• HeyListenWatchOut@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    1st ever system I played on was an Apple II. And my older gen X brother had an Odyssey 2, a Commodore 64, and later I messed with a bunch of pre-Windows DOS systems via home and school computer lab playing and screwing around with games made in BASIC.

    Then we got a Mac OS 7 system at home thanks to my teacher parent getting a grant for a Mac computer (Performa 550) for their classroom.

    From there on out, I meandered back and forth between Mac and Windows.

    Now I have a desktop with Win10, a Steam Deck, and my spouse’s desktop I just installed Bazzite on to let her play games and act as a trial run for changing my own to some flavor of Linux before Windows shuts things down in October.

    No autism diagnosis. Just an elder millennial lucky enough to get a lot of experience with a lot of different computers at a young age.

    • perestroika@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Does messing around to play Red Alert at 640 x 480 (instead of the default 320 x 240) qualify? I emphasize that I modded the thing to have ICBM carrying submarines for more realism, and played global thermonuclear war with my university course mate over an RS-232 cable. :P

      (We could not afford Ethernet, or maybe couldn’t understand it, since it was such a new thing. I recall seeing shiny Ethernet cards from 3COM with some envy.)

  • SSNs4evr@leminal.space
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    3 months ago

    I switched to Linux after my experience with Windows Millennium Edition. Many people have since referred to me as some sort of programming genius and hacker…I don’t know crap about any of that. I’ve simply followed instructions and referred to the help communities, whenever I’ve had trouble. Using the mainstream distributions (I’m guessing) has kept me from having much trouble.

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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      3 months ago

      Mixed messages here: “I’ve simply followed instructions and referred to the help communities, whenever I’ve had trouble.” Fellow human, those are the actions of a programming genius and hacker. The bar is remarkably low. A lot of people can’t even read what it says on the screen.

      • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Peoples’ definition on programming is unclear.

        I watched two people argue if Dennis Ritchie or Mark Zuckerberg is better at programming in comments on a youtube video about C.

        And they are relatively tech-savy if they watch those videos.

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I just want to point out that I was somewhat tech literate in the 2000s. and The Mac OS still scared me.

  • rockettaco37@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    My first experience with Linux was at 10 years old or so. I had a netbook that I’d installed Ubuntu on.

    Flash forward nearly 14 years and I use Arch as pretty much a daily driver these days.

  • Signtist@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    I grew up with mac, but I was always so frustrated that I couldn’t play the games and run the programs my friends could on their computers. I finally bought my own PC in high school, and was so happy to have the control I always wanted. I haven’t switched to Linux yet, but at this point it’s inevitable; I’m just dragging my feet on figuring it out.

    • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Download VirtualBox, its free and open source. Download a few Linux isos, actual Linux isos, and fire them up in a VM to see what sticks out to you. People usually recommend Mint As a bridge from Windows, personally I’m liking PopOS a lot more than I thought I would. Both are based on Ubuntu which is ubiquitous. I hear a lot about immutable distros, but I haven’t ventured there yet. Point is you can figure it out for free and completely without hassle.

        • Novaling@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          VMs are a good way to dip your toes, but honestly, doesn’t hurt to boot from a USB and try that way too. That’s how I checked of Fedora, which I stuck with and now dual boot with. I rarely go to my Windows partition unless there’s something I have to do that can’t be done on Linux.

          I don’t touch terminal often, and I use Fedora Silverblue, which is immutable, making it harder for me to fuck up my system somehow. I have used the rollback feature due to updates with the kernel breaking bluetooth, so there’s the bright side of rollback distros.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I’m currently training a new employee who comes from the “My school handed out Chromebooks” generation, and hol…eee…shit… Its frustrating as hell.

    Literally every single instruction gets followed up with “no…double click”

    FML

      • Beryl@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        It’s there, it’s just not necessary for launching an application. It’s the same as on Android.

    • Novaling@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      I am that generation, but I was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home, and my mom got me a HP laptop later because she knew I was gonna be going to a tech school program in my Junior year, and knew that Chromebooks were dogshit.

      My tech teacher would constantly complain about the kids who had like zero Windows knowledge, and couldn’t do shit like open a PDF in word, or simply find the terminal. I knew this shit would happen when I was in school, I literally told my mom that anyone who can’t afford a windows device at home is fucked in the work environment. Compounded by the fact most teens are iPhone purists and make fun of Android, they’re just too used to “shit just works”

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I’m having a lot of trouble working with younger hires, and I’m not even 30. If I had to summarize, they’re able to do things like memorize button combos, but there’s just no comprehension about the how the buttons were only pressed to achieve larger goals.

    • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I wonder if it’s really a computer issue or a more general lack of problem-solving skills. In your 20s you should still easily and quickly be able to switch to any OS and understand the logic. If you don’t the issue is likely not limited to computer-skills.

    • minerva@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      I can sympathize from both directions. Teaching my iPad generation nephew to use a Windows PC is a challenge.

      At the same time I look like a total incompetent when trying to do anything using the GUI on a Mac. My muscle memory is just plain wrong after 20+ years of Windows and assorted Linux variants I keep clicking in completely the wrong places

      • KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Over the last 40 years I’ve used Mac, Windows and various Linux desktops as well as the Atari desktop called GEM (used it in an early music studio), Amiga and BeOS. Probably a few more over the years.

        I always go back to Windows because it has support for pretty much everything I throw at it and the OS isn’t as bad as nerds want you to believe. Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does.

        • LOLseas@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          " Yeah, it crashes and gets unstable from time to time, but EVERYTHING does. "

          ** Debian enters the chat **

        • Illecors@lemmy.cafe
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          3 months ago

          Everything does, indeed, crash; but the rate on windows is ridiculous. I was thinking the same way as you, but a year ago was given a windows laptop at work, which was my first windows device in close to 5 years ar the time.

          It is, without any exaggeration, completely unusable compared to my tiny sway or hyprland desktop. Got a replacement laptop about half a year in - same nonsense. So hardware faults are ruled out.

          Eventually made a deal and set up my favourite distro on it - all insanity went away. It might not run photoshop, but I don’t need it. At least it doesn’t crash every few days.

          Many words to say a simple thing: people get used to software being shit. It’s really nowhere near that bad if you leave windows environment.

          • KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca
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            3 months ago

            Funny. We had a bunch of Lenovo laptops we ordered in for the developers. A few stayed as Windows and a bunch got various versions of Linux installed.

            The Windows laptop chugged along and did their thing, We had a problem with some of the Linux laptops overheating. Some just were unusable unstable.

            Ideally we all use what works best for us. I’m not going to get into an argument over which OS is better because clearly it has to do with what hardware it’s on, how it’s setup, and who is running it. I also think it’s pathetic to make an OS part of my personality. I use whatever at work, but at home I use Windows so I don’t have to mess with things. I get it installed on good hardware, update some drivers, and the thing chugs along fine. I can’t remember when my workstation at home has ever crashed. My Windows laptop does from time to time because it’s a Asus ROG that it a bit dodgy. My Apple laptop and my Chromebook are buggy and crashes as well so maybe I just have bad luck with personal laptops.

          • GenerationII@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            I hate to say it, but maybe you just didn’t take the time to learn Windows?

            I’ve had the same pc running windows 10 day and night for 5+ years (I think I’ve literally had to reboot it 9 times in all that time), and it has never crashed. And I have RUN that thing ragged.

            • Illecors@lemmy.cafe
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              3 months ago

              I had used windows for decades prior to that. Never been a windows admin professionally, but definitely new my way around.

              I’ve had my desktops with reasonable uptime as well, but it was on win7 (and probably 10). However, system uptime is not everything. Things running within that system have to keep running as well and they don’t.

              I think thr closest comparison I can give is upgrading speakers - you can’t really tell a higher quality speaker plays your music any better until months pass, you get used to it and then hear the same track on a previous set. It’s night and day.

              • GenerationII@lemm.ee
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                3 months ago

                I’m as much as a Linux guy as anybody else, but this really just seems like an interfacing issue. I’ve never done anything professionally with computers, but I run all of my self hosted stuff right on my windows machine (no virtualization) with no issues. The only times things MIGHT go down is when I’m updating. I’ve never used Windows 11, so if it’s as bad as Windows Vista then that makes sense, but then why not just use Windows 10? It exists and you can use it and it works

  • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I started on a Mac, and now I live as a nomadic caveman, never contacting the civilized world.

    • sunshine@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      yep, exact same thing. Apple is the name of the company, Macintosh is the brand of computer

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    3 months ago

    Can confirm. Started on a Mac. Was using terminal, hex editor, resource forks, and squirrel basic to modify my Catz installation before I was 10. Windows peers seemed to think computers were made of rainbows and unicorns

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        Yeah I guess not. It seemed obvious to me, but I guess for other people it seemed obvious in the opposite direction.

    • Oniononon@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago

      Nah. Windows with ati card here. I was fucking around with regedit and config files, drivers and dlls every damn time I wanted to run a game.

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Weird. I was thinking the post was saying Mac kids were less digitally literate because of the whole “it just works” culture. When I ran a help desk, the Mac users were definitely less adept. The pattern seems to continue with iPhone and Android users I encounter today.

      • Panamalt@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Well, now I really want to see the results of such a study. My hypothesis is that it actually has more to do with the activities each computer is used for rather than the actual OS. As in, gamers (Windows) are more likely to be tech literate than authors (Mac), or graphic artists (Mac) are more likely to be tech literate than office workers (Windows).

        • Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          Yeah, that is a pattern I’ve seen. I grew up having to troubleshoot stuff offline just to get a modem on PC to work on dialup to get to a BBS or CompuServe or editing mods for computer games, whereas my Mac friends were mostly playing with artistic programs on Mac. I also used artistic software on PC but that too required more skill. I don’t recall seeing them deal with a command line interface whereas most of my earliest games ran in DOS.

        • Who knew?@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Anecdata: everyone on the film set in 2009 except for the studio accountant used a Mac, and the accountant was a Thinkpad Guy.

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “When I was a kid the computer didn’t need some filthy OS!!”

    ZX81 - C64 - Amiga (that wasn’t an OS, it was just for launching stuff! /s ) gang

    • Damage@feddit.it
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      3 months ago

      I mean, I managed to fuck up my Windows 95 just by installing a couple of games. God knows how that happened.

      • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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        3 months ago

        I remember!

        My family just got a new computer; running the brand new Win95. It was so fancy, I can’t remember what game it was, but I couldn’t get the sound to work, so I tried reinstalling the sound drivers…

        I managed to completely nuke our 2 day old PC. Had to get a friend of my stepdad to come and fix it…basically reinstall Windows. I have no idea what I did, but I did learn from that point, you can basically fix anything not hardware related given a bit of time and knowledge.

        And that was my origin story, been using Linux full time since 2007, and dabbled for a few years before that.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Is the hypothesis that Windows being constantly broken forces you to learn how to fix it ? Because that’s kinda what happened to me 😆

      I’d add that PCs also had great gaming, which also encourages upgrading, and PCs have always offered more options for upgrading. You learn a lot and can break a lot doing that, both of which add to the experience.

  • Destide@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    10 Print “BBC micro crew” 20 Print " I’m only dyslexic not autistic" 30 GOTO 10