this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
631 points (87.8% liked)
linuxmemes
24370 readers
1 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
3. Post Linux-related content
sudo in Windows.4. No recent reposts
5. 🇬🇧 Language/язык/Sprache
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations.Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That was kind of true for a brief period of time. And even then it wasn't true entirely. Now most people encounter a computer when they enter the workforce. They know shit about shit, they never had to tinker with computers, most of them never had one outside of some chromebook that allowed them to render two web pages. In most cases they start from basically blank slate.
Most people don't know that it's cog. Most people don't know it's a button. Most people don't have concept of a button in mind. Most people entering workforce right this moment never used a mouse to press a cog button in their life. Unless they're in IT or engineering.
This is usually when you kind of required to use console on Linux, that's why I was talking about it.
But my broader point was against so called intuitive self-explanatory nature of the menu you have to click with your mouse.
Of course they know how to use a computer. They don’t know a thing about how a computer works but that doesn’t mean they can’t use it. Heck, my 8 y/o cousin can figure out how to open and play Minecraft on his tablet. No need for him to know about commands, programming languages and bits n bytes.
Most people these days know how to use their phones, at the very least, and even there cog = settings. Most people don’t know how to use a CLI or how a spreadsheet program works, but they certainly can use a browser on a computer. Which is also a form of using a computer.
And maybe they don’t explicitly know it’s a button. But they know if they tap or click on a cog it takes them to settings.
And even figuring out how a mouse works is a thing of a few seconds, if all you’ve used before was a touchscreen (or even nothing at all). There‘s a reason they took off in the first place.
Although, if someone truly has never used a computer in any shape or form before. No smartphone, no tablet, not even a smart TV, you‘d probably have a point that it’s not much more difficult for them to learn the common iconography than it would be to learn the CLI. But people rarely start with such a blank slate today.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a good thing, people are less and less tech literate these days. But my point is, tech illiteracy doesn’t mean they have never used any computer ever and do not know what an app- or settings-icon is. I’d wager it’s more the other way around: People are so used to their devices working and their UIs looking pretty (and very samey) that iconography like cogs for settings are especially self explanatory to them. It’s the same on their phone, tablet and even TV after all.