Obsidian Musings

"My sister has had an expensive gaming machine and didn't use it and doesn't use it now but might do some light gaming stuff at an indeterminate point in the future and is currently using my personal laptop to do basic web browsing, I'm trying to ensure that my sister can keep doing web browsing but whenever I ask my friends for advice they start at a high price point and the people I know who have purchased used equipment have bad experiences with it that I'm not interested in duplicating; is it possible to get an inexpensive computer that will accomplish what I'm looking for here without it turning into a time suck because I'm not particularly good at computers?" is not what someone says when they want you to start speccing out a machine that requires a graphics card that costs as much as the machine that they actually need. The question was not "can you find me a less expensive gaming machine?" it was "is there such a thing as an affordable non-garbage machine my sister can use to look at Ao3 or are my choices 'used office machine old enough to have a driver's license,' 'cheap-but-trash machine that will have to be replaced annually,' or 'gaming rig that costs as much as a car'?"

I get where you're coming from here, almost everybody CAN become technical if they want to, but most people who are not CURRENTLY technical can't generally become technical in the timeframe that they would need to in order to manage whatever problem they're having.

So I search for information about how to do checksum bullshit in Windows and the instructions I come to from the Ubuntu site say "If you aren't using linux on windows, why on earth not? You should do this by installing linux."

THAT IS THE THING THAT I AM TRYING TO DO I NEED AN INSTRUCTION FOR HOW TO DO A STEP IN THE OS THAT I AM CURRENTLY USING SO THAT I CAN INSTALL LINUX.

Seriously, follow some links with me. From the link above to this:

From that to releases:

From the release download you can get info on how to burn the images to disk:

Which tells you that you need to verify the image:

and then links you for info on how to do that in Linux!!!!!

THIS CHASES NON-TECHNICAL PEOPLE AWAY. THIS IS WHY NON-TECHNICAL PEOPLE THINK LINUX IS SCARY. BECAUSE WE GO 'OH NO YOU HAVE TO VERIFY YOUR DOWNLOAD IT'S A VITAL SECURITY STEP' and then the non-technical people go "Okay how do I do that" and the instructions say "Why aren't you already using linux, dipshit?"

Because that is, legitimately, where a lot of people get lost.

*I* knew how to find other documentation without relying on ONLY links from the foundation I got the install from, non-technical people *don't* know how to do that and a lack of clear instructions paired with a tremendously unwelcoming user base makes beginners stumble.

Ubuntu is not the only tech documentation I'm familiar with (and is certainly not the only linux documentation that is confusing, circular, and poorly formatted), and there are a ton of tech literate people who recommend various ubuntu distros for a number of reasons.

My job is talking to non-technical people about their tech stacks so that the decision-makers don't have to be exposed to techs and the whole reason that my job is necessary is because "git gud" is an unfortunately common communication strategy in tech spaces.

My hobby is infosec and this attitude of "you're stupid for using this program and stupider for missing the obvious instruction to open a terminal window and install via command line" is genuinely a massive security problem because it convinces normies that any attempt to "do tech stuff" is futile so they don't bother.