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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Recently I had to setup a Windows computer and a Macbook.

Both sucked. It was miserable. Lots of dialog after dialog after dialog. Disabling crap just to get like functional local file storage. Turning off news and stocks and notifications galore.

Linux is fine in this regard as a poweruser but has it's own rough edges. I think for the moment it is actually ahead despite occasionally having to pop into terminal for the odd task.

I just can't believe how horrible using a computer is for a non-poweruser. It is abusive. No wonder so many people hate computers when this is the experience they have.

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>I just can't believe how horrible using a computer is for a non-poweruser.

I think it's more that computers have filesystems and a ton of other stuff--unrelated to crapware in many cases--that a lot of people don't understand, don't want to understand, and that a lot of people reading this are probably somewhat contemptuous of them not understanding. So they use phones that don't require them to understand any of that stuff and ask family/friends to help them when they get out of their very narrow comfort zone for some reason.

> don't understand, don't want to understand

They're a threshold for when things are complicated and not wanting to understand something is fair. But as an adult, you very likely have a home with an address, which contains a room with a common name, which contains a folder, which contains your documents (birth certificate or something similar). That means you already understand filesystems. As a non-poweruser that's all there is to it - beyond that is just being uncomfortable with something you haven't encountered.

As someone who actually works with a lot of basic computer users, you are incorrect.

Nobody has ever struggled to understand files or folders. My 80 year old aunt has a preference for the names of her email folders. My 11 year old nephew has a sorting system for his little game mods.

No the main issue is exclusively "crap". To quote my mom on a recent call: "How do I make this thing go away?" (It was a notification about some new cloud service).

Breaking user patterns is a close second - especially anything to do with file management.

> Nobody has ever struggled to understand files or folders.

It sounds more like your family members have an aptitude for pragmatic organizational habits. This works for my parents but a common enough question from others is along the lines of "what do you mean where did I put it, I thought the computer was supposed to remember it?!" No amount of encouragement around the fact that they must have saved, likely named, and at least reopened a particular document dozens of times makes the concept stick in a satisfying way.

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