Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
there are benefits to being a technically advanced computer user:
- you can learn how to use linux.
- once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
What’s a good parent distro in your opinion? I’ve been eyeing Mint since that’s how I started
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
Yeah I like the idea of an “starter” distros for parents, but then rolling packages would probably be easier for when I need to do tech support
rolling distros are a bit of a pain from time to time, notably if you get a broken package, although i hear fedora is really good in terms of being updated, and also stable, so maybe that’s the ticket. Personally i don’t mind things being out of date, since most of the stuff i host is either externally installed, or stable enough its not going to get significant feature updates anyway.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
have you tried not interacting with people? Seems to work well for me.
Try explaining this to your family.
they wouldn’t listen to me anyway lol.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
Inputs login, grabs the mouse, clicks on the password field, inputs password, grabs the mouse again and clicks OK
With the way sites work these days there’s always some pop-up asking you to rate your experience or some crap. Especially Microsoft admin sites.
I start typing and then that pops up and then I click it away and the freaking focus is taking off of the text field… Now I got to click back in there and type again
If anyone here works at Microsoft please please stop with the fucking pop-ups inside of your own administrator sites. I do not want to rate your site, I do not want to learn about all the little changes you made for no good reason. I want to get my fucking work done
Ugh it’s the worst. Every time I remotely connect with Social Security support, there’s always such a delay while they click around. Thankfully they help me understand how many viruses I have by running some weird command called Net Stat or something idk. I see the screen flash and it’s scary. They’re even so helpful that they even help me login to my bank and transfer funds to get rid of the net viruses! I only wish they would scroll the mouse instead of clicking on the arrow bars. They’re helpful, but man do I hate when they yell and curse at me when I don’t have money and can’t pay them until next week. But I guess it’s worth the small computer struggles, but boy does it bother me when they don’t scroll the mouse wheel!
I’ve dealt with that and found a solution. What’s your SSN?
Oh fantastic! I didn’t expect to find you guys on the mouse Reddit version, whatever it is I’m using here to share my success story!
I’m scared someone will attack me, so I can tweet it instead with that cool encryption thing that Elon talked about. I’ll try it now.
@tweet send Okay we’re safe here, no one can see it except you and me. Thanks for the help, I don’t know if the hackers can see my stuff. But if I cover my webcam while I type this I think we’re good. My social security number is 155-21-3249. I think I already sent the last payment, so if I need to get you a new Google robot gift card or whatever it’s called, I can try to go to target. I get paid Friday, is that okay?
I try not to judge people…unless I see them right-clicking to copy and paste. Ew.
Double click then middle click gang.
If your hand is already on the mouse, it can be quicker to just right click and click copy. Especially if the next action also uses the mouse.
Do you hold the mouse with both hands?
No, the other hand is scratching my balls
No, but I’ve been using Dvorak long enough to have forgotten how convenient the default cut/copy/paste binds are without stopping to think about it. Dvorak’s x, c, and v are where qwerty’s b, i, and period are, respectively.
I still use the keybinds more often than right click, but it’s not always the optimal option. With qwerty, it might be always optimal.
well as a Colemak enjoyer I don’t have that problem. Couldn’t you just rebind the shortcuts in your OS to be in the normal spot near ctrl?
I’m not sure there is a way to rebind those keyboard shortcuts, at least in Windows, since I believe they are all handled in the current program’s Windows message handler as key inputs rather than cut/copy/paste events. So, afaik, it would need to be set up on a per program basis with that program’s support.
There might be a utility that does that remapping on a key by key basis, but I figure such an app might not work as well with games that use ctrl as a modifier key but not for cut/copy/paste.
For Linux, most of the work I do there is via the terminal which doesn’t even have the usual ctrl key combos for those operations (like ctrl+c is SIGTERM instead of copy).
If I’m doing something that is heavy on copy/paste and mouse use, middle click paste covers a lot and for what it doesn’t, I can move my left hand to hit the qwerty period or I buttons on the right side of the keyboard, so this issue hasn’t been enough of a problem for me to seek out a better solution. I’ve also got a two button switch keyboard layouts shortcut so I could just switch it to qwerty for that and switch back easy enough.
Though I did use to rebind those shortcuts in word and the like when qwerty habits were fresher in my mind. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure when it was that I “unlearned” those shortcuts.
Based dvorak enjoyer
You’ve got me questioning my life choices
Yeah, who wouldn’t use the toolbar icons?!
I…
Fuck you, man!
Shift+ins gang
I had someone send me bullet points in Teams… except they weren’t bullet points or even carriage returns. It was just 50+ spaces at the end of the line to make the text go down to the next line in her view.
She was also a right-click copy/paster.
yep, not using scroll wheel but clicking on the up/down arrow in the side bar, or, especially in Windows, when the remote IT guy go through start menu and type “control panel” and go here and here and here and you are wondering how this guy knows so few?!?
Having done remote support in the past, there is often a delay and especially with scrolling it is difficult to control, so I always ended up doing the side bar thing as well.
Control panel is also a quirky one, because it is sorted alphabetically from left to right and then from top to bottom in the display language. So the control panel items are very often in a different place because Microsoft.
I did learn most of the control panel shortcuts because of that though, which still comes in handy sometimes. I even had a printed out cheat sheet for it.
I don’t think the up/down arrows on the scroll-bars event exists anymore. They aren’t there in default windows 11 that’s for sure.
