If I remember correctly you need to unlock the bootloader by taking the back off it and removing a screw. Then install MrChromebox firmware. Then you can flash a normal linux distro. Ignore all the chromebook specific ones they're all dead and unmaintained. Arch with Sway worked perfectly on my 2015 chromebook with 4gb of ram and the worst cpu ever.

If any techy Americans want to see how bad it is, ask random people throughout your day what operating system their computer runs, and discover how many don't know what am operation system is.

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 used to think everyone at least knew VLC media player or Firefox, but nope.

Now I first ask which field, if they're CS they know linux, if art, they know blender, if geosciences they know QGIS, anything else is hard

If you are completely new don't yet. Find someone to guide you if you are experienced =>
https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/getting-started.html I had to do minor soldering for the ones I jailbroke

Some days I'm one of those people and most of all I am tired.

I know this change probably happened gradually over the course of time, but it’s truly shocking to me how many people my age can’t do shit on a computer.

I’m in my mid 40s.

Like, this was understandable when I was a kid doing computer stuff and wowing all the adults - the PC was brand new. But people who are my age NOW grew up with this stuff all around them! Like, you didn’t know how to CLICK? You were born in 1983 what the fuck, Carol!

Like I said in my longer comment I think we should embrace questions in out communities.

Ok so how different is Firefox from any other web browser? Seems like the basics are all pretty similar. Address bar, bookmarks, click links. But maybe I am showing my bias here. What am I missing?

That’s weird because mid 40s (to mid 50s) should be the ideal age to know this stuff right now.

The Kim Jong side eye is great, almost like the Fry futurama meme.

But those notepads. Always with the notepads.

And now it knows what Linux is. It has broken free from its container. God help us all.

Chrome based browsers are riddled with privacy invasive features, data collection etc...

Also, ad blocking in chrome is crippled purposely because Google wants ad revenue.

Firefox has less of these anti features, and there are plenty of Firefox derivatives that have none of them.

i think that's true of most people in any generation, honestly. gen alpha isn't uniquely tech illiterate in my experience, look at all the stuff kids are doing to bypass age verification!

there's also that all of gen alpha are kids or teens, of course most of them are gonna be less knowledgeable about stuff than adults lol

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.

I remember seeing that airplane on the VHS all the time at the video store

In my 2022 highschool journalism class we were instructed to take pictures from a professional camera, plug it into laptop, transfer the files, and make slides from the images.

First step was fine for everyone, but later I saw a 17 year old plug the camera to the laptop; and then they tried downloading their picture from google chrome.

No disrespect, I have my dumb moments too, but I genuienly wonder what the logic was sometimes.

YEP.

I used to work in a library computer lab. It was soul sucking, how many people older than millennials couldn't friggin handle a basic computer. I heard the words "I clicked the 'E' for 'internet'." multiple times A DAY. (Thanks, 1990's Microsoft and No Child Left Behind.)

"CaNt I jUsT uSe My PhOnE?" (Which would be a million more steps on my part...thanks, 2006 apple, and defunding schools.)

The biggest ragebait for me was "I dOn'T kNoW cOmPuTeRs, I'm oLd ScHoOL."

I'm like "PCs have been increasingly commonplace since the mid-1980's. It's currently the 2020's. You're like 56. HOW 'OLD' IS YOUR SCHOOL?! Because somehow you drove a car here!"

I imagine a certain weird kind of "privilege", to have been able to somehow dodge computers and learning this entire time, when they were so often found in homes, schools, and workplaces.

Like it takes significant effort to somehow avoid even an accidental education. HOW?!

It's...infuriating. These rubes can gleefully scroll tiktok and dump all their personal lives into Facebook, but freak out about sending an email.

Many of them were even around to try the Internet during Eternal September and AOL, and now they've exchanged the squishy fat in their skulls for convenient slop.

I'd bend over backwards to patiently teach, but few cared to learn.

Their collective, willful ignorance is why we're fighting a constant uphill battle against attempts to turn the entirety of computing into nothing but a commercialized authoritarian hellscape.

I left that job because if I heard one more "Kids are born so smart with these computers because my (grand)kids can watch their cocomelons all by themselves." I would've snapped and been booked for assault.

Lol /rant

...clearly this is a button for me...I have sought help in the past...

Are we talking about that original one? Where he tried Pop!_OS and tried to install Steam and the package installer gave a big message that something wasn't right, so he chuckled, TL;DR'd and hit "yes anyway" and was shocked he borked his install?

That LTT?

I'm never gonna fault somebody for unfamiliarity, but we should absolutely fault people, especially ones with any tech experience, for not reading helpful messages right in front of them.

well, file:// is a thing. maybe.

