Asklemmy

I think it comes down to my level of proficiency with computers. I'm a photographer and an artist. However, I am above average tech literate but with absolutely no formal training compared to anyone in the computer sciences.

When I use a Mac or PC I am a power user and most people think of me as very tech inclined there. I used terminal or command prompt for commands that I have learned from Google for a specific tasks and can follow most guides and tutorials online, but I can't come up with strings of commands creatively to fix a problem.

With Linux, there's all these weird little problems that might be unique to me and looking them up is really difficult and when someone says "oh it's easy. Use the terminal" as if this incredibly confusing thing that I have zero fundamental knowledge of can solve my problem. A genuinely feel illiterate when I use Linux. I can write sudo though 🤷‍♂️

I feel like saying "just use terminal" is like telling a kindergarten kid to just use creative writing, algebra and calculus. The fundamentals have not been taught yet, I have no idea what to do.

When I learned Mac or PC, I was shown how to use a mouse, I could read and just clicking around and opening things and reading help files let me intuitively learn on my own what to do. With Linux, this way of learning achieves nothing. Maybe I can turn wifi on and off assuming it works when I install it.

And then when an update breaks everything and I have to mess around and terminal for hours or days between doing actual work, It's a nightmare. The only Linux thing I've managed to keep running for years on end is a Synology. I use it for a bit of backup things but thank goodness the OS updates and app updates all work. Nothing is broken and I barely touch the machine. It just grabs my files from the network and backs them up. You should have seen how shocked I was when I was trying to install something on docker and it took days for me to realize I just type the name of the thing I want and it grabbed it from the web and installed it automatically. I spent way too long trying to figure out how to grab the actual package files and open them like installing something via an MSI file in windows.