"When I was a kid the computer didn't need some filthy OS!!"
ZX81 - C64 - Amiga (that wasn't an OS, it was just for launching stuff! /s ) gang
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Can confirm. Started on a Mac. Was using terminal, hex editor, resource forks, and squirrel basic to modify my Catz installation before I was 10. Windows peers seemed to think computers were made of rainbows and unicorns
Weird. I was thinking the post was saying Mac kids were less digitally literate because of the whole "it just works" culture. When I ran a help desk, the Mac users were definitely less adept. The pattern seems to continue with iPhone and Android users I encounter today.
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I'm currently training a new employee who comes from the "My school handed out Chromebooks" generation, and hol...eee...shit... Its frustrating as hell.
Literally every single instruction gets followed up with "no...double click"
FML
I am that generation, but I was blessed enough (not dirt poor) to have a family Windows PC at home, and my mom got me a HP laptop later because she knew I was gonna be going to a tech school program in my Junior year, and knew that Chromebooks were dogshit.
My tech teacher would constantly complain about the kids who had like zero Windows knowledge, and couldn't do shit like open a PDF in word, or simply find the terminal. I knew this shit would happen when I was in school, I literally told my mom that anyone who can't afford a windows device at home is fucked in the work environment. Compounded by the fact most teens are iPhone purists and make fun of Android, they're just too used to "shit just works"
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I started on a Mac, and now I live as a nomadic caveman, never contacting the civilized world.
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What about TRS-DOS?
Tbf installing linux is not that hard
I installed Slackware in ’96.
Things have most certainly changed.
Easier than installing any other OS.
I recently had to make a bootable iso for windows for someone in my family and it was a way bigger pain than linux, so.. not wrong lol
Never tried installing mac so can't say how the experience of that is :3
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I've met people that struggle with the concept of shutting a computer down.
You are 100% overestimating the average non-techy
You are assuming they can't when in reality it is more that this is learned helplessness, they have been told over and over that they wouldn't understand anyway so they aren't even trying.
Oh no, these very same people have been told time and time again they can.
It's not a can't, it's a won't.
Ah, the learned helplessness<->weaponized incompetence spectrum.
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Now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ been quite easy for like a decade at least
Two decades minimum, my first install was an Xubuntu live cd more than 20 years ago
Fairsies :3 I just said a decade cause that's my first experience, and I couldn't be bothered looking into when the install process was really simplified for a random lemmy comment lol
Yeah no fun.
Ikr? At least we still have LFS /j
Back in the day when installing Solaris and OpenBSD and such you had to specify in numerical values the number of sectors of hard disk space you wanted to format drives with. Shit is considerably easier now with modern UNIXy systems.
Back in what day? My first Linux was in the early 2000s, and even back then it wasn't any more complicated than a Windows install.
Bah! Young'un! ;) Installing Slackware off of a stack of 5 1/4" floppies and trying to work out your harddrive's geometry without switching the machine off to look at the label was a challenge. Doubly so if you were trying to dual boot.
When I installed Linux for the first time around that time frame, I had to write X configs (for XFree86, not X.org) by hand. And be sure to get your monitor timings exactly right or risk permanent damage, said the scary warning.
That was always 'fun'. Trying to find things like the 'front porch' timings was an exercise in frustration at times. Then put it all together and try it, hoping it either worked, or at least didn't go too badly. The 'boiinng' noise sone monitors would make was always a bit alarming.
I ended up soldering together an adapter to convert from VGA to a monitor that took separate red, green and blue inputs with a sync pulse on green. Working out the timings for that was interesting, but I doubt any other PC OS could have driven it.
The mid 1990s for me, OpenBSD came out in 1996 and Solaris was Solaris was like 1992. I was admining a Solaris SPARC station back around 1997 that had a gnarly install if I remember correctly. It was on 3.5” floppies and I still have that SPARC station and the original Solaris OS sitting in the basement collecting dust. At one point that SPARC was being used by some of us working with the PHP group to diagnose file system limits on Solaris and build PHP binaries back when I was involved in PHP development. Fun times.
My first Linux install was like Red Hat 5.2 or something and it was much nicer.
It's absolutely insane how much progress was made from 1995-2000.
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I started on a Mac and now I'm an IT expert.
But that's because my next computer was a Dell.
I started with a DEC Alpha CP/M, then moved to a Macintosh SE. And yes, I do IT. Where does that place me?
Over 40.
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