linuxmemes

Perhaps it's changed in the years since I ditched Windows, but at least for a good while, just knowing what Linux was as a concept already represented a certain degree of awareness of tech that would have me surprised if they were unable to do any sort of troubleshooting. Whether or not they decide it's worth their time to do so was a different matter, of course.

That said, while being too hostile to new users is detrimental to broader adoption, the level of handholding that many users want just isn't reasonable to expect from a free OS being supported by volunteers. There's only so many times I'm going to put up with something like:

"My computer says it has an error."

"What's the error?"

"I don't know, it doesn't work."

on and on for a dozen messages or more only to realize the message is literally right in front of them the whole time and they're just deliberately being helpless, rather than put in any modicum of effort. After a while, I'm looking up if anyone has found a method to throttle someone via the internet the next time I see one.

Yes, you do need a certain level of independence to run Linux. I'm not sure why we make so many excuses for self-sabotage with computers, though. These are ubiquitous devices, and they've been around for a fair bit. I could understand someone who retired in the early 90s never having gotten into them, but it's absurd otherwise. So many people have an attitude with computers that would be like someone who's never looked at a cookbook, a youtube cooking channel or even done a cursory google search for a recipe coming to a stranger and saying, "Hey, I'm bad at cooking, so I don't get all this cooking stuff, but could you teach me to make beef bourguignon? Oh, and I need you to do it for free. What do you mean, 'chop the onions'? I told you I'm not a culinary person, I don't know this stuff. What, I need a knife for this? Oh my god, this is so complicated, can't you just show me an easy way?"

Even the person with the best of intentions will burn out helping with this sort of stuff, day after day, in their spare time. When it comes to tech support, many non-tech people have an absolutely insane sense of entitlement to the time and effort of strangers volunteering on the internet. Unless someone whips up an absolutely idiot-proof UI for Linux that is entirely self-explanatory, users will need to choose between putting in some amount of effort in the form of educating themselves even the slightest bit, or paying for the privilege of having someone else manage their computing and be at the mercy of that third-party whenever it makes a decision they dislike enough, or just ceases providing support altogether.