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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
The other day my wife was talking about her new job and having to take notes. For the past 30 years I’ve been keeping notes in text, then markdown in vim, starting with personal scripts, then vimwiki. A coworker showed me Obsidian, which while not FLOSS, does use an open standard for all its files. It pretty much does what my setup does.
Then it dawned on me that my wife and other non-techies just use whatever their computer has on it by default (i.e. OneNote). She never thought to go out and look for better productivity software. The idea that there is tons of better apps out there doesn’t register. She has a phone, knows about the app store and gets tons of stuff there but as for her desktop or laptop the idea of apps outside of MS Office and the video games she plays is lost on her.
They just want to get the job done. The fact that they considered a note-taking app at all isn’t universally normal. To this day my wife sends me messages in signal as a post-it to remember things, she could have just sent it to herself, but she used to do the same in sms and just applied that forward after I convinced her security was a good step.
We want the best, the nicest, the most useful thing. We apply the same rigor most non-technies use when choosing a car.
They want to fill a need that, at worst, bothers them a little.
My wife did the same on signal. When I showed her the “Note to self” feature she was amazed an. started using it. She use to get annoyed that we would text and her note would get lost but now it doesn’t.
It isn’t about finding the best, it is about finding better than the worst. My wife needs the features Obsidian has, she says she wished her notes would visually link together. What she doesn’t know is that such apps exist.
She wishes she could sync files between her phone and computer and not have to go to a website to get them. syncthing does that.
syncthing + obsidian is a rockstar.
Like everything else Syncthing, it works well when it is working well.
Far from foolproof.
Been using it for 2 years now with a large number of individual shares, 0 issues other than the occasional exclusion list. You must have use cases I don’t have.
lol, are you me? Our Signal chat is ⅓ chat, ⅓ grocery list, and ⅓ my wife’s notes to herself.
I might be. Have one of us time-traveled recently?
Come to think of it, if we’re time-traveling, does recently even have a viable definition?
I feel obligated to mention Logseq here. It’s similar to obsidian, but FLOSS (AGPL-v3).
I have a love-hate relationship with Logseq. I fantasise about rewriting it to better suit my needs, but it’s definitely a lot of work to do this for both desktop and Android.
I’m loving Logseq. It’s the open source software I support monthly. It (plus what I learned from “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte) changed my life. Having a low-barrier (daily journal everything) place to dump everything (easily discoverable later with back-linking tags) helps me manage my ADHD.
I highly recommend it. Once you wrap your head around the idea that the daily journal is where you dump just about everything, it’s pretty smooth sailing. (The daily journal automatically dates everything, then the pages themselves automatically pull a reverse chronological feed of every time you wrote about the thing, and queries allow for more targeted, dynamic searching, like all tasks due in the next week, or all tasks for the project, etc.)
I’ve tried it before and I like the concept but in my head I struggle using something not directly how it was intended. I want content rich notes, not just bullets. Yes logseq has support but it just feels wrong for some reason.
If it was around two jobs ago when I was just copying lots of meetings I would have been all over it.
Also I never was able to get Logseq and syncthing to work. I doesn’t seem to let files be modified in the background and would lock up.
All my work computers are provided by the companies I work for and per their rules I can only take and store notes using their approved software and on their servers which basically means I work on a locked down Microsoft ecosystem. Access to third party productivity software is simply not possible outside of certain role specific specialist software.
I would guess literally millions of employees have a similar setup so it’s not that we are tech illiterate per say, but more accurately in the corporate world this option doesn’t exist so there is no point trying.
Outside work my productivity tools consist of a Moleskine notebook with tasteful check paper.
I have worked at places like that. The issue is real. But I have also asked for apps to be audited to get on the approved list. Again not always possible.
But I still think the general issue stands. There are a lot of people unaware of software. I even know developers who have never learned their tools and built muscle memory but instead just used whatever came with their computer because they aren’t out there looking.
Honestly OneNote is pretty good for the people who like it though. I personally really can’t stand rich text editing, I really need a raw view. If I didn’t have those reservations I’d probably like OneNote more.
an open standard for all it’s files
All that and you still can’t use the right “its”.
