Having spent many years in tech support and also being my family tech support, this post pains me.greatly.
I get to see other people ways of using the computer daily.
I had to watch someone use emacs today.
Lucky!
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Murder she wrote
That’s brilliantly told.
I am a little proud of the little details l.
/wrists
I’m pretty savvy but I have learned a few tricks from others. Although some people make me grind my teeth down to nubs
there is a reason i use i3wm on linux.
You cannot use my computer, it is impossible.
Part of the reason I installed Arch (BTW) is to see the looks of confusion and concern on my family’s faces as I’m computationizing
Do you game? If so, how is it with tiling?
yeah, play minecraft and factorio mostly, it’s great. Opening a game in bordered with another window is a little goofy sometimes, but you can set that workspace to be stacking/tabbed instead of splitting, and that solves that problem, you can also just make it open in fullscreen if you want though. One of the really nice things is since it’s a WM dealing with any sort of fullscreen operations are going to be pretty substantially simplified.
I have had a few weird input issues but that might be my config, i haven’t gone through it incredibly tediously. I can highly recommend at least trying a WM if you haven’t before, i3wm is quite nice as it’s extremely minimal but mostly configured out of the box, you’ll need ot do some minor config but other than that it’s usable once installed.
I could unless your i3 config is atypical
good news for you, i use mostly stock binds for navigation, the defaults are always the best, and a few extraneous ones for launching applications and configuration and such.
Yeah something tells me this ain’t limited to computers, for you. God save whatever man, woman or child has to suffer your oversight.
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.
Watching somebody scroll to the bottom of a very long list by clicking the arrow button under the scrollbar is my idea of hell.
do those arrows still exist?
Yeah, sometimes. I think Win11 fucks with scroll bars so they might be a line there.
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.
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.
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.
i am okay with this during the few instances where they do things in a better way than i would have. like utilizing some extremely rare/custom keybinds for certain tasks in IDEs. those experiences are eye opening and humbling.
most of the other times though, yeah it’s pretty rough
This is how I learned about alt+drag and middle click in many common DEs.
What do those do?
In Windows, nothing. In Linux, if your DE supports it, you can hold down the Alt key and click anywhere to drag it, rather than using the title bar.
For middle click pasting: normally, to copy and paste text, you’d have to use Ctrl+c,Ctrl+v (or equivalent methods). Again, if your setup supports it, instead you can just highlight text, then middle click elsewhere to paste the highlighted text.
Oh I already knew about the alt one. I thought you were talking about IDEs lol. Was very sleep deprived when I read this the first time.
I like the middle click one. I knew you could use it to paste, but not copy.
When I made my comment, I was worried that “DE” would be interpreted as a typo … But not enough to expand it.
This is how I learned about alt+drag and middle click in many common DEs.
Excellent! If you can incorporate them into your workflow, you may find your efficiency mildly enhanced, as I did.
Seeing people with respectable typing speed using just their two index fingers. What a waste. They could have been great.
People that learned on manual typewriters will do this.
The fingers aren’t the bottleneck, it’s the brain. I type just as fast with two fingers as with ten.
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)
Ah yes, my dad mastered the 2-finger-search-system
Your words do not hurt me, I’m already used to being a diappointment.
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
Oh my goodness… my job requires me to work with a team on some fairly industry specialized software (steaming and broadcast television); the way my coworkers have their shit set up is so weird. It’s like we are all speaking the same language, but with wildly different dialects.
In my job as a Product Manager, I make specialized software for internal users in my company. Watching people use it can be so painful.
An example: Look at dashboard view > memorize client name > go to client view > type in client name to search > click to view the client
When they could have just clicked to view the client from the dashboard.
After I finish cringing, I just take it as learnings for how to build/design better in the future.
Um have you ever tried to debug something over a zoom call on a *nix shell cli? This person’s nightmare is my Tuesday morning before I get coffee.
Watching anyone else’s terminal flow is my personal hell.
But then when you do find someone else who gets it and you start swapping runcoms it’s like the most beautiful thing.
It’s like when I log in to a vnc session and see a bunch of nano commands in the history, I just know my day is gonna be fucked.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
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.
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.
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.
REAL
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
DUDE IT’S CALLED A STICKY NOTE
But honestly if you’re happy with your current workflow then that’s fair
why are you moving the fucking mouse for this?
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.
