A flawed hypothesis. LOGO and Hypercard > Lotus notes.
I got into programming on a TRS-80 clone. Everything you needed to know to program it was contained in a little 150 page book that came with it.
To program the Mac, you needed a whole bookshelf of books.
What if you were started on an Apple computer before Macs existed?
Get out.
“Discluded”?
Thank you! This meme is reposted often, and that non-word always jumps out at me.
I installed Linux for the first time at 14.
13/14 for me. Thinkpad 600 😎
Its nice to know im not the only Linux kid. It felt so weird, most of my friends didn’t even know what Android was. It sucks growing up tech savvy when most people call themselves nerds after discovering “air drop”.
Good grief! The word is excluded. Holy shit.
probably a Windows user
Shit was making my eye twitch.
I think that being forced to learn about WINE at a young age may have been beneficial actually (if extremely unpleasant)
I remember when Wine was in alpha for twelve years (and then beta for three more). Was surprised to learn that it finally exited that stage, some time ago already.
So unpleasant.
There are dozens of us
Linux didn’t exist when I was 12. 😑
Same. Didn’t show up until 3 years later.
I was around 13 for my first Linux install. Good times. Think pad 600, what a classic.
If I could have that exact same machine, with modern specs, I’d be hard pressed to use anything else. The nostalgia alone… So good.
Ibm had fallen off a cliff. I remember having one that had a dock for it’s cd reader and such. Things was God damned bullet proof! I got an IdeaPad recently and aside from the metal shell, it’s pretty much garbage. Like I don’t really know what they’re doing with their bios, but I just installed an m.2 drive with a Linux install and it takes almost the exact same time to boot as it did from the fucking platter hdd!
they haven’t been made by ibm for years and years
I was 8 when Linus posted on that Minix Usenet group about his hobby that won’t be big at all.
The majority of people I know who have major computer problems solve them by buying another computer
I’m not even that tech illiterate, but I almost did that… My laptop was being slow, and I still had like 4k€ in overtime hours that I could buy Hardware from at work (it’s a great deal because I neither have to pay VAT on the hardware nor income taxes on the money from the overtime), so I was like, eh, might as well get a new laptop.
So then I read up on what laptop brands are out there, found out about Framework, and when I excitedly told my electrical engineer husband about it he was like “You knooow that you can easily replace parts in any laptop, right?”
Well, I didn’t know that (just kinda assumed laptops were more like phones than they are like desktop PCs), so I ended up just ordering a new SSD and new RAM for my laptop. It’s back to being butter smooth, but I have a hunch that cleaning the dust from the fans while I was in there was a very large factor in that haha
I used to work at a locally run computer store, and one of the biggest upgrades for most people was going from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD. Made a night and day difference.
Ooh, totally! I did have an SSD in there before, but it was only 256GB, so I had to store most files on the HDD and be extremely selective about what to install to C:. Going up to 8TB felt very liberating, I no longer have to fear that an npm install might crash my whole machine! (at least not due to space constraints, npm will figure out how to crash it for other reasons)
If the crashing stopped by replacing the SSD probably the SSD is end-of-life. SSDs basically wear down with each write action and when they reach their terabytes written limit they can start crashing the system during read and write actions. Also the smaller the SSD the lower the terabytes written limit is. 256GB drives are on the low end, so not surprising that you reached that limit.
That might be the case too! I do believe it was more of a skill issue in my case because I was booting Linux Mint from a 40GB partition (couldn’t free any more space than that on the old SSD) and enabled too many system backups (they recommended 2 daily and 2 on boot, and I just followed the recommendation without thinking about the space implications). Those alone put me at around 35-38GB of used space, and an npm install is usually around 1 GB, but log and temp files can sometimes balloon up when things go wrong. So it wasn’t really a crash per say, just Mint’s “shut down the system when you run out of storage space” protection triggering haha
I’ve been pretty much upgrading my own desktop PC regularly since the 90s (though I did buy a brand new one 6 years ago).
In my experience the upgrade that’s more likelly to improve it the cheapest is RAM, then a graphics card if you’re a gamer.
Upgrading the CPU has always been something that happens less often and also it doesn’t help that the CPU can only be upgrade up to a point without having to replace the motherboard (which then forces replacing the RAM and possibly even the PC box).