Edit: they do appear when you hoover your mouse over the scroll-bar or click on it.
when you hoover your mouse
pls, do not hoover your mouse
I love Satisfactory but scrolling through a longer list of items can be a real pain. Scrolling with the mouse wheel feels incredibly slow and clicking the wheel once and then moving the the cursor down simply isn’t an option
So I’m often forced to resort to dragging the scroll bar manually, just like people in medieval times did
deleted by creator
The number of people I blow away with Win+X [task manager / device manager / system properties / powershell]…
I’m a ninja. I slide my hand over and thumb/index/key and the required window magically opens.
Even win+X/U/U for shutdown trolling.
BECAUSE I HAVE ADHD AND CAN’T REMEMBER THEM TO SAVE MY LIFE
You don’t use keyboard shortcuts because you have ADHD and can’t remember them
I use keyboard shortcuts because I have ADHD and would never be able to stay focused on anything without them
We are not the same
Every 0.04 seconds I shave off whatever task I’m doing is a hit of dopamine right to the receptors
DUDE IT’S CALLED A STICKY NOTE
But honestly if you’re happy with your current workflow then that’s fair
SO MANY STICKY NOTES
deleted by creator
why are you moving the fucking mouse for this?
I want to see a Blender expert using it with no keyboard shortcuts. I think you can’t even use some functionality like panning without a keyboard. Unless you bind it to extra mouse buttons or smth of course.
my sister’s boyfriend leaves his keyboard,
moves his mouse to the + icon
clicks to make a new tab
moves his mouse to the search bar
clicks the search bar
moves his hand back to the keyboard
then starts typingIt’s so painful to watch. He is making progress though! We made him get a sticky note haha
I had an old friend that would type www.google.com in the Google search bar, click the top link, then search.
omg I thought that was just a meme
I think most people do it that way, hell I use Vim and tiling window managers and I still do it that way most of the time.
I’ll be honest, I forgot there was a + button to make a new tab. Now I wanna get rid of it, that’s space that I could put more tabs.
I forgot where that button is because when I need a tab, I just open a random link on the page that I am on in a new tab and go where I need from there
REAL
When I’m in the passenger seat, I push on the imaginary brake. When I’m watching someone on a computer, I’m pushing shortcuts on the imaginary keyboard.
But on the flip side. If you tell somebody something they don’t know like:
‘You can open links in new tabs by klicking on them with the mouse wheel.’
Or
‘You can reopen closed tabs by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T’
They look at you like you’ve just shown them the meaning of life. Bonus points if you see them using it later.
You can what?!
Man, 2 weeks into an IT job, we’re doing a presentation and our VP of IT accidentally closed a tab. Felt like a wizard being the only person in the room, somehow, who knew that hotkey.
Watching my partner play a FPS game has the same energy
I had to teach my little brother how to download a exe yesterday. Like just the simple every software or game type of installation:
click download on website -> click windows version on GitHub list -> extract folder -> find exe
Quite honestly im impressed he’s been using a computer for like 4 years without ever encountering a .zip fileAnd don’t get me started with my highschool teachers. One of them got SUPER excited because I showed her how to enable looping on a YouTube video because she kept clicking replay every 3 minutes when the song ended (she plays Spanish music before class starts)
TBF if you’re young, so much software just comes through software managers or super easy installers. Steam + Windows store is probably enough for most people. Maybe? Idk, I have no idea what’s on the Windows store except Minecraft.
Every single time anybody has had to take remote control of a work computer while I watch feels like a violation and/or some sort of supernatural haunting.
Looking over someone’s shoulder while they clearly engage the interface wrong I have a much easier time doing. It’s the disembodied element that gets me.
Yeah something tells me this ain’t limited to computers, for you. God save whatever man, woman or child has to suffer your oversight.
There’s an older guy at my work that defies all stereotypes. Hes in his 60s, but everytime I watch him share his screen, I learn something new.
Now you need to share some examples
Seeing people with respectable typing speed using just their two index fingers. What a waste. They could have been great.
That’d be me! Over 90 wpm with mostly my index fingers. I do use other fingers for some keys (I always hit space with my thumb and backspace with my ring finger), but it’s mostly index fingers.
Same. I imagine, for me at least, it’s due to having deal with unendingly different keyboard models and not being in front of a terminal all day.
I can however type relatively quickly with either my left or right hand and with the keyboard facing me or sideways. It’s a skill that’s really useful when helping someone out with an issue they’re facing. (I prefer being at their side over remote, as I can gauge what they do and don’t understand better)
The fingers aren’t the bottleneck, it’s the brain. I type just as fast with two fingers as with ten.
Your words do not hurt me, I’m already used to being a diappointment.
Ah yes, my dad mastered the 2-finger-search-system
Even if they were half as fast, it’s so much more satisfying when you use all your fingers.
I remember day I started actually using my right pinky finger to press the semicolon. That’s when I became a real man.
That reminds me of when I learned to touch type 3 years ago, I went from 30wpm hunt and peck to 15wpm touch type
Now I’m at ~80wpm and my small brain coming up with words is the limiting factor hahaHah, sometimes I forget how to spell a word but my fingers still remember it
People that learned on manual typewriters will do this.
There’s an application we use at work that I used to be an admin for at a previous job so I know all of the keyboard shortcuts, watching people use a mouse for navigation makes my skin crawl but I’ve been teaching some of my coworkers so it’s getting better.
