…Yeah I’m still working with a mental health professional untangling what that job did to me. Lol
This sounds completely fair and benevolent. A lesser dictator would have them thrown into the pit of despair.
Unless most “relevant” answers point to a Microsoft help forum with shit answers.
I have to use windows for work and I hate this bullshit.
I was going to make a joke saying “What, you don’t appreciate Andre Da Costa telling you to reboot your computer?” but tbh the reason I do remember him is because he often had actual solutions.
Crazy that out of the thousands of Microsoft MVPs, there was exactly one that knew how to make your Windows shit work, and now he’s no longer affiliated with Microsoft either.
I’ve been on Linux exclusively for over 5 years now. I’m starting to struggle with some Windows stuff that I just forgot how to do. But also I’m still shit at Linux. It just works so well that I never really had to learn what’s under the hood.
this is something the common people of these days should hear(read) and know. as many have the misconception of Linux being hard while in trueth it is the opposite.
My elderly, barely tech literate dad has been on Linux for years and he doesn’t even know it
I think another part of this is that you can do a little sleuthing in Linux and generally figure out what’s causing an issue because the error messages are generally helpful!
In Linux, running a buggy / non-starting app in terminal will usually spit out something understandable. I think once we figure this out it spoils us a little.
Windows on the other hand, with anything that actually requires intervention, seems to go out of its way to be obtuse and goes all “contact your system administrator” about it. You spend more time trying to look up and cipher their “error codes” and dealing with unhelpful “support” than figuring the problem. (Which usually involves “nuke and pave a driver” anyway. Lol)
Yep. Haven’t used windows besides poking at other people’s machines and trying to figure out wtf is going on in about 20 years.
I’m just as clueless as you bud, but I’ve got a bootable Linux drive I can plug in. Come on, you know you wanna… It’ll be great, you’ll love it. It’s free
You can learn Windows it just takes a little effort. If you spend some time you will end up knowing half the tricks in the book.
I just scroll Lemmy and every time someone mentions a Windows fix, I press the little save button.
Maybe for some, but even if you have to keep it up because your work it relatives demand it, Windows ecosystem is essentially impossible to debug when it hits issues and you just have to take guesses as to why the obscure bad behavior is happening.
Windows is better at not needing to be fixed or the first place by self healing, whereas with Linux distributions you have to know how to fix those issues, but once it goes beyond easy to fix issues, Linux is reparable but windows isn’t.
If it isn’t blatantly obvious, it didn’t fix itself, and SFC didn’t fix it, then they always say reinstall…
Dealing with Microsoft’s bullshit has always been one of the most pursuasive arguments for Linux.
I dare to say most Linux users know more about windows problem solving than the average windows user
Well, your Windows skills are being represented by Bennett, who is no John Matrix, but also
isn’t a standard civilian. And he does have that chain mail vest…that separates him from the normies too.90% of problem solving is just Googling stuff and screwing with settings, which isn’t particularly Linux specific.
Under Linux you find the root cause and fix it.
Under Windows you just try everything until something magically works.
That’s exactly what I tell tinkerers.
You can be a Windows IT person for a decade and not really know anything except how to copy and paste something.
You do the same for Linux, and at some point, everything clicks.
Technically that’s not entirely true. I’ve met some talented Windows Adkins and some terrible Linux people. If someone has been using Linux for decades they tend to become complacent and errogant. Good luck trying to get them to even acknowledge containers or that systemd. It sad since both containers and systemd have been around for decades at this point.
Give me someone who is really to learn. Those are the best people to work with.
Experience with Linux administration just rocks, frankly working with servers this past month has been a very eye opening experience and I learnt a lot, just thinking about what I may gather from a year or a decade of work is immense for me
ATLEAST I won’t go hungry, haha
Except the success chances are significantly higher on Linux and It’s easy to find a manual.
Usually there is also documentation of your distro, if not use the documentation of the distro your distro is based off
There is definitely a difference between finding out the registry exists vs having to look up which key to edit
Being able to find a solution instead of a huge amount of bloat is Linux specific.
Even the average windows gamer doesn’t know shit anymore.
I remember learning a lot of stuff as a side effect of Morrowind modding. :D
In my experience professional Windows admins tend to be click ops guys. Trying to tell them that they don’t need a GUI is impossible.
They are also the ones who will lock onto legacy ways of doing things. Try telling them that the thing they are trying to do is in the settings app.