However there were two transition periods were the best upgrade by far was something else: the first was back in the day when hardware 3D accelerator boards were invented (Quake with a 3dfx was night and day compared to software rendering) and the other one was the transition for HDD to SSD, both being massive jumps in performance.
I see you used to have an HDD in there. That alone would’ve made it painfully slow in Windows especially, but even with Linux.
Now it should stay fast for longer.
I mean, asterisk. Most laptops let you swap the storage and RAM and many let you swap the battery. Beyond that it usually gets difficult.
Framework let you swap everything, which is a major difference. But of course you pay for that privilege; modular design has its costs.
Still, good on you for getting a cheap upgrade. No need to throw away a perfectly good laptop if you can make it work fast again with a new SSD.
Framework let you swap everything
I think there’s still a pretty big asterisk on that, because laptop parts are generally not built to be swappable… So I don’t think you can swap the CPU without the rest of the mainboard, and some parts like the CPU cooler are probably tied to the specific variant of mainboard and need to be swapped together if you want to switch CPUs.
They do let you swap out parts that are reasonably swappable, so it’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll be able to upgrade storage and memory, and even where you can’t swap to different parts they make sure you can replace broken parts more granularly, so it still seems like a good deal.
The logic board has the CPU built in, that’s true. However, the Framework 16 has a swappable GPU and all models make the ports independent of the logic board through a USB-C-based expansion module system. So that’s even a few parts other manufacturer might consider unreasonable.
(Also, to be fair, I forgot one other thing most laptops let you swap: The WiFi/BT card, if only because it’s cheaper to have that on a swappable module.)
Wow that’s an amazing amount of dust. I think that’s the most I have seen in a computer and my only source of laptop used to be old things from recycling centers
Could be explained by the fact that my favorite position to program is on my bed, like a teenage girl from a mediocre 2000’s movie writing in her diary. The laptop fans get a taste of all that good good bed sheet fiber.
My back hurts thinking about this.
I use mine on a sofa (for gaming, even!), but I get around the issue a bit by having a pad under the laptop. It’s literally just a hard plastic board with a beanbag attached underneath, I think I got it from IKEA. It isolates the laptop a bit from dust and improves airflow + lets it heat up without burning my knees + the one I have is just large enough that I can also use my wireless mouse on it when I push my laptop to the left.
Ah I see you keep your laptop well fed. I try to keep mine anorexic lol
If you’re a half-decent person you doged a bullet there:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/framework_linux_controversy/
I’ve told those kind of people about how easily I could format/reinstall the OS, and they looked at me like some kind of lunatic witch doctor.
That’s why I will nab computers out of the trash if I see 'em. Most of them still have perfectly functional modern parts. A lot of the time, the only thing that even needs replacing is the PSU.
*Reads comments in thread*
I started with a pair of matchsticks and a trenchcoat that I got at Galipoli in WW1, using the Phosphorus I found in the Bosphorus to craft makeshift TI calculator based on specs I got via Fax from a Samurai. I ran slackware on my slacks until we defeated the Ottomans, but they unleashed their puppy linuxes on us, and we stood no chance.
Meanwhile…
At the Hall of Justice, we join our heroes enjoying a celebratory game of Tuxkart on their PopOS devices after their latest defeat of Lex Luthor’s DOS army.
“That was a great buffer underflow, Batman” said Superman, piping his Krypto into a GPG wallet.
“Thank you, Superman. Evil shall think twice before compiling on a non GCC system without warnings enabled!”
It’s all that musl he has.
I think the issue is not having a desktop-type computer at all and having a tablet/phone that’s so locked down the kid isn’t given the opportunity to explore or troubleshoot.
Tinkering is how you learn to solve problems, which requires having something tinker-able without having to go down a hacky rabbithole.
I know a bit about teaching about computers/programming to kids in the first years of high school. Their understanding of anything computer is abysmal. They have grown up with smartphones and maybe tablet, never were able to tinker with anything. Even just what internet is was confusing to them. It had to be reframed as “when can you watch youtube” for it to make sense…
Anytime this topic comes up, I reshare this blog post. With things being “that bad” over a decade ago, I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten.
