Weird, right? I feel like I grew up in the perfect generation, where I started with MS-DOS and Windows â95. We had to KNOW how things worked in order to get games and other software running. Had to know how to install, how to fix driver issues, how to configure things, etc. Even (re)install a complete OS.
But tech these days âjust worksâ. A lot of software is one click installs, with no real user interaction needed. And everything else is easily accessed on the web or a phone app. Windows itself is also much more reliable, so even that doesnât require much knowledge.
Itâs made everything available to a much wider audience, but it also means people donât need to develop actual skills in this area. A good example is my dad. He never figured out how to do things on our Windows â95 PC, but he loves his iPad because itâs so easy toddlers can use it.
Yeah, you fire up a brand new Windows PC, spend a few minutes creating an account etc, then leave it to it's own devices for an hour or so to update itself.
Doing my first linux install on a main PC (after a decade of managing a headless server). Honestly, getting the trackpad to scroll at the right speed has been something of a hobby of mine lately.
most "just works" distros have really intuitive installers though, I'd even say it's easier than windows, if not for the mandated Microsoft bullshit on all computers by default like secure boot and TPM
As someone who isn't technologically ignorant: I'd rather have things that "just work" over things that I spend 3 days trying to make work and it still doesn't.
Sure, but current distros mostly "just work". My desktop linux installation is broken half the time because I enjoy tinkering, but the one on my work laptop (linux mint debian edition) has been working like a charm since day 1.
I feel lots of people don't realize how Linux is much easier to use nowadays. Most people I talk to seem to assume they need to learn how to use the terminal, but really they just can do everything by using the GUI.
I agree with you. I currently dual boot, but once windows 10 is not updated anymore, I'll just use Mint and go Microsoft free. It's less bloated, no telemetry, most games work flawlessly to perfectly (with proton it will just get better) and most applications needed are easily found in the software manager and are for the most part open source.
You had to prove you were worthy to play the game by resolving IRQ conflicts and figuring out how to squeeze every spare byte out of HIMEM.SYS. Sometime it was more challenging than the actual game.
And letâs not forget that âsystem requirementsâ were more like âsystem suggestions and challengesâ. Especially when your parents bought âa computerâ with hardware specs that basically read âhard drive, memory, soundcard, CD-ROM driveâ.
So when configuring things, there was some trial and error involved in figuring out what the software could attempt to configure in order to work with your specific thing. Itâs not like today where us gamers pick the exact hardware down to the RGB-infused RAM.
And few things were plug and play prior to USB. You know how shitty printers are now? Try wrestling with one of those on a fucking parallel port.
Camping out at the library with whatever computer magazines they had in the reference section taking notes or using your last dime to make a copy because god forbid your parents would waste money on a subscription to BYTE or something.