The best one I’ve ever heard is they like the Microsoft wallpapers. Yes i told them you can use them on linux too. But they argued with me that they wouldn’t be compatible.
The best one I’ve ever heard is they like the Microsoft wallpapers. Yes i told them you can use them on linux too. But they argued with me that they wouldn’t be compatible.
A friend of mine finally decided to heed my advice and try it out. He successfully installed fedora and was pleasantly surprised by the ‘clean’ design (of gnome). He then enabled his Bluetooth headphones and DMed me that they won’t connect. The BT menu wouldn’t show them.
Now, I wouldn’t call him stupid, so I committed a grave sin of troubleshooting when I decided to not offend his intelligence. We hopped on a call and started debugging. Looking at drivers, support for his hardware, logs for any errors… He didn’t have another device to connect through BT at the moment and I was out of ideas, so we called it a night and decided to try again tomorrow.
By the time we reconnected the next day, he had already reinstalled windows, but was suffering from the same issue.
And then it downed on me… “Did you pair your headphones?” I asked, afraid of the answer. He just blinked twice and the “what do you mean?” hit me so hard I couldn’t even laugh. “I’ve never had to do that before…”
Some painful explanations later, or an argument really, and his headphones were paired. But by that time he had had enough and didn’t want me to bother him about Linux again. Needless to say, pointing out it was his misunderstanding of the technology that ultimately led to this outcome didn’t really help.
This memory still injects fury in my veins as I fall asleep, right there with fumbling my words when speaking with my highschool crush…
People blame everything on whatever the last change was
Went to the mechanic for an oil change and now my AC doesn’t work? The mechanic must have fucked my AC while changing my oil!!! 1!1!1!1
All while claiming they did “nothing” when they f-ed up themselves.
Around '98, a tech support guy got a call that their application didn’t work anymore. He tried to troubleshoot, but the system was a mess. “Did you change anything since yesterday?” - “No, we didn’t!”.
What they did do, though, was running the Win98 update the day before. Which, at one point, after doing lots of things, complained that it could not continue for some reason, and offered to “undo” the changes…
Not trying to shit on the guy, but like, that’s literally the first thing you do with BT anything. 😄
I guess that really depends on the equipment though, some devices when you turn it on for the first time will automatically enter pairing mode, so all that had to be done is click it in the bluetooth menu, but it might not auto enter pairing mode when you turn it on after. So it’s unlikely the user ever knew they were pairing it, and just clicked through the prompts like many do
Yeah, no, of course. But that’s kinda my point: there was still an initial pairing. I’m not trying to be antagonistic or anything. I just find it a bit silly that one could research how to replace their entire OS with one they’re not familiar with but not realize they’re gonna have to re-pair their BT devices.
Then again, I think we’re all guilty of sometimes missing small details. I once put a PC together for a buddy and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t post only to eventually realize I was a dummy who forgot to plug in the CPU power. 😂
We all have been there. First technical build I struggled for 45 minutes trying to figure out why I was getting a zero display whatsoever only to find out that I plugged that damn HDMI cable into the wrong port, and the board had disabled everything including post and splash from using the motherboards port
He was able to install Linux and Windows but couldn’t figure out how to pair a Bluetooth device…
TBF Bluetooth sucks a lot. To this day I need to power cycle the phones Bluetooth connection and headphones connect button a few times for it to pair properly some times. Different brands and headphones, silly different issues for all. Want to use your headphones for more that a phone and laptop? Maybe on a third device like a TV or desktop? Fuck you.
I find a big part of trying to be the friend that transitions others to Linux is taking on the role of mentor. It’s something a lot of wish we could just hand to someone and dust off our hands, but that ultimately leads to experiences like yours.
For a better chance of success, especially on first install, be on the line with them as they go through the steps, or in person is better yet.
Answer all the questions you can and help them install all their usual stuff. Most people don’t want to have to go through this change, so making it fun and social goes a long way.
Indeed that was my intention. I just never thought that he wouldn’t be familiar with something so ubiquitous in today’s world, so I didn’t even think to ask. That’s why this situation is so infuriating to me, not so much that he didn’t know, but that my assumptions prevented me to resolve it
We regularly believe that, because we know, everyone else knows, and that’s a failure I’m extremely guilty of. I gave my sister a Qnap NAS about 6 years ago and told her to just plug it in, plug in the land cable and set it up. 2 years after that she calls me asking for info on a data recovery service for her Mac. So I asked her why she needed data recovery, that’s what the NAS was for. Well, she did what I told her, but never configured backing up her files.
So, yeah, now I assume everyone is ignorant and pass for arrogant some times over explaining.