Then they’re shit admins, I’m always using Command Prompt and Powershell because the GUI fell short somewhere.
Also
Try telling them that the thing they are trying to do is in the settings app.
There’s a reason for that, the settings app is trash the second you need to do something beyond the basics and doesn’t cover enterprisey things whatsoever
Just this week: The Settings app on my work Windows computer had a completely non-functional search feature. The other thing I was trying to set “Choose what happens when you close the laptop lid”, I have still not been able to find it outside of manually going to Windows 7-era control panel.
We hired a IT guy who had a decade of experience with Windows Servers. The dude was not a good fit for our linux-heavy IT team. Didn’t fully know commands or how the OS worked.
He was still a smart dude, and he moved to the AWS team, where there’s a lot more GUI aid.
Why would you hire a Windows admin for Linux? Surely there was a better person.
Oof. To do anything at scale on AWS you’re still gonna need to do a lot of CLI, yaml, and json.
On the DevOps, and scaling side, yes.
But not on the general maintenance side.
I dare to rebuke that
Just install Linux. Should fix most of their Windows problems.
At the expense of an exciting new array of problems!
But now they’re Linux problems and easier to solve!
I know we’re joking about how obnoxious we are when we make this recommendation… But it’s also true. Linux problems are much more likely to be solveable. The proprietary “no serviceable parts within” boxes are much rarer.
It’s a bit of both. I agreeey that Linux problems are actually solvable, but we’re also willing to put up with a lot more because of that. (Admittedly, Window’s enshitification is helping with the last part)
Yeah, the frequency of bullshit problems and just having to accept losing features and gaining advertisements has reached a point of absolute absurdity, it almost feels intentional at this point like they’re trying to see how far they can push people before they’ll leave
I will say however, I’ve encountered a few things that were unsolvable because I wasn’t a professional coder with tons of time on my hands. Unfortunately the only solutions were “attempt workarounds” and “wait. :(”
But at least in that case:
- You can generally narrow down this is the case vs. your own config issues.
- Somebody else has the same problem.
- Barring all that, you can bug report!
I run Tumbleweed though, sometimes things happen. (But it’s still shockingly stable!)
I wouldn’t expect people running Mint or Debian to face this nearly as much.
The particular most recent instance I had:
All my KDE services were crash-restarting on startup because QT didn’t like my drawing tablet or something. Truly bizarre. Bug reporting lead to resolution!
I will say however, I’ve encountered a few things that were unsolvable because I wasn’t a professional coder with tons of time on my hands.
Oh, yeah. That’s still true. I’ve hit those as well.
Though at least with open source stuff, I usually find the issue solved when I try again a year or so later. (Maybe not how I would have solved it, but there’s typically at least more and better options.)
Unironically why I switched my parents to Linux - they don’t touch any important settings so usually the only problems are when they get a new popup / prompt they’ve never seen, which ofc happens a lot more on windows especially when they decide to push some new thing or decide that they want to convince people to enable something new or change a setting that they want people to use.
I also love that if they call me I can just ssh in over tailscale and do whatever needs doing.
YES. I think Windows tries to keep computing “simple” while simultaneously training poor expectations and habits into its users.
“Never listen to these big scary error messages! It’s a scam!” (But also forces full-screen ads and “recommendations” for things to modify your system)
It’s very “It’s only okay when we do it.”
Where are my weather widgets?
Just install one. Likely it won’t have ads.
Funny you say that I saw someone on the bus the other day with a terrible KDE theme.
It looked kind of like Windows 11 but in the worse possible ways. They managed to get the panel to look like Windows 11 but they were using the wrong icons and the wrong Window decorations.
“Did they change that fucking control panel setting/menu again?? Where the fuck is it!”
Control panel is being deprecated in favor of the settings app
And when the Settings app has even 70% feature parity, I’ll stop crying about control panel.
It has well over that plus a decent amount of quality of life features.
Die hard Windows users don’t want to change
Lol, actually a Linux user, but I do fear change. And to be fair, I don’t have accurate stats for feature parity percentage. Maybe it is above 70%. And I actually do use the Settings app often when I have to deal with Windows at work. So I get that it’s actually not terrible, and is slowly getting better.