Literally nobody care’s at all.
The discussion is not improved by your contribution.
Yet you huge nerds tizz out over the most boring and trite software trivia that’s obsolete within hours, but won’t learn basic grammar that will serve you your entire life?
I’d like to think that improves things by a tiny amount.
It doesn’t.
it doen’st.
name checks out
The “who still uses Google?” crowd forgets most people just want their computer to work, not become a weekend side quest.
Nonsensical argument. Just because a piece of software is FLOSS and non-Google, it is not automatically a “weekend side quest”. Big Tech is very happy that these false equivalencies have spread as well as they did, but they don’t hold a kernel of truth, at least not anymore.
oh man it sures takes all my weekend to install firefox and set a search engine
It’s surprising the number of people who don’t do that last part
I get the point, but going away from Google search is so easy.
Gmail on the other hand I understand why people are still stuck using and I don’t push them to switch away.
But it drives me nuts that some normies in my life will complain that Google has gone worse, still refuse to switch. There are some who don’t know how to change default and I still get it, but there is one mf at my work, he changed his default in edge from bing to Google and when I said since you know how to change default why not use DDG or startpage or honestly any other non giant alternative. He just says too much work.
Gmail was about easiest to switch away from. You can just create a new email account and have two mailboxes. Then update the new email to services as they go.
With banks and financial services in general being a bitch about changing contact details. That’s a form and a visit to the branch for each bank, broker, investment advisor, direct fund provider. That’s already almost 30 applications. I haven’t even counted stuff like vehicular services, government tax portal, property tax portal, electricity provider, gas provider, internet provider. Not all of whom allow changing for email address digitally or without some complicated support ticket.
It’s such a mountain of changes I myself have only gotten through the list halfway and it’s been 4 years of trying. I can never recommend that to anyone in my family, they’ll just hate me.
P.s. This might just be my country specific problem, I understand other countries are easier.
I think it might be specific to your country and it sucks.
Here, banks are required to ask you to update your contact details once a year. You just log in as usually and sometimes they just give you a form to fill out with your phone number, email, physical address and stuff. If it’s unchanged, you leave it all unchanged.
Sounds like a dream.
Wow never thought about that, I changed it to all those digitally and it didn’t require much at all. One service required me to send an email and that felt a bit old-fashioned, but nothing like you described.
Yeah it’s fucked. And the worst part is, most of these places don’t even open on non working days, so I can’t even do these on weekend.
My country does have identity theft problem running rampart, so I don’t totally blame the services, it’s a pain but at least a leaked email password here and there wouldn’t automatically mean losing access to finance. I understand why it’s been designed such a way, but man it’s a such a mountain of a task.
Yeah it’s fucked. And the worst part is, most of these places don’t even open on non working days, so I can’t even do these on weekend.
Yes, because what working adult would have difficulties going to places between 9 and 5 on workdays
It’s so stupid. If you’re going to have your physical location open exactly 5 days a week for a super important service people need to get to in person… make it tuesday thru saturday or something.
Good luck in your endeavour in case you go that way. I guarantee it feels nice to read those emails in another provider knowing that Google isn’t sniffing around.
Honestly, switching search engines is pretty normie friendly. I’ve got a lot of non-techy friends or family, that use Ecosia or something. They also did it on their own, I didn’t even encourage them to do it.
With things like Linux it’s a bit harder. But if they don’t rely on any specialized software, they are usually fine with me offering to upgrade their Laptops so Linux. I installed Linux Mint on my Mom’s Laptop and she can use it as well as Windows. She never complained about it.
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I think this might make for a stronger argument with “Linux” instead of “Google”.
I can never see any media hosted from files catbox.moe, am I the only one?
Do you happen to live in Spain during a football game
Looks like there’s an outage at the moment
You’re not alone, I can’t either. Not sure if I’ve ever been able to.
Condescension means “patronizing attitude or behavior”; your comic doesn’t show condescension so you probably need the dictionary definition spelled out.