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
Great read, exactly what I experienced. On the other hand, we also really want to think about what knowledge is really important. Is knowing the difference between Internet and World Wide Web necessary? Or is programming in a random language? Knowledge is power, but there is just so much you can learn. Starting knowing that you don’t know and it’s not magic is, to me, already a great step, because from there you can learn. Expecting everything to be prepackaged is instead a very passive approach, and that should be discouraged.
Yeah, that “what to absolutely learn” line needs to be established. Basic knowledge of fixing and troubleshooting absolutely should be taught, while scripting and programming is probably not a high priority for many people. Maybe financial/business interested students could learn some scripting, but art and literature students won’t really care.
I’m Gen Z, and I cringe at both my classmates and alpha-cusp cousins, my millennial aunts, my xillenial dad, and my boomer grandparents, one of which taught college classes on how to use computers back in the 80s, so idk what happened there…
In the case of my classmates, I can understand that if you’re too poor to have a home computer with Windows or Mac, then you won’t have many opportunities for computer literacy, cause we used heavily locked-down Chromebooks from 5-12th grade, and while my college library has Windows desktops, I’m not sure if the rental laptops are Windows or Chrome. But grown adults had computer lab, so what happened there?
But still, I’ve seen mind numbing shit like using the caps key instead of shift when typing (ON PURPOSE, by the way), not using any kind of ad block, not knowing where shit is in phone settings, hell, asking for chargers is “iPhone or Android charger” or “round or flat charger” instead of USB C or lightning.
Troubleshooting is such a big one! Like, you should be able to distinguish between a “I can fix it” issue, a “somebody can fix it” issue and a “my computer burned to the ground” situation… and act accordingly. I’m also okay with the first option being very limited! But please Google your problem until you vaguely understand what’s wrong.
Like kids back in the 1980s ☺️ many couldn’t even read a floppy on the C64!
I wonder if they, I mean today’s kids, learn other things we miss out on.
From the educators perspective, they get a lot more brain rot. They dropped in in-person socialization, long and medium term concentration and literacy of any type. I haven’t heard any positives yet… but I also fear that with every year, I am getting closer to the trope of “back in my days”-shake walking cane. So, hopefully someone comes to tell me I’m missing something
Witnessed a radiology resident typing her password into a computer and for each uppercase letter she would press shift-lock, type the letter, then press shift-lock again.
I couldn’t figure it out until my mom pointed out she probably only ever used a phone or tablet.
Which is crazy, because I can’t imagine getting through high school, college, and medical school without ever working on a desktop computer.
I think the issue is not having a desktop-type computer at all and having a tablet/phone that’s so locked down the kid isn’t given the opportunity to explore or troubleshoot
True. That being said, I’m pretty sure that a Mac is roughly at the middle point between that and a Windows PC, with Linux users being way more tech savvy still.
In fact, so much exploration and troubleshooting being REQUIRED to make most if not all Linux distros do what you want is (along with game compatibility/availability) the main reason for many people who are sick of Windows to be hesitant to make the switch, myself included.
You don’t really need to tinker too much tbf, install distros like Bazzite and you have all done pratically
I’ve been told that exact thing dozens of times with different “just install it and it does everything for you” distro recommendations, and it hasn’t been the case with any of the ones I’ve tried.
I’m not saying that people are lying to me or anything like that, I just think that people underestimate how used they are to using Linux and thus overestimate how easy it is for people who aren’t.
Right now, I have Zorin OS on my laptop since that’s supposed to be THE easiest one for refugees from Windows to use, and while I’m liking it so far, I’m nowhere near being ready for it to replace Windows on my desktop yet.
I don’t even use Linux often, since my institution require me to run windows i use linux rarely.
Zorin OS has just a better ““marketing”” than other distros, the only plus it has is having a familiar GUI and a big community.
some features of bazzite (you can check everthing in bazzite.gg)
- Roll back: after every update the previous version of the operating system is retained on your machine. Should an update cause any issues, you can select the previous image at boot time.
- SELinux (a more secure version of Linux, it was originally made by both the NSA and redhat) with Secure Boot support
It’s more focused in gaming but it work well even in non-gaming situations
Also, it should be harder to break but i think you need to install apps from flatpak (a software store) instead of the package manager tho, i don’t remember well.