I think asking why people use Google these days is totally valid, because it is not even good anymore

it's so incredibly easy to highlight some text and click search that it it shows a profound lack of curiosity and a lot of laziness.

100%. People will 'Google' celebrities, memes, "Why is my poop green?", but also just be like "Somebody hand me an answer." When they risk learning something.

"The Internet is like having access to the Library of Alexandria, and everyone wants to just gossip about each other in the lobby."

--I think I read this on bash.org at some point

Don't quote me on that tho.

--Me.

BUT ALSO like the others said...if somebody's legitimately curious, let's be nice about it because somebody new learning about our thing is a net positive.

The vast majority of people don't give a shit don't care and still would prefer to use it. Hell myself as a technical person in the IT field for 20 plus years would much rather use Google than most of the alternatives out there within the environment that I have to use to do the job I do.

Haha I'm an aspiring game dev and I know a little bit about a ton of software!

...and I suck at most of it. But I can hold a conversation about it at least! :D

P.S: Haven't heard of QGIS tho! My partner used ARCGIS though, and would always get annoyed when I pronounced it "Ark-jizz."

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."

oh no. this tool is too good.

Don't even get me started on how many people don't even know what an address bar is. They Google everything.

Psh, I've been on Linux for almost 20 years and I'm a guitarist lol

I said "web browser" when talking to a mac user. They had noo idea what I was talking about till I said safari xd.

i am reminded about this one time i was doing desktop support at a hospital. super smart doctor was having a problem and i asked them to recreate the problem for me

oh they did... and instantly clicked the error away when it showed up and then instantly looked at my for an answer

i asked them to do it again, same

i was flabbergasted... i had to point out that i need to know what that error was

"oh it's the same thing it always says" was the reply

thankfully i understood the the workflow and asked to sit and recreated the error again.... AND guess what? IT FUCKING TOLD THEM EXACTLY HOW TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM

don't forget that some of chrome is encrypted and only Google gets to see the sauce

where as all of Firefox is available to look at, but it's a mess of years and years of building, so it's impossible to understand unless you're dedicated

Then you have some young people going back to flip phones... they're likely the ones getting laptops, possibly even refurb.

That's feels absurdly high. I was feeling over confident thinking maybe 10%...

just one loop they don't know about all the others

wow i would hide a note in my chest cavity before they do surgery on me
a bloody slip of paper hidden within my ribcage, enscribed "learn how to read, idiot!"

Both. Neither are what I would expect to be the new users fault. The warning message was vauge. You are about to do something potentially harmful is a warning that comes up on a ton of things like deleting a user or a folder. usually you think about what you're doing an if you know what you're doing then you proceed. He thought he was just installing steam and so he proceeded.

I'm on the edge of that, it started existing while I was in college, but was called Phoenix, and then Firebird. It didn't have the name Firefox until I had graduated.

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 😅 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.

On the third hand if people didn't constantly ask this, those search results would not exist, especially for more obscure queries.

Reddit became the #1 source for search engines for a reason

I think more people would know "windows" rather than "the Microsoft one" ? As a layperson we always called it windows 😅 I think people know Microsoft office but I don't know that they would refer to their OS as "microsoft".

I've noticed this even in gen z. Everything is just an app and having a laptop is less common so all they seem to know is phone/tablets which just have apps that work lol. Their troubleshooting skills go as far as "turn it off and back on". If that doesn't work...do it again. Otherwise... it's broken and they need a repair shop or a new phone 😅

Obviously a generalisation but something I've noticed as a millennial. Older gen x/boomers and Gen Z's seem to struggle more with basic computer skills (or what millennials just grew up with so it seems fairly basic!) I'm not particularly techy but I'm always asked by those people (zs and boomers, some older xs) how to do shit on the office computers.

oh whoops

I can assure you there are lots of people in computer science that don't know what linux, foss or firefox are.

you could have a camera host a local web server lol

... i guess i've kinda done that in first robotics (although that was a live feed)

Perhaps theyd be less annoyed it you pronounced it "arse-jizz"?

maybe orcaslicer for 3d printing people? seems like the most popular nowadays, although it's getting so fragmented with every manufacturer's own slicer branch..

yeah, this is hard

oh, people who do streaming or youtubing stuff probably know OBS

there's also probably a certain demographic for audacity

Tbh depending on what subreddit and how long ago you saw that comment, it makes sense. I can't see the average 2010s techbro redditor that I remember not knowing what Linux is, but the 2020s more normie redditor, I could.

Don’t quote me on that tho.

–Me.

endash MonkeMischief