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When I was in highschool I had a bunch of free time outside of school days. I used a YouTube guide to install Arch. I failed many many times. But in doing so I

When I was in highschool I had a bunch of free time outside of school days. I used a YouTube guide to install Arch. I failed many many times. But in doing so I almost kind of learnt what each command was doing. I had the same experience when I installed Gentoo. In both cases at first I was copy/pasting commands, but through failure I ended up understanding a lot of what the commands did. And what someone else said below is true as well, actually try and force yourself to understand what you're typing. Even briefly just scanning a man page helps a lot.

bee_rider 2y ago
I wonder if the wiki would have been an easier start, than YouTube. YouTube is nice for learning things with a visual component, but installing Linux is all text, all the time. The ability to easily hop around and re-read sections on the wiki where necessary (I mean, jumping around is possible on YouTube of course, but it is really easy on the wiki) seem like it would be a big help.
- pino82 2y ago
  Reading and actually understanding non-trivial text is hard if you are part of a generation that was never challenged to actually learn it. For those people, YouTube (and a few similar shops) are the default way to consume any content. That's what they do all the time. Sure, they somehow know those legacy emojis that you call the latin alphabet. It will just not lead to a deep understanding of text. Another aspect is probably that watching YT clips always has a feeling of being part of something. Some movement, some bubble, some society, whatever. They don't install Arch bcs they want to learn sth, or make some use of the OS. They do it _because_ they found it on YT and they want to be part of it. Maybe they even write comments or make a 'reaction' video. Today it's Arch, tomorrow it's a special pizza recipe from that other guy on Insta. It doesn't really matter.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I dunno. I’m a millennial so all sorts of stuff was just ascribed to my generation. As a result, I tend to just assume these differences are overstated. I worked with college students fairly recently. They did often reach reflexively for video. But when the written material was good enough, they used it.
    - chgs 2y ago
      Us millenials are old. My 43rd birthday is coming up fast. College students are the next generation. Most millenials remember dialup or at most a time before mainstream streaming video. College students today have seen their formative years being constantly on with instant access to more material in any format they want than they could ever grasp the concept of.
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        Yeah, I was just abstracting from the experience of having everything I did attributed to my generation, and then applying that experience to the next generation. They handle some things a little differently and sometimes reach for different defaults, but in the end, it isn’t like they are coming from some totally alien planet or anything like that.
        pino82 2y ago
        Very often when I discuss it, someone argues along the lines of "yes, it looks different, and maybe even weird at first glance, but everything is indeed fine, and look how access to all that content even makes them more competent than older generations in many ways". And I'm always asking myself what is wrong with me that all that completely does not reflect my practical experiences at all.
        bee_rider 2y ago
        I dunno, hard to say, if our experiences don’t match maybe we’re just in different environments. No particular reason to assume mine is the ground truth of course. One possible skew could be: often it is professors who complain about this stuff, but the type of person who goes on to be a professor tends to be pretty clever and surround themselves with clever friends. So if you are a professor or a highly skilled programmer or something, keep in mind that you probably have a rosy picture of the average competence of the past.
  - pushupentry1219 2y ago
    > Reading and actually understanding non-trivial text is hard if you are part of a generation that was never challenged to actually learn it. I don't think this is fair to say. Could be said for the generation after me. Maybe not. I think this kind of sweeping generalisation is not fair on any generation though. There are motivated and lazy people in all generations, as there are people with good/bad attention spans. And what you've said about YouTube might be true, but it wasn't for me. I did not go to YouTube for the community aspect, but only because like I said before I didn't even know that the Arch wiki was an install guide as well.
    - pino82 2y ago
      You tried (and failed) to install Arch many many times, based on YT, and you have not even considered that there might be some kinds of helpful resources directly from Arch outside of YT. Sorry to say that, and even more sorry that you'll probably not even understand what I mean, but this actually doesn't need any further comments.
      - pushupentry1219 2y ago
        I was 13 and had never touched any OSS software in my entire life give me a break. > you have not even considered that there might be some kinds of helpful resources directly from Arch outside of YT. You're speaking about this as if it happened yesterday. This experience happened over a decade ago. I am not a teenager, and I am now accustomed to reading and actually learning on the internet. Don't fault me or my entire attention span for some minor, naïve behaviour/mistