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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)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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alt textAn 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

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[–] 10 points 6 months ago* (8 children)

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.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

    Gen z? Probably not as they’ve mostly know Chrome as having been the best web browser.

    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.

    Gen alpha and boomers, no way.

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    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/

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    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

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    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 πŸ˜…

    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.

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