…/s
This is true for every field. I have noticed this many times, whenever I was introduced to something new I never expected those things to be that deep. So I have understood that almost all things are shallow in nature to us until and unles we ourself step into it
Happens all the time. Also, nerds tend to overestimate the amount of resources, like time or money, someone would put on something they care about.
Right here in Lemmy I had this interaction where someone argued that if one were to lose their photos because Google had an oopsie, it’s kind of their fault because they didn’t have a backup plan.
That’s why I try to show people I know how to get FOSS alternatives for their everyday apps. It takes a bit of patience but trust me when I say this: Most people are more tech savvy than you think, they just don’t wanna go through a judging community.
I think they’ll know about VLC, Audacity and Blender also
All FOSS nerds that joined after 2020 only know OBS, charge they phone, distro hop, eat hot chip, and GUI.
libreoffice is getting there too
every pc i’ve used has had libreoffice, even at my job even though they have licenses for almost everything from microsoft
Every group of nerds assumes average person knows more about their obsession…
The most intelligent people aren’t those with the greatest amount of knowledge but rather they’re the people that are capable of patiently breaking down concepts for their fellow human beings to understand.
Actually most firefox users don’t know its open source. I was baffled for years about its inclusion in ubuntu and fedora by default. I even specifically went out of my way to find “open source version of firefox”. This is how I discovered it was open source. This was after using gentoo for several years.
I don’t understand this, if it’s installable on gentoo using the default method of building from source then it has to be open source, right?
Or have I misunderstood gentoo? I considered trying it once, but didn’t fancy compiling everything on a potato.
That’s the exact point. I didn’t realize firefox was open source despite the fact my package manager had probably built it for me at some point.
I have had a comm literally dogpile me claiming linux wasn’t designed for multi sessions or to run as a terminal server.
My respect for lemmy foss forums is in the fucking toilet.
My experience with the Linux communities here has been the opposite. Very welcoming, and very helpful.
there’s a lot of people that hopped on the Linux train in the past few years. which is great, truly. but many of them don’t understand where it came from or what it was originally designed to solve. particularly on lemmy, people are pretty up in arms about their opinions of Linux all the time, so I would bet whichever comm was doing that is mainly the new heads. again, love that it’s getting mainstream recognition but I wish the combative attitude was at least tabled until they actually understand it.
the recent debate of systemd in here kind of drove home that a lot of people just parrot points without having their own thought out opinions.
Oh let’s be honest, elitism has always been baked into linux a bit. Remember the old joke about how to get help on a linux comm? Ask and get told to RTFM even if you detail a complex issue that demonstrates you have in fact read tf m. Say “linux sucks because you can’t do X or Y like you can in windows” and they fall over themselves…
But yeah, the new batch of users are just…you want to gently grab them by the face and say “you’re not fucking nero hacking the matrix because a command line interface doesn’t make you shit your pants any more my dude. Stop acting like it.”
Wait, who was making that claim?
I had a quick look, and all I could see is this post Taleya made where no-one made those claims.
Okay but litterally everyone knows about Firefox.
I’m willing to concede some people don’t know about Linux. But I’ve never met anyone who didn’t know about Firefox.
Hah no they don’t. My partner doesn’t even really know what a browser is, or where the distinction between phone/pc and ‘the internet’ lies. Sure she might have heard of the word ‘firefox’ but no way she can explain what it is or does.
that’s the true ‘average’ person. they don’t know. they don’t understand. they don’t even want to know. they just use this magic thing that shows stuff from the internet. they don’t even know what a bookmark is, they just ‘google’ for everything. even google, ffs.
No. People who are 30+ maybe. But there are tons of people in GenZ (my generation) and Alpha that don’t even know what folders or
symlinksEdit: shortcuts are. And Firefox is a nieche browser since 10 years or so.Putting folders and symlinks in the same category is wild. Most people I know (basically every non-elderly non-toddler person) knows what a folder is. Yet only some of the programmers I know know what a symlink is. Not even a chance for non-programers.
At most they’ll know what a shortcut is. Which is not the same as a symlink.