I don’t say it’s the easiest one, i just say it’s the one i suggest, do what you want, try what you want.
the only plus it has is having a familiar GUI and a big community.
Those are exceptionally good plusses, though.
In fact, it’s the number one and number two requirements for easing the passage between systems, which is why I chose Zorin.
Thought, those plus are more common than what you think (usually because making a good looking GUI is easy on Linux and because most of the distros are derivates of Debian, Arch, Fedora or some other famous distro) so yeah, i wouldn’t say it’s the best one for begginer, thought i admit it’s polished and i would probably use it
Seconding a rec for Bazzite, but please don’t make people think that distros this are a silver bullet. I’ve been running Bazzite for months, and while my experience is MOSTLY issue free, I did have to spend quite a while trying to figure out why certain flatpack apps refused to run sometimes on boot. Still don’t know what I did to fix my issue, and it’s working reliably, so I’m not going to touch it…
It’s not issue-less but it’s pretty much a “work out-of-the box” expirience , you will have 2/3 problems like in EVERY other OSes, you can’t say that you didn’t had some problems on Windows or macOS
Exactly.
A background of tinkering with stuff without fear of the consequences of breaking it (which is a common mindset mainly amongst kids and teens) is the difference between a tool-maker and a tool-user, IMHO, and thinkering is far more natural to start doing and to do much further with an open system than with a closed system.
Das wirft natürlich eine sehr interessante wissenschaftliche Forschungsfrage auf, die ich mir erlaubt habe, in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zu recherchieren:
“Does early exposure to different operating systems (macOS vs. Windows) correlate with differences in technological literacy and general problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents?”
The available research does not provide conclusive evidence that early exposure to different operating systems directly correlates with differences in technological literacy or problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents.
While studies reveal some interesting distinctions, the evidence is limited. Ronaldo Muyu et al., 2022 found Windows is more popular among university students (84.61% vs. 11.38% for macOS), suggesting potential usage differences. Shahid I. Ali et al., 2019 found no significant competency differences between Mac and Windows users in Excel skills. Cem Topcuoglu et al., 2024 noted that users’ perceptions of operating systems are often based on reputation rather than technical understanding.
Interestingly, Bijou Yang et al., 2003 found Mac users had significantly greater computer anxiety, which might indirectly impact technological literacy.
More targeted research is needed to definitively answer this question, particularly studies focusing on children and adolescents.
I did once have a Mac user describe the Bash terminal as “it looks like breaking things.”
Had to ssh into an orange pi I set up with emulation station to transfer some roms. Dude who I thought was tech literate was in awe and even described it as “hacking” a few days later recounting it with another friend.
Also was the hbic at a Dave and Buster’s, had to update the six person halo game, which runs on Linux, people started gathering around with their oooo’s and awe’s, with one kid saying it was like the movies. People by and large are pretty fucking
stupidignorant.Edit to not sound so harsh.
I mean idk. I know it’s simple once you know but not something I would expect the average person to be familiar with. To be fair if you’re hacking you’re probably are using ssh at some point. But also I wonder if some have a hard time accepting their own accomplishments. If we never allow ourselves to see our own advancement then we just see others who have not achieved as less. Give yourself some credit bro and by extension give these onlookers a break. What you’re doing is kinda cool. Is that not what draws you to these types of activities in the first place?
That’s a very solid outlook. Thanks for the perspective.
I think early exposure to several different OS’s means you’re at least not too poor, and lack of money does correlate a lot with illiteracy of all sorts.
I think you misunderstand: the question is not about exposure to different OSes, but about the correlation/causation of a given OS to later cognitive (and other) abilities. Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
The point I’m making is that I believe that people who have mac skills will need to also learn Windows skills just because it’s so much more commonplace.
Just like lefties can be more empathetic on scale, because they have to face the disappointment of things not being designed for them (us, but I’m more mixed-handed than pure lefty).
It’s not about the orientation of the hand, but the phenomena surrounding having to orient your hand / use a certain hand in a certain way.
Just like I don’t believe that Mac as an OS is inherently changing the kids significantly.
Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
And to be fair, I don’t really know anyone who’s only ever used a mac for those exact reasons. We had a few kids in graphic design school be like “well I mostly use Mac as my personal computer is a mac”, so they weren’t as used to using Windows, since they hadn’t done it since school.
Like if you compared the linguistic capacity of people in the US, I’m pretty sure that no matter what you choose as the primary language, those kids will still know English (as we’re talking about USA here), and if they know English, then they’re at least bilingual, which has a lot of cognitive benefits. But you wouldn’t be saying that specifically speaking some specific other language makes the kids smarter.
Some languages might give certain advantages, like say some aboriginal language which doesn’t have left/right but always uses cardinal directions. Due to them doing that it’s insanely hard to confuse their inner sense of direction, even if you chuck them if a van and drive them around blindfolded.
So I’m not saying using Macs can’t have some such small specific advantage, but I doubt it, and think it’s just general adaptation skills, which do correlate with positive cognitive development.
So I started with a DOS machine that my dad had at work, then my school got a few Apple Macs in the library so I played Oregon Trail on the green screen, them the first computer we had at home that I was able to spend hours on was windows 3.1.
'98 myself. But I got a vivid memory of being at my aunt’s when her computer guy was there and he hated windows describing it as for the lazy. I was really young att but remember playing some kinda dig dug type game that had cartoonish CPUs as the collection goal. I also remember figuring out how to launch it on a dos system.
What about people who started on DOS?
They are either database administrators or completely oblivious to modern technology
Lies and slander.
I am a system administrator and a network administrator. I abhor database management tyvm.
Heh, me too. DBAs are to sysadmins what sysadmins are to devs
Or AmigaOS?
Or Basic 2.0?
There was a 2.0?
TIL.
I was referring to the C64 which came with Basic V2. I did have a Commodore plus/4 as well to do some programming - it came with Basic 3.5 as far as I remember.
Oooh. That version. I forgot they called that basic 2.0
Alright.
I started on a commodore 64, you kids that started on a machine with a gui were coddled.
I know you’re joking but this is how a lot replies here feel. Kids don’t even know how to program using punch cards anymore smh.
40 years from now the newest generation will be saying “Grandpa doesn’t even know know what a Cyber Tibulator Strip is let alone how to use it. If you need him he’s out back yelling at clouds.”
Don’t get me wrong here, tech literacy is low but when has it not been?
Vic-20 here. What a time to be alive.
TRS-80 then IBM PCjr here. Both hand-me-downs though.
Mom wouldn’t let me on the 386 until I could touch-type and write a program in BASIC. She was a Cobol and IBM RPG programmer.
I remember BASIC from school, on the old Acorn BBCs… good times.
I started on an Antikythera mechanism, you kids that started on a modern machine were coddled.
C64 gang, represent!
Seriously though, I feel like that generation of machines was the last time you could look at hardware and say “yeah, I understand literally everything about how this works” and that knowledge has made even some of my (tech sector) coworkers think I’m a wizard
I can technically claim I started with a hand me down C64 from my grandmother in the early 90s. But I was like 6 years old, and I didn’t really get into computers until we got a Windows 95 machine a couple of years later. Though by 99-2000 I was regularly playing around with the C64 for the novelty of what felt like ancient tech.
I remember using dialup internet on windows 98 in the late 90s to look up how to use the C64.
I had a GUI - windows 3.11
But it was so slow. So I made my own gui/menu system that ran in dos. I was between 9-11 I reckon.
Not sure where that lands me on the spectrum of coddledness
Yeah, it was just MSDOS. I saw “Abort, retry, fail” so many times, and I didn’t even know what it meant because I was four and I just wanted to play Family Feud with my brother.
Apple ][e was my first. We also had an XP machine for internet (Neopets) but I didn’t have to fight for turns on the Apple.
I had an Apple ][e I could use at school. It was preferable to the ][c for the same reason.
Are you joking? C64 was the bomb back in the day! My Atari and Amiga mates were enjoying colors and music and games while I had sat there on my colourless, mute PC. All I had was Flight Simulator 2 in black and white. And DrBrush for drawing in Hercules “graphics” mode.