Regardless, let me just add a secondary IP address to a network interface so I can access a network device using a different IP scheme without losing access to the internet. Oh wait… Settings doesn’t have that feature… It opens Control Panel…
Well, that’s just one instance, no biggie. Now I just need to create partitions on a new disk… Settings got my back right? Oh… No… It needs to open Disk Management…
Whatever, that’s pretty rare anyway. Just gotta rename this printer. Oh, launches control panel again…
My point is this, having to navigate what settings have been migrated, what settings haven’t, and what have been disabled just to force users to try Settings, is a bad experience. Its not fearing change, its growing pains. Just telling people that “control panel is being depreciated” doesn’t solve the fact that this swap is currently making the situation harder, not easier. I look forward to the day where I don’t have to wonder where to find the settings I need to access again.
Leave it to Microsoft to make settings open control panel and control panel open settings.
Terrible design
I kind of forgot about that since I haven’t used Windows in a while.
Whenever I get a tech question its always about how to navigate a gui I am unfamiliar with. And when I can’t give them an answer, they assume I’m actually clueless about technology.
My least favourite technical support calls were with people who didn’t know their own interface and I was having to direct them, blind, to get the information and do the diagnostics I needed.
There were at least a couple of times where I had to ask the customer to describe literally everything they saw on the screen starting at the top left and working their way down.
I sometimes pretend to be one of those people when I get tech support scammers on the phone because I know how tortuous it is.
This is why I always bounce around between all 3 major OS’s (Yes yes, I know Linux distros complicate thongs)
Keeps me flexible, an OS is a tool and you need to use the best tool for the job at hand
I bet that if you stepped away from the computer while removing said thongs they wouldn’t seem so complicated.
I know, right? Gotta take the hands off the keyboard or at least take your eyes off the monitor for a second if you use your teeth.
Don’t tell me what to do, you’re not my Dad!
an OS is a tool
I’ve been supporting Mac, Windows and Linux for years. I find I can only truly keep up with two at a time, so every couple of years I switch windows -> OSX.
I remember the first time I got to work on a Mac (for fun). I was about 9 years old and I just wanted to learn. I seen an option for a ram disk and made it fail to boot.
Luckily my aunt had System 7.5 for Dummies. She was so mad at me.
I had a Quadra not long after that and I loved it.
I kind of skipped the time in between the Apple TV and the first Mac minis :)
I sold a few quadras, They were really advanced for their time.
I was still using my Quadra in 2002. I didn’t stop using it until 68k software stopped being made.
It’s crazy but I remember it being a 640. Those apparently don’t exist so it must have been a 630 or a 650.
It was not a tower, it sat flat so it couldn’t have been the 640av.
This is driving me nuts lol.
I used to bounce between them for the same reason, but nowadays the right tool, for me, is always a Debian variant, anyway. (or Arch, counting SteamDeck).
- My gaming is on SteamDeck now.
- My Office bullshit works fine on Android, and Linux. There’s always been a community for this. There’s a learning curve to get professional results, but it’s so much less hassle once mastered.
- Remote management is so much nicer with Linux. I still deal with some of that crap on Windows, and the Windows admins go on about how they need Windows to be able to remotely manage. I bite my tongue, but I feel embarrassed for them every time they do so. Remote management is about 20 years more mature on Linux than on Windows.
- Artistic stuff, interestingly, also Linux, for me. (I never got into Adobe suite, I felt wary of their monopoly early.) But GnuIMP and Krita get the job done, for me.
Edit: And I can still collaborate. Office cloud tools work on Linux in the browser, nowadays.
Yea for personal professionals it’s fine, but my career is in IT, so staying flexible is important for multiple fronts lol I’m just as comfortable in a Linux heavy position as I am in a Windows or MacOS and being able to do all 3 makes mixed environments a hell of a lot easier.
Remote management is so much nicer with Linux. I still deal with some of that crap on Windows, and the Windows admins go on about how they need Windows to be able to remotely manage. I bite my tongue, but I feel embarrassed for them every time they do so. Remote management is about 20 years more mature on Linux than on Windows.
For terminal stuffs, for Remote Desktop, all the Linux solutions are…not that great, they work. Microsoft’s RDP otoh is fantastic, high quality, low latency and easy to pass through USB devices, Webcams, mics etc. right out of the box
Not sure what your Windows guys mean by needing Windows to remotely manage Windows, there’s plenty of cross platform RDP clients. The only time I’ve needed Windows to manage Windows is for very enterprisey Windows-specific things, like Active Directory or group policies
so staying flexible is important for multiple front
Yeah. I do work to stay current in the big 3, for the same reason. That used to mean alternating my home setup as well, but now I only do it on my employers dime. I think the reason is mix of my having less patience for proprietary interoperability issues at home, and of Linux just being able to do everything I care about.
for Remote Desktop, all the Linux solutions are…not that great, they work
Agreed. I recently bought a nice little portable monitor for home, for exactly this reason. If Linux RDP was a better experience, I might not have bothered. That said, I even do my grandparent’s remote IT support from my Debian machine now, regardless of whether they’re on Windows or Mac. So I’m pretty satisfied with it where I absolutely need RDP.