Sorry, english isn’t my first language and I confused shortcuts and symlinks. I meant shortcuts of course!
I guess I’m a programmer now
I don’t know you. My comment doesn’t apply to you, sorry.
Knowing what a symlink is doesn’t make you a programmer. It’s just that I don’t know any non-programmer that knows what it is.
I don’t know you
I’m Edgar :)
I didn’t know that symbolic links were a thing until like 2 years into using Linux daily. I didn’t know there was a difference between symlinks and shortcuts until I saw this comment!
To save others a trip to Wikipedia, both a symlink and a shortcut store a path to another file or directory. The biggest difference is that symlinks are resolved by your file system, whereas shortcuts are resolved by whatever program accesses them. So if your software doesn’t know what a symlink is, that doesn’t matter. It tries to access the symlink, and your file system says “oh hey they want that jpeg” and serves them that jpeg. Whereas if your software doesn’t know what a shortcut is, it’ll try to access the shortcut and be like “wtf this is just a file path, I was expecting a jpeg”
They can also store relative file paths, while shortcuts can only store absolute filepaths. So if your symlink references a file that’s in the same directory, you can move that directory and the symlink still works. Can’t do that with a shortcut.
Our generation ! I am part of (older) GenZ myself.
Holy moly you kids are young!
… what do you mean there are 29 year old GenZ’s‽
Everyone uses VLC still right? … Right?
The vast majority of people I work with in my organization have absolutely no idea what Firefox is or that there are other browsers. You, me, and everyone here is living in a bubble.
Not too long ago, in the internet explorer era, Firefox had a huge market share. Something like 30%. Even if they didn’t use it themselves, they probably knew someone that did.
They may not remember it, but at some point they knew.
They may say they don’t know firefox, but if you ask them “do you remember there were some people that didn’t use internet explorer before chrome?” They’ll probably remember, even if they don’t remember the name.
There are quite a lot of people in the workforce now who are so young they won’t remember that!
opera
Only Linux? ONLY Linux?
It’s the Gnu/Linux ecosystem with a shit load of software.
(yeah which the average person has no idea about, proving the point in the comic 😁)
Thank you Richard, however:
- Not all Linux distributions use GNU.
- GNU coreutils aren’t the only or even most important component of a modern distro. systemd is.
Ooooo seems like you’re personally invested and did not catch the tongue in cheek drift.
lokening???
It comes from anglish “loken” meaning to heal, it is related to Old English “læce” IPA /ˈlæː.t͡ʃe/ meaning doctor.
Thanks!
What’s an oakframe, though?
I made the oakframe in an attempt to loken Gaja. It’s a project focusing particularily on the role of the language in how we bring about transformative change, for example through relighting and sighsteer. The question that the oakframe asks us is; How do we move our attention away from the destructive towards lokening.
The oakframe sais Gaja is unwell because of structures of migth which we call the machine, but it also sais that this machine is socially constructed, and so we have the change force to dissolve these structures. The construction of the machine happens through our language and how the language paints our world.
I don’t have an official spot for posting about the oakframe right now, because I’m still in the discovery process. I’m also primarily developing it in norwegian.
While I have some concerns about this idea - for one, while using new words like “waxt” as a relighting [replacement?] for “mastery” might be more poetic, it might be easier to spread the acorns of the oakframe with existing words like “skill” - it’s still an interesting one.
Have you considered creating a Lemmy/PieFed community for the oakframe to notify people when you do create an official spot for posting about it?
You are right in challenging the words that I’m using. The oakframe is highly experimental, and so there will be words that ends up not getting traction. It is part of the process. It’s similar to how you have to allow yourself make mistakes when trying to do a new waxt. Flawlessness prevents growth.
I think that the word “waxt” has potential; It is culturally rooted in Old English, and works in norwegian as the word “vekst”. Words like these are easy to translate and keeps their poetic nature because the images of the words are universal and all languages has these images.
Thank you for your suggestions! Right now, I’m just posting a little bit everywhere to increase the exposure in different communities and see what resonates. It would be good to have a place to post, but what I really need is honest feedback.
