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/
I think we’re talking in circles here. My point is: Telling people to go read the docs contributes to the perception of the linux community as closed and unhelpful. That perception doesn’t help with winning over more people. As you note:
But that cycle has to start somewhere, and until companies start picking up, we need to do it ourselves, for ideological reasons if not monetary ones. Telling people to start out with easy guides is good, but redirecting further questions to docs and git pages builds a wall.
Why should I do the reading for someone without pay? Because I can, I trust my understanding and I want to help them.
But there are hard and easy guides, just go to the easy guides. The times someone said to me to read the docs, they were right. Often when I want to start a post asking for help or reporting an issue I realize that issue has been reported already or documented before I finish writing it, because I do my searches while I write my issue adding context of it.
If your skills aren’t good for that guide, start with something simple, I don’t know what kind of issue happens that what you are explaining.
I do help anyone, no matter if they use Android, Linux, Windows, Apple… The best way to help them for me is to sit behind them and tell them what steps to take, often they ask me what to do, and then I tell them to read what is on the screen, the app window or the popup, and here I say, “just read, what does it say?” and the text they read is often the response to what they want to do.
That’s what I mean: we’re techies. We know what context may be relevant. We know how to read that documentation and we know how to search for it. When we read documentation, we can tell whether we understand it, we can try if a fix applies to our issue, we can recognise if a given issue description matched ours. When we read a message, we know what is or isn’t a technical term and what they refer to. We know synonyms like folder and directory, we understand that a word document, powerpoint presentation or executable all are “files”, we trust our understanding and our ability to compensate whatever we don’t know with searches or educated guesses.
All of these things require understanding a lot of tech words and a degree of trust in your understanding, and that’s where non-tech users hit a snag. I’ll tell them “You don’t need to buy a new Windows key to reinstall it, you can check your current one. Here’s a good and detailed guide.” They’ll get back with “I don’t know what that command thing is, it looks scary, I’m not doing that” because they don’t trust themselves. It’s literally a step by step guide for opening the cmd, entering a command and finding a relevant part of the text it produces, and they get scared that they’ll mess it up because they have absolutely zero understanding of the components. They don’t know what a command line is, they don’t know what a text command is, they know nothing of what we take for granted.
They said they’d need someone to guide them through and basically hold their hand for it, someone to unfuck whatever they fuck up, or at least confirm that what they’re doing is right, to help them understand the output and assure them that the text means exactly what they think it means.
When you sit behind them and tell them what to do, to just read the message without fear of not understanding, that’s exactly the helping I mean. In order to even dare to try Linux, people need the assurance that, whatever their issue, someone will be there for them. And that assurance comes through the way we treat questions online - all question, not just the more complex ones, because the layperson can’t tell the difference.
When they come asking for help, don’t send them away. No matter how familiar the docs and git pages may be for you, don’t just send them there. Show them what they have to do, where it is written, how it is written there and how to understand that writing. Guide them, and they’ll be happier to follow.
As I said, because Linux is not popular, it’s hard to know someone close to you that knows Linux to help you.
Now, with your example that you give here, let’s say you want to learn how to use the Windows PowerShell things. If you don’t have someone close, you would look for a professional to pay, if you don’t want to pay, you would check for a YouTube guide and there are full of guides about it.
If you want to do the same with the Linux terminal, is the same exact phrase: “let’s say you want to learn how to use the Linux terminal things. If you don’t have someone close, you would look for a professional to pay, if you don’t want to pay, you would check for a YouTube guide and there are full of guides about it.”
Most of the people wants to play on their PC and don’t want to mess with Linux, the people I know that doesn’t play on their PC are still using the Linux I installed to them. And your example is something easy, and there are many guides on YouTube and blogs about it.
If someone responds with a “rtfm”, should be because the question is about something complex not a common user do, what common people do on their computer it’s all on YouTube guides.
I think those people that kept with Linux are those that doesn’t play games or doesn’t reject the idea from the beginning (denying learning something new).
You’re still getting a fundamental detail wrong: Most non-tech people don’t want to “learn (tool)”, they want to “do (thing)” and (tool) happens to be part of the solution. But they don’t search for “beginner’s guide to (tool)”, let a lone a professional to teach them, they search for “vague terms describing what I want to do in non-technical terms”. They may get accurate results, useless results, results targeted at more technical users, or their choice of words may overlap with technical terms meaning something else and more complex.
If they click on a search result they (or google) think is relevant to their search and see an online forum of people responding bluntly, they’ll leave. They don’t know that the response is about something more complex. They can’t possibly tell. All they see is a culture of “You’re on your own, buddy”. That impression may stick with them, may even spread, and create a wall between techies and non-techies.
My vision is one where they’d see helpful answers, even if they don’t understand them, but they feel encouraged to ask. If it turns out this isn’t actually related to their issue, someone will point them the right way. I want that to be the impression we create. That includes answering more complex questions. That would benefit both the non-techies feeling more welcome, the veterans that probably have already read the docs and found them wanting and the beginners that need help learning to understand docs.
“RTFM” should under no circumstances be considered a reasonable answer. If you don’t want to help, don’t. If you want to help, give an explanation while pointing at the relevant section of the docs. Piping up just to tell people to go away and not asking questions is a dick move.
If we want break corporate monopolies, we need to be better than them, particularly in User Experience. Poor User Experience includes poor Pre-Experience while deciding whether to use a product. That means we need to project a welcoming image all around, not just selectively.