Not sure what your Windows guys mean by needing Windows to remotely manage Windows,
Yeah. Many of them are point and clickers. Some of us are mentoring them on expanded tooling available. Their interest varies, which is fair. I don’t want their job, anyway, so it’s not my problem how efficiently or inefficiently they do it.
But Windows is never the best tool for any job. Unless of course you only know that one tool like most people do.
There is a lot of software that only runs on Windows that has no viable alternatives. For private use, the vast majority of people would be fine without Windows, but so many professional applications require it.
You don’t work in IT do you?
How about for Digital Audio Workstation duty?
windows is very complicated and inconsistent if you get to look under the hood
As a Linux user, I shit on Linux tutorials being obtuse because the solution is often like “then sudo [command]” and now run these 8 other commands. But at least with Linux commands, a smart person can piece together what’s going on.
Windows, it’s even worse. It’s like a bunch of black boxes talking to other black boxes so after you right click to enable that property and add this registry key, you then have to reboot into your bios to turn on “Fuckboi” mode and take photos of your asshole for verification, then log into your Microsoft account to get this Powershell script and now you can finally see your children again.
And to add insult to injury, many of the issues in Windows are just “I don’t want to do this the way MS wants everyone to do this.”
There is still not a neat replacement for wmic in PowerShell. If I want to do the equivalent of
wmic product where name="some shitware" call uninstallit looks like this:$instance = Get-CimInstance win32_process -Filter "Name = 'powershell_ise.exe'" $instance | Invoke-CimMethod -MethodName 'Terminate'Like how the hell is that easier to understand Microsoft? Everything else in PowerShell follows a general pattern of Upper Camelcase.
That’s just one instance of what I’ve found working with pwsh at work that leaves me thinking wtf
i also hate powershell, batch all the way. @echo off i my anthem now
I used to love batch as a kid. One time I was feeling devious so I wrote out a little script that deletes system32 and I emailed it to a classmate. I immediately burst into tears after hitting send and called her to let her know to delete the email.
Just like the enterprise software it is.
sfc /scannow
chkdsk /f
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Pray that it works.You want to first fix the offline image and then run sfc.
Of course that won’t do much if you have a bad ram which is likely what causes that corruption in the first place.
What are you talking about? I love playing fun little games like “find out which of the three control panels has the option I need” and “trying not to click on the web results in local search”.
I love how some control panel options now open settings and they still don’t have fucking consistent theming
Do clean install
“Where are my apps?”
what the fuck is an app?
What is is?
Just install Linux on a full wipe.
Whatever their windows problem was, it’s gone and they’ll never ask you again.
Why is everyone poking fun at Vernon Wells? Because he’s intentionally being goofy for the picture?
Why is everyone poking fun at Vernon Wells?
because he didn’t win 7 Mr. Olympia titles - that’s why!
Leave discount Freddie Mercury alone!
He holds the distinction of fighting in the most comically lopsided boss fights ever filmed. Arnold circa 1984 vs my neighbor Larry who always lets me borrow his ladder and smokes a mean brisket while drinking 12 beers.
I always had a windows system around (for gaming, so it was kind of mandatory for a while), so I had a minimum level of know-how to fix most common issues on windows.
I’ve been telling people asking me for help that I would never be able to help them with W11, as I won’t be touching it at all. Not even for work. It finally convinced quite a few that they did not need anything more than a linux box with a browser and libreoffice. Feels nice.
It depends. I’m Carl Weathers with XP.
Baby, you got a stew goin’
Show me an Apple OS and I go full Boomer Mode. It’s embarrassing.
Let me download this thing real qui-
Edge Crashes
Okay let me just ope-
Store crashes
Nvm ill just che-
Settings crashes
How about control panel?
actually opens
Okay cool now we just need to che-
Menu no longer exists because it moved to Settings
Screw it let’s check google on my phone
sfc /scannow
Okay I’m out
