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I'm currently training a new employee who comes from the "My school handed out Chromebooks" generation, and hol...eee...shit... Its frustrating as hell.

Literally every single instruction gets followed up with "no...double click"

FML

Tbf installing linux is not that hard

Linux users are inherently more tech savvy because there are no limits. On the contrary, there is documentation and free knowledge aplenty. Windows and especially Mac hide and obfuscate everything happening under the hood and you are vaguely warned away from doing anything not specifically blessed by the corporation. That's why those users are less tech savvy on average.

I grew up with mac, but I was always so frustrated that I couldn't play the games and run the programs my friends could on their computers. I finally bought my own PC in high school, and was so happy to have the control I always wanted. I haven't switched to Linux yet, but at this point it's inevitable; I'm just dragging my feet on figuring it out.

My father made me figure out how to compile Linux drivers for a modem card before I could have internet.

I started on a Mac and now I'm an IT expert.

But that's because my next computer was a Dell.

Year of birth matters a lot for this experiment.

Macintosh versus some IBM (or clone) running MS DOS is a completely different era than Windows Vista versus PowerPC Macs, which was a completely different era from Windows Store versus Mac App Store versus something like a Chromebook or iPad as a primary computing device.

Run a second correlation on the incomes of these families and the tech literacy of their children and see what you find. I have a hypothesis.

Looking at the comments, it occurs to me that we're not a representative section of the online community.

Were literally people who went out of their way to not use a conventional/commercial tech product.

I wonder what the % of people on here is who have built a pc, used a raspberry pi or installed Linux compared to the outside world.

Is the hypothesis that Windows being constantly broken forces you to learn how to fix it ? Because that’s kinda what happened to me 😆

I used MacOS for a bit, switched to Windows, then when I was 15 I installed Linux :3

Granted I do very much have autism

If you've had to mess around with EMM386 and HIMEM settings to play Wing Commander 2, you win.

My schools had this growing up. The old single button Macs(I remember this game too).

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We didn’t have a computer in our house until I was ~8. It was blistering quick 400Mhz machine running windows…(Good ol’ slot load processors).

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But the time I was ~11 I had built my own computer. Mother was kind enough to take a leap of faith and set a budget for the project. My parents are absolutely not tech people. So they had no idea what I was doing and could offer no assistance other than monetary. It worked out in the end though.

I work in the tech industry and I’ve had windows boxes, and even a few MacBook pros for work. We deploy stuff to Linux and windows. I have dual Xeon servers running Linux in the basement.

I started on a Mac, and now I live as a nomadic caveman, never contacting the civilized world.

Lemmy Linux bros make me avoid Linux at all costs

I doubt there would be much difference. I was started on an old brick-style Mac before switching to PC and am now the most technical person in almost any group I enter. It's not as if Mac devices are entirely void of programmers and other technical users.

I'm curious what her hypothesis is, I don't think there is a correlation at all personally, seen a ton of people who know nothing about their computers regardless of Mac/Windows as their primary os.

I learned because I was torrenting and broke the family windows computer. It was either fix it or get grounded.

My family’s first computer was a 68k Mac, specifically a Quadra 605. I tried (and failed) to teach myself C++ using that system at the tender age of 9, but eventually moved over to Windows PCs. Had a Linux-based web server running on spare parts as a teen, though, and did succeed at teaching myself PHP and later Python well enough to hack together my very own blog software. Not very good blog software, mind you, but the critical thing was that it worked! Even spent a few years as and SMB sysadmin even though my degree is in [building] architecture.

Since then I’ve drifted away from the very deep end of tech world, but I would never say that first Macintosh stunted my skill.

(100% autistic tho, so ymmv)

I suddenly vividly remember putting my mom’s Chromebook into developer mode and installing crouton on it so I could play Minecraft.

I switched to Linux after my experience with Windows Millennium Edition. Many people have since referred to me as some sort of programming genius and hacker.....I don't know crap about any of that. I've simply followed instructions and referred to the help communities, whenever I've had trouble. Using the mainstream distributions (I'm guessing) has kept me from having much trouble.

I think my kids may benefit, as my wife only uses Mac, I have 2 Ubuntus and a Mint, and the kids use Chromebooks at school. We have 2 iPad and a Galaxy tab in the house. 1 kid has an Android phone and the other an iPhone. My wife and I both have flagship Android phones.

Sometimes it's fun to watch them debate over which systems they prefer, depending on the school projects they work on.

Should've written "Mac PCs" just to mess with people.