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99% of Windows usability issues would be fixed if Windows had the guts to add this button (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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I don't fucking know why I can't eject USB hard drives. I installed the SysInternals apps, and best they can tell me is that Dropbox is fucking with the drives. I explicitly told Dropbox to not fuck with USB drives. I don't know who's lying, I just want whoever is fucking with the drives to stop fucking with the drives, OK??? OK.

Windows dialogue about failing to eject an USB drive, because an application is using it. Aside of "OK", a new button says "Well why don't you tell them to fuck off♪~"
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[–] [S] 32 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Basically, if you, as a regular user, cannot unmount a device, you can usually just go to root shell (sudo -i), see where the thing is mounted (just use mount) and then unmount it (umount /media/blah/floop). If it says the device is still busy, as root you can remount it as read-only and then unmount it (seeking documentation left as an exericise to the reader, as I'm sitting at a Windows system now).

There's also lsof ("list open files") tool, which can be used to see which exact programs are using files on that device, which you can then use to kill those sneaky processes (ps, kill).

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    So a complicated set of terminal commands and alternatives you need to have memorized ahead of time. That's definitely the linux solution. You can do it, but no average user would ever be able to when they need it.

    Windows probably has some equally complicated way of finding what is locking a file/folder... or you can just install File Locksmith which is a Microsoft PowerToys tool, and just have it in the context menu everywhere.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    No average user would be able to look up what commands to run? Because newsflash: unlike Windows, searching for a common problem on Linux normally turns up a solution written by a human who knows what they're talking about.

    "Windows doesn't even have basic package management like every Unix-like OS does so you don't have to individually update applications and go find them on the Internet, but this one edge case on Linux requires like two terminal commands (the sudo -i is totally superfluous if you just put sudo in front of commands) instead of installing an entire separate tool you'll ever use one time like on Windows and which an average user wouldn't even know exists. Therefore Linux is more complicated."

    Incidentally, here's what Microsoft officially recommends for the "average user" regarding PowerToys:

    It's insane how nose-blind Windows users are to how user-unfriendly their OS is.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Windows doesn’t even have basic package management like every Unix-like OS does so you don’t have to individually update applications and go find them on the Internet

    Funny thing is that it does (winget), but it's a terminal app. Windows users who look down on Linux users for "needing" to use a terminal don't want to bring it up, so Linux users also aren't aware of it and never point to it as a counter example.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It’s insane how nose-blind Windows users are to how user-unfriendly their OS is.

    Oh the irony. You clearly don't work with any sort of end user.

    For 99% of computer users, if the GUI doesn't have an option, it doesn't exist. They aren't searching past a basic Google of the issue showing them step by step instructions of how to use the GUI to fix the problem. If there is no way to do so in the GUI, it's not getting fixed by them, they'll take it to the Geek Squad if they even decide to fix it at all. They're must more likely to just ignore an issue. In this case, just removing the USB drive and complaining about something being corrupt later on. The idea of the terminal scares the average person.

    Windows doesn’t even have basic package management like every Unix-like OS does Well that's simply wrong. winget upgrade --all I just upgraded 44 apps I definitely didn't install via winget, they were all installed via individually downloaded installers at some point in the past, but all upgrade with a single package manager command in a terminal. Certainly seems similar to me. It may not be everything, but it's certainly the majority of things on this system other than the games.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    They aren’t searching past a basic Google of the issue showing them step by step instructions

    Your users are searching for their problems???

    Most wouldn't even do that.

    If the button isn't right there to fix everything automatically, the problem just stays that way until they (maybe) restart

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Alright, so others went over the "easy" way to see which program is being the offender. But I feel like the average Lemmy user just skips GUI at this point.
    Say hello to KDE:

    KDE also does automatic fsck before mounting, which is why it may take some 2 seconds to mount a drive.

    HDDs it properly spins down and unpowers as well.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 1 year ago*

    For 99% of computer users, if the GUI doesn’t have an option, it doesn’t exist.

    Literally 99% of Windows tech support is

    Have you right clicked on Windows menu, selected Terminal (Admin), then entered sfc /scannow and then DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth? ...ohhh shit you're still fucked up - well, maybe you need to completely reinstall windows, well, here's the page on how to do it.

    That's the difference with Linux. Your average user never uses terminal, and when they do, they find the tools suck.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    If there is no way to do so in the GUI, it's not getting fixed by them, they'll take it to the Geek Squad if they even decide to fix it at all.

    The best part is that Geek Squad probably won't even fix it.

    With the amount of time allocated to tasks and the lack of autonomy retail workers are given, the solution to anything not explicitly written in an employee runbook is going to be "we need to reinstall windows" or "it can't be fixed, but we have a new computer you can buy"

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You can also just pull the USB drive out, if you have waited a reasonable time after last writing to it, no harm will be done.

    Also, terminal commands have the advantage that they are the same over the course of 20something years and across all desktop environments, while the tinyfloppy windows moves critical functions around with every second patch so you have to relocate stuff you had just memorized.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well, the commands that I presented (sudo, mount, umount, ps, kill, even lsof) are actually just normal commands that you use to do ordinary things on your system to manage account elevation, mounted disk volumes, processes, and running processes. You need to "memorise" them just as much as you need to memorise their counterparts in a Windows system (Run As/Explorer/Explorer Eject/taskmgr) (...what kind of nerd memorises Ctrl+Alt+Esc anyway?).

    ...except you don't have lsof, you literally need to install SysInternals Process Explorer.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Hi, I am that nerd, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open taskmgr, actually.

    ...I hope to be able to develop a similar level of nerd when I switch to Linux soon

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So a complicated set of terminal commands and alternatives you need to have memorized ahead of time. That’s definitely the linux solution. You can do it, but no average user would ever be able to when they need it.

    As a point of contrast. In Linux Mint you press the eject button. That's it.

    The other guy was getting into more detail for people who want it.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    complicated

    Stop with the learned helplessness. It's like 3 words.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's nothing about learned helplessness, it's about what the average user experience is for new and inexperienced users. And terminal commands are just not new user friendly. If Linux ever wants to consider being true competition for a Windows replacement with the average user, it has to provide easy to use GUI options for most commands, and it needs to do all basic functionality without a terminal ever being needed.

    Like @user224@lemmy.sdf.org posted elsewhere in the thread, KDE has a good GUI for an end user experience for this exact situation. It shows files are open from the device, and what has them open, in the same interface an end user would use to eject the drive.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Maybe it's just because I'm old and remember DOS, but I just don't see having to type such simple words into a terminal as complicated. 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It is. And so do I. The terminal isn't hard, it's just for the average user, it feels intimidating and/or extremely old and thus inherently bad. They rely on the GUI as the user experience. And to be honest, they're right. A modern system should not require terminal interaction for every day use cases, or even infrequent use cases. It's just not a user-friendly interface for a consumer.

    And that doesn't even get into the youngest generations that have grown up with touchscreens, where many can barely use a mouse. Even those most would probably consider to be more tech-literate, like gamers. PirateSoftware (I know, I know, but it is a real world interaction versus theoretical) brought a demo to one of the conventions, with 2 stations for a game, 1 KB&M and 1 controller. For the few kids that tried to use the KB&M stations, they moved the keyboard out of the way and tried to touch the screen to interact, because they didn't know how to interact with it like that, they knew how to use a controller and a touchscreen. That was how they played games. Their tablets, and controllers probably on consoles. Youtube Shorts video explaining. That's the average user. No one anywhere near a place like lemmy is an average user.

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