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

The "Dunning-Kruger" effect directly contradicts this. It states that experts will overestimate the lay-person's knowledge. (it's the second, and often forgotten result)

I'm not saying either is correct, there are plenty of reasons to doubt Dunning-Kruger including that it's results are among the "reproduceability crisis" in Psychological research.

edit: yea I misunderstood that.

It states that experts will overestimate the lay-person's knowledge.

That's exactly what the meme is saying.

It states that experts will overestimate the lay-person's knowledge.

Is this not what the comic is saying?

I remember being on Reddit some time ago, and in the comments somebody mentioned Linux. The next comment was "What's Linux?"

I try to keep that post in mind whenever I think anything is common knowledge.

Is the average person unaware of Linux and Firefox?!

tbh, i realize that me using "condescending" in the title kinda implies that experts would underestimate, that’s usually what that word means

is there a better word for this? i meant it in the sense of foss nerds being all "if you still use google chrome in 2026 you’re an idiot and deserve what happens to you" to people

I imagine the average non-tech person does not even know what "open source" means, let alone able to name anything that is open source.

Yes

Yes? The number of people I met in college that doesn't even heard about firefox was surprising.

if they are, it’s not much more than "that thing they heard of sometime", i don’t think the layperson really considers them as alternatives to what they’re using.

i remember, when i first switched to an non-chrome browser many years ago, my friends kept asking me if stuff like google, google drive or google classroom (which our school used) still worked on it. many people don’t know the difference between google chrome (the web browser) and google (the search engine)!

Just on Firefox, dedepends on how old we are talking. Gen z? Probably not as they've mostly know Chrome as having been the best web browser. Old Millenials and young gen x know it as the next IE alternative after Netscape died. Old Gen X maybe depending on how old. Gen alpha and boomers, no way.

If knowledge of both is required, then even less so. Anytime I bring up Linux I get the feeling that it is like bringing up religion with a stranger.

it's different when they become informed and choose to remain part of the problem for convinience ☹️

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 seems like a good thread to ask: I got a spare, handmedown chromebook and wanted to linux it. What the fuck should I do for that?

I had a client who was the head of product at her buisness. We'd meet at the end of every sprint to do demos and planning. Anyway when my team mentioned there were some issues on Firefox her knee jerk response was to openly say "I hate Firefox users"

I have tons of stories like that but the point is that even people who are aware don't universally love it

Awareness is just the bare minimum

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...

The next comment was “What’s Linux?”

In fairness, there's a 70% chance this comment was posted by a bot that was, itself, being hosted on a Linux server.

I would give it a coin-flip as to whether the average person could name their current OS. Not sure if I would have to give credit to people who respond "The Microsoft one" or "Google Phone" in order for that bet to be fair.

This is a really well written post. That's all I came here to say. /srs

The obligatory add-on to a comment that says "that's all I came here to say": this phenomenon can be seen in a great variety of communities and I believe that it speaks for not the characteristics of the FOSS community, but rather some detrimental socially constructed human tendency to feel superior by oppression.

Gen z? Probably not as they’ve mostly know Chrome as having been the best web browser.

Chrome hasn't been "the best browser" in at least a decade. Even at its peak, it was notorious for sucking up system resources like a sponge.

And that was in the interim period when people were flirting with Opera and Safari on non-Mac machines as an alternative to old-school IE. I remember having to lobby my office just to get Chrome whitelisted (and then doing it again for Firefox a few years later) because using anything but IE was considered "insecure".

Now it's mostly won default status because of the Android OS rendering it the default (much like how Edge is the default on Windows and Safari on Mac). Plenty of Millennials/GenZ had to make their way to Firefox the hard(ish) way by knowing it exists and realizing how many gigs of memory Chrome was eating up.

Gen alpha and boomers, no way.

In my experience the number one "I made the jump to " conversion stories has been the end-user experience. Edge cleaned up its act and runs relatively smooth now. Chrome is still a bloat-a-saurous. Firefox has to fight with an increasingly locked-down computer experience. If you're using a school device or a work laptop and it doesn't come pre-installed, you likely won't have rights to download it.

If I had to bet, GenAs are the ones most likely to do a Firefox install simply because they're the ones most likely to still be out there buying their own PCs for recreational use.

Even the average tech person doesn't know what it means.
The term was coined by Christine Peterson of the Free software movement, and is defined to specify software that is free and open source (FOSS).
This was after problems with the term "free software" because it was a bad term, that was hijacked to also include software free of cost but closed and proprietary, so far from open source. And free was not generally understood as free as in libre.
After the Free software movement coined the term. The Free Software Foundation also adopted it, and to distinguish they called it FLOSS, for "Free as in Libre and Open Source Software", where the libre means that the code is protected from being "jailed" because it has a so called strong copyleft license, like for instance GPL. So MIT, BSD and public domain are not FLOSS but they are FOSS.

https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software

/Nothing in this life is simple.

thank you! ^w^

this phenomenon can be seen in a great variety of communities

that's a good point. i'm talking about the foss community because it's what i'm part of and i see it coming most from it right now, but tbh i've had car people give me some shit for not knowing some car knowledge i'm assuming are pretty basic to them lol

Most people I come across will have heard of it, but just know it as a browser, and don’t know anything about it being open source or more privacy respecting than chrome (ignoring the even more in-depth question of that still being the case)

People may have heard of these things, but I don't think most people could give an accurate description of what they are.

Yeah, this I would totally agree with.

When in doubt, Linux Mint.

I feel you. Interestingly, Linux communities, especially the Arch one, but also programming communities over at StackOverflow, can be pretty exclusionist and elitist, while, for instance, electrical engineering, electronics and other hardware oriented communities feel more inclusive and welcoming. Are there conclusions to be drawn here? Software vs hardware? 😆

hmm, if it's an x86 chromebook i'm assuming you could install linux on it like any other x86 device... not sure tbh, i've never done this 😅

if it's ARM, then postmarketos may be your best bet, it's typically used for phones but they have many laptops supported as well. maybe yours would work!

i've seen stuff like crouton, chrx and galliumOS which are all projects that are supposed to help run linux on chromebooks, but they're all abandoned as of now so i wouldn't recommend them.

I'm going to assume that you didn't study a STEM subject?

Computer Science

I remember my uncle using Firefox, so I thought people heard about Firefox if they at least send emails. As for Linux. I thought like 40% of people at least heard of it without knowing what it 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.

I was with you until the end. Most Gen A are mostly technically illiterate thanks to smartphones and tablets that "just work." They've never really needed to tinker with their devices and it shows in their technical capabilities. I would bet the average Gen A couldn't tell you the difference between downloading a file vs installing a program.

That’s why I find posts here like “Fast-MBysoon is getting a major update!” funny. The amount of times they just assume you know what it is and then you go into the comments and the only one is “care to say what Fast-MBysoon is?” So many FOSS users just assume everyone knows about their Microkernel-Based YAML Synchronisation Object Notifier project is.

Wtf, what was her reasoning?

I've done this with a chromebook recently, first it depends on a model and how old is it. In general you need to disable secureboot in recovery menu, enable 'developer' mode, and allow booting from usb. After that you can install your distro.

Nobody I knew in college had heard of Firefox, but that's probably because it didn't exist yet.

Unless you mean the Clint Eastwood film

well thankfully it’s not self aware

They were one of the lucky 10,000.

I'm of two minds on this.

In some respects people are learning new things everyday and your take is correct.

On the other hand 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.

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?" 😑

more work for her, i assume. how easy it would be of you only had to optimize for internet explorer at 640x480...

It'd be a coinflip on whether or not they even knew what an operating system was.

Lots of websites work poorly on Firefox compared to Chrome. They optimize for Chrome because that's where the userbase is. If you're not on Chrome then fuck you I guess.

You overestimate the amount of people who actually use a computer.

I bring this up at my job all the time. I work as a software tester, and I'm constantly reminding our BA that most customers aren't smart enough to "just know not to do that"

Yeah...

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 found it funny how condescending all the foss nerds have been to the problems in the LTT linux video. So many people were mad that someone unfamiliar with linux didnt know everything and have a perfect experience. The worst part was they had this opinion and attacked the user while demonstrating they had absolutely no idea what the issues were caused by and could have easily run into the same issue.

This is a crippling reality.

Whenever I explain anything I am constantly evaluating how in depth any given node must be expanded for my audience.