Yeah the avg people won't even know about the TempleOS

While I don't disagree with this in principal, it's important to distinguish between stupidity and ignorance. Most people don't know about OSes because they've never needed to learn more than how to do basic tasks, and so are ignorant of how they work, what alternatives are out there, and why someone might choose one. This is very different to being incapable of those technicalities if shown a good reason to do so.

Okay, imagine Linux. But (most of) the whole thing developed at once rather than just the kernel and tools separately.

AND:

• GNU licenses: companies use code and contribute because it may help
• BSD licenses: companies that use code shouldn't contribute because it sucks

macOS

I touch computers every day - with my hands! Anyone else want to admit to it?

Most of them haven't even set up Arch

You could read that comment differently: People are getting lost when the icons aren't in the same place anymore on the same fucking OS. Just happened my dad yesterday. Accidentally moved a folder into another one and didn't find it anymore. Panically called me.

That’s kind of an astounding anecdotal batch of experience, you sure more of those folks don’t know Linux better?

Your dad seems miles ahead knowing windows versions compared to the average person.

Same position and agree

Wait so which is more accurate? Unix-based or unix-like? Also as someone who thought they knew this stuff already, what is "the SUS spec" or are you making some pun on suspect?

I had to describe a web browser to someone the other day at work. In the end they had to go to their IT department for help.

Though sometimes IT departments we deal with aren't much better. Combination of ultra paranoid security policies and incompetence. Then a panicked end user who I need to try and work out how to help with the restrictions in place by their IT department. Some of our customer notes are amusing, stuff like "RDP still works onto X and you can connect to the SQL server from there, don't tell them".

I always think about the effort to create a bear proof trash can in Yosemite that gave us the phrase “there is significant overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist”.

I use Plan 9 BTW

I finger my keyboard daily.

No shit I did this for my partners grandparent. All they needed was the browser to do shit like Facebook and paying bills. Slapped Linux Mint on their near dinosaur laptop with a Windows theme and they were none the wiser.

The average person distro hopped at least 3 times before they settled on Mint.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html

"There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

In the case of the browser, they are still only describing use, not brand name.

no way

1. The one preinstalled on their computer.
2. The one preinstalled on their phone.
3. The one preinstalled on their smart TV.
4. ???

Is it Georg again?

I wasn't being serious, but I guess you can add in preinstalled on their gaming console

someone told me their sound for meetings was coming out of their hard drive the other day. I knew what they meant but still.

now if it was a floppy drive I could believe them

Hold up, what did they mean because I cannot translate that

My dad has been running Linux Mint for almost 10 years now and he doesn't know that LibreOffice isn't "Linux."

Are these really overestimations?

So are you Mac or windows?

I'm not a crappy OS.

If it makes you feel better, you’re probably overestimating their interest in whatever it is.

Yeah, right. Because everyone is dumb. But definitely not the people here though. The people here are all geniuses!

I swear I saw a comment around here that said "the average user does not want bloatware like systemd on their computer" and I just kind of wonder if we are all living on the same planet sometimes.

They don't know what a browser is. That's just "The Internet".

Edit: I got whooshed.

They know macOS as an "easier alternative for normies"

Questionable amount of knowledge for techies if they aren't aware that MacOS has a nearly full-blown FreeBSD inside. Then again, discourse on Reddit and Lemmy is the same way. But a lot of webdevs love MacOS, which also leads to tons of open-source utils for it, that I don't have to download as binaries from a site last updated in 2016.

There's a sorta-famous photo from CERN, from early 2010s, with a room full of folks who work there, all with Macbooks. A dude I know went to CERN sometimes for his university, and came to me with a question of why he's seen so many Macs there. I explained that it's a Unix but with a GUI made for people.

Probably the desktop tower. I've seen many people call it a hard drive, but I'm actually not sure how common it is to have speakers in the tower.

Non-technical people will sometimes refer to whatever piece of plastic or metal that contains electronic components of any sort but does not consist of an LCD display or obvious input device as a “hard drive”. This includes desktop boxes, external modems, docking stations, UPS systems, teleconferencing platforms, and far, far more. If it has das blinkenlights anywhere on it you can expect it to be referred to as a “hard drive” at some point. It will save you a headache if you just mentally translate their “hard drive” to mean “hardware” instead.

Alternatively, if it is a display device (an LCD monitor), expect that to be called either “the computer”, “the server”, or “the internet”.

Yeah, I think it's a fair characterization, I just wanted to clarify that it is indeed based on Unix.

To my knowledge I've never used BSD. I didn't move away from Windows until I, like you say, just didn't have the bandwidth to do more than one experimental thing with my computer. Windows pushed me out a few years back, and I went with Linux because of the breadth of support.

I've got tons of time to do research, though. By which I mean read random Wikipedia articles in the bathroom, TBH. I found a big tree somewhere on there a long time ago, showing the progression from PDP Unix all the way to the latest FreeBSD (with Linux as a little tag on the side, lol).

I've heard "what is Windows?" from a Windows user.

...to be fair, it's not like the name is plastered all over one's experience with their PC most of the time, so how would they know?

Both are accurate. Something can be Unix-like (using many of the same paradigms and keywords and such) without being derived from the source code of Unix, but BSD actually is originally based on that code. Linux is Unix-like but not Unix-based. BSD is both, as is MacOS. Windows is neither.

SUS means "Single Unix Specification," I think. When it went from being an OS to being a spec, that's what they called the certification.

Though "SUSpect" would be a great pun on the idea, yeah. Big "Among Us" opportunities.

Ah, one of my first jobs involved coming in earlier than everyone else and starting up the inventory management program on the AS/400. Never even saw the machine itself, just connected via command prompt through my desktop and typed in some instructions.

Thanks for the writeup, I have trouble falling asleep on some days, and rereading it a couple times will definitely help.

Anyway, not sure what SUS is, but MacOS was indeed certified as a Unix. They also keep tools and APIs compatibility with FreeBSD so stuff is portable between them, and not just for shits and giggles.

Computer scientists don't understand this. This is systems.

Seriously, I have met computer scientists who admit they don't know how the computer works, but simply is processional math.

One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking.

Computer science doesn't mean you know how to a use a computer; astronomers and microbiologists don't know much about telescopes and microscopes.

And CS students have the dumbest "smart" questions.

I mean he was trying to run software which listed those as compatible, so he just copied the list :3

But yeah, thinking about windows versions at all is already a step ahead some

if you're used to the command line, a lot will seem familiar at a first glance

Until one runs into “unknown option --help” and the multitude of other quality-of-life improvements that at least FreeBSD never ported. I frankly doubt it that they changed a noticeable amount in that department in the past twenty years.

I worked tech support in a call center, a thousand years ago.

Telling people to click on the "big blue E" was used nearly every call. Not much has changed.

Lol, nice.

SUS is "Single Unix Specification" or "Single Unix System," I can't remember which (I think the former). It's the name of the certification that MacOS actually has.

I do have to say, I didn't realize that they were close enough as to be co-portable. That's really interesting.

A BSD. There are multiple

The BSDs are UNIX-like because being "UNIX" involves paying to go through a certification process, and I don't believe any of them target strict compliance. Solaris is a UNIX, as is HP-UX, AIX, and Apple OSX.

The BSDs should all be pretty close, though.

I started building pcs to replace cable boxes for people. The realization I had is that most people's understanding of technology starts and ends with their phone.

If you try FreeBSD you get ZFS as the file system and PF (OpenBSD's creation) as the firewall. Sound and video will be a little different to set up, but most applications are going to work the same these days.