this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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You're completely right, but there's a good reason why this happens. Why are people so insistent on trying to find fixes and workarounds for a broken system?
It's absolutely the same mindset as boomers complaining about technology these days because they don't want to learn how to download a mobile app. These people grew up with Windows and are too stubborn or insecure to learn something new, even if it's consistently better in multiple different ways. Yes, there are a few exceptions to that argument, but for the most part the arguments against switching to Linux are flimsy excuses, or outdated, or both.
I'm really not too sure about that.
Used to work in customer service for a major right wing (Daily Mail) newspaper, and that included tech support for their rewards club website, their newspaper reading Android/iOS/Kindle Fire app, and their bookshop website.
Pensioners struggle with technology and I really don't think it's just stubbornness and ignorance. I genuinely think that your ability to learn and remember things diminishes greatly as you grow older.
It was one of the worst jobs I worked in, not just because trying to explain how to do basic things like open a web browser, type in a URL or force stop and clear the cache on an Android app to a 90+ year old is like pulling teeth, but because we were paid like crap, treated like children by management, treated like shit by a lot of customers, and because we used to get a lot of editorial calls from people thinking we could put them through to a journalist so they could spout their often bigoted views. So glad I work in accountancy now. The worst customer support jobs are the ones where callers frequently go full Karen on you.
Good grief, that might be the worst customer service job I've ever heard of. I've worked Sainsbury's 'head office' - which was just the outsourced customer service centre for people who phone store chains to complain about cucumbers - and that was bad enough, but at least I got some good stories out of it ("My watermelon has exploded and I'm afraid of the second one. Can a man come round and take it away?" First ever call).
You were getting Mail readers who are already a self-selecting group of thick cunts and you were getting the worst of them. Jesus Christ, that must have been rough. So, so happy for you that you're out of that, I can't imagine what that would do to someone's mental health!
My condolences on having had to work for the Mail!
My mum really wants to use her smartphone but we've been struggling to teach her.
Do you have any tips?
Retraining people to use new tools on a corporate scale is an immense endeavour, probably a huge cost given the dip in productivity, and that's assuming there is an equivalent Linux tool in the first place.
For some people, learning new stuff isn't as easy, and they just don't have the investment to do so when all they want is to go about their day. The expectation that people shouldn't be so reluctant to learn something new ignores the inflexibility that long-established habits bring in some demographics.
Conversely, while that demographic is locked into using Windows by virtue of the cost-benefit function to learning something new just too... not be using Windows anymore? is just unfavourable, others will have to cater to them.
Technology is advancing way faster these days, and it's unfair to demand that everyone keep up with it. Hence, while recommending Linux is a good thing, being an elitist about it (as the people my previous commend alluded to tend to be) is unproductive.
Corporate adoption is Linux is absolutely a completely different discussion. Users of corporate devices are not the owners of their device, they have no expectation of control or freedom, and the tasks completed on these devices are typically simple and restricted. So yes, very little of my initial comment applies to that.
As for your other arguments, I would agree that the general everyday public with very little knowledge of Linux or the differences from Windows should have little expectation of switching over unless they decide to investigate for themselves. The main target my complaints are those people who come in to threads like these who do have the technical understanding to complain about Windows and understand that Linux is different, but constantly whine that they could never switch because this reason or that reason and oh won't those Linux nerds please just accept that Windows is better even though we're talking in the eighteenth thread full of people who hate it.
This is absolutely the attitude he was just talking about, you can't agree, then add a "but"
Linux is not the fix for all that ails you, and it's especially not the fix for non tech-savvy people, which as a reminder, is most people. Lemmy is not a good baseline for this because we're all savvy enough to get onto the fediverse in the first place, which in itself is very confusing if you're non tech savvy or coming from a place like reddit, where things are so fundamentally different.( Which i know for a fact most of you have experienced at some point)