KDE is an international technology team creating user-friendly free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. KDE’s software runs on GNU/Linux, BSD and other operating systems, including Windows.
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Let's make Windows 10 the last version ever used!
*Sat. 28 Dec. 11h* Stage YELL #KDEEco 's Call To Action against e-waste driven by #Windows10.
*Mon. 30 Dec. 13-15h* B&B habitat join the BoF to organize a global #FreeSoftware campaign to raise awareness of Windows 10's EoL in 2025, the role of software in #eWaste, and how independent, sustainable #FOSS is a solution to keep devices in use & out of the landfill.
https://fahrplan.alpaka.space/jugend-hackt-38c3-2024/talk/ST8NJA/
As someone who is way into the idea of Linux, wants to switch, and is very gun-shy about the million little programs and extensions I might not be able to replace, let me tell you what is required of anybody who is actually genuine in their desire to see Linux gain the traction it deserves:
Don't ever tell anybody to read the manual again. Just answer the god damn question. It's good when answers to basic, common problems are peppered around the internet like that; it's dumb and wrong and weird to think of it as a thing to be avoided. If you'd like to put a link to the part of the manual where the questioner could have looked to find it, that's cool, too. Don't just leave the link--there's a good chance they didn't understand it and that's why they're asking. Maybe they just want a person-answer instead of a reference-manual-answer, and it's good when the answer exists in both forms. Every answered question is a contribution.
I would go even further: the version of reality where Linux beats Windows and ushers in an era of community-centric open source dominance is populated by a Linux community that considers "rtfm", "pebcac", etc to be borderline bannable offenses. If you are a small, weak person, and want Linux to be your way of thinking you're better than other people, you'll drive question-askers away, back to Inferiority Land, using your knowledge to dunk on them instead of help them, and call it a win. These are the ugly bridge trolls, who may as well be paid Microsoft employees, keeping people away from your community, and a serious change of pace might yield much smoother adoption. At the very least, the community owes it to their own work to see how much smoother.
As someone considering the switch seriously, the knowledge that I may have to deal with people like that is absolutely, 100% a factor, and I am someone who has no qualms about telling someone on the internet to fuck off, so it's gonna be more of an issue for many others who are more conflict-averse.
The Linux community needs to take very seriously whether it actually wants increased open source adoption, or if it wants to remain a tiny minority so that it has a nice, large majority to feel better than.
Without offenses but it's important to read instructions for anything in this life, the wash machine, robot cooking, your daily medication, etc., all of them have instructions.
Most people that says "read the documentation" is also tired of people that can't read instructions how things works, and in this open source world everything minimum popular is well documented.
I feel Windows users lacks many documentation and people are used to click to .exe that claims to do what they need to do, or they just follow some random user on a forum.
When someone asks me to teach them to learn to programming, I tell them to just read documentation. No need to pay for extra courses or YouTube videos, most of the time you can learn it better and up to date if you go to the documentation.
Then, after you did the proper search, it would make sense to open a post asking for help to gurus, telling them the steps you followed providing context and logs, if you don't do that, most experts would just ignore you if you can't spend time reading docs, they won't spend time solving your issue normally.
Pretty sure that's their point: If the instructions are too complex or intimidating, particularly if they're technically written, they may genuinely be unreadable to some users.
There's a certain effect where, if something seems overwhelming, particularly if you already feared it might be, that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And once the overwhelm starts, once it sounds even a little too complex for users to be confident in their understanding, the brain goes into panic mode and holds on to "aaaah I can't do this".
So yes, some people genuinely can't read instructions because static instructions don't talk to them, just at them, with no ability to respond and reassure if that panic hits. Human interaction often seems less intimidating because they can (ideally) respond to your confusion, reword just that part, hold your hand through the process, all of which instructions can't.
Throwing them into the pool and telling them to learn swimming doesn't help: It makes them want to leave. Learning to read docs is a skill itself that needs to be developed separately, but making it an entry barrier risks scaring people off before their investment of time and focus starts paying off.
Are those docs written or proofread by noobs? My experience with tech people (including myself, unfortunately) is that we tend to think in specific trained (or perhaps intuitive to us) patterns that don't neatly map on how non-techies perceive and understand the world. If I try to explain something, I don't even know where there are parts that I'd need to simplify, explain differently, what metaphors I could use to help understand and so on.
Of course, techies do want those details I'd have to omit for non-techies. Some guides do really well with a "simple" and an "advanced" version of instructions. However, "documentation" doesn't always equal "guide", and some docs are really just a dry list of functiond and syntax, which brings us back to the topic of having to learn to read docs.
...they're already past the first threshold of "This is all way too much, I'll never learn that". Anyone willing to engage with programming already has conquered - or never had - that initial fear of not understanding stuff. For them, docs might not be much of a barrier, and if they're well-written may be a good point for slightly more advanced stuff.
I'd argue they'll still need an initial intro to "how to think like a programmer" (or rather, "like a computer, and to solve backwards from that"), but in any case, they're not the target audience for "Linux as competitive desktop".
Non-techies are, and to them, tech may well be scary. We need to account for that and ease them in by whatever means work best for them, if we want them to come to us, not what suits us best.
This 100% I'm the computer person in my social circles, and my head sometimes starts to hurt from reading less than ideal documentation. Granted those are usually for pretty involved stuff, but it's pretty frustrating spending hours to chew through and not getting an answer after all.
I'd imagine it's worse for people whose PC is not a hobby but a tool. You shouldn't need to spend a lot of time and effort on a tool just to get it working right. That might be fine for a used bargain tool, but you don't replace like half the world's OS's with a used bargain tool. That's not what people want or need.