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foss nerds stop being condescending to those who don't know the same things you do challenge (impossible)
(files.catbox.moe)
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An edit of xkcd 2501, "Average Familiarity":
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
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
Is the average person unaware of Linux and Firefox?!
Yes? The number of people I met in college that doesn't even heard about firefox was surprising.
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."
"Filesystem? You mean the downloads folder? Yes I know about it. You just tap the Files app"
π
Conflicted on filename extensions. For the average person it works just fine, and I suppose that's what probably matters. It's not very common for not knowing the details of how they work to matter. It's just silly that the same information is also in the start of the file 99% of the time. It is nice though to have a readable, usually reliable label, and then have a signature anyways for when different names overlap. Wikipeda lists 4 completely unrelated types with a .mod extension, for example.
Pretty much any application will correctly open any file type it supports, regardless of the extension. So it is quite unintuitive that you could have a file named ".png" that seems to work completely fine yet is actually a jpeg or something. But that hopefully isn't a case that people run into very often, so it probably doesn't matter.
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 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 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.
You can't use it without the custom cursor? Doesn't seem important
It's actually super important, the cursor in question is the one that you're supposed to get when you select "Freehand draw", without it you'd basically just have stock designs.
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.
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
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 remember seeing that airplane on the VHS all the time at the video store
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...
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 π 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.
There's the people who know what source code is, then the subset of those who have heard of open source, then the subset of those who actually know what it means as opposed to like source available
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?" π
It's funny how that question can become serious again when you do actually know what you're talking about
I remember this video addressing it at the end and basically giving up because it's so meaningless lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPIxfCggFw
You overestimate the amount of people who actually use a computer.
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 feels absurdly high. I was feeling over confident thinking maybe 10%...
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.
Firefox and, Opera my beloved, was the thing during the 2010s
Now that you mention it, i think i remember using Opera on my phone at the time. I don't remember why tbh, maybe i felt like it was more lightweight and faster, but no clue if that was actually true.
I first got introduced to Blender in basically the same way back in elementary school
those computers probably weren't actually very restricted, but none of us knew enough about computers for that to matter lol. as long as they blocked us from going on the download pages
other stupid thing someone figured out how to run was that Star Wars ASCII thing in the terminal (lol looked it up and found this article https://www.instructables.com/How-to-get-an-ASCII-Star-Wars-movie-on-Mac/)
I'm going to assume that you didn't study a STEM subject?
I can assure you there are lots of people in computer science that don't know what linux, foss or firefox are.
Computer Science
if they are, itβs not much more than "that thing they heard of sometime", i donβt think the layperson really considers them as alternatives to what theyβre 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 donβt know the difference between google chrome (the web browser) and google (the search engine)!
Reminded of how, for some unfathomable reason, the way you access the task manager on ChromeOS is through the hamburger menu in the bar of the Chrome browser. Plus the popups "gmail actually works much better in chrome!! trust me!!"
I can see how people could get confused lol
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.
I think more people would know "windows" rather than "the Microsoft one" ? As a layperson we always called it windows π I think people know Microsoft office but I don't know that they would refer to their OS as "microsoft".
It'd be a coinflip on whether or not they even knew what an operating system was.
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
Wtf, what was her reasoning?
more work for her, i assume. how easy it would be of you only had to optimize for internet explorer at 640x480...
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.
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.
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.
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.
obviously tests aren't everything and don't necessarily reflect user experience, and idk what that jump in safari at the end is from, but chrome clearly has some things going for it.
currently chrome passes 97.4% of applicable tests, firefox passes 95.8%, safari 94.8%, ladybird 92.9%, and servo 89.6% (a lot of the bulk is "easy" stuff like text encoding)
https://wpt.fyi/
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 just memes made by angry childless millennials. Anyone with kids will tell you how frustratingly talented with technology they can be.
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
Then you have some young people going back to flip phones... they're likely the ones getting laptops, possibly even refurb.
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 π
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.
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.
Yes
Most people I come across will have heard of it, but just know it as a browser, and donβt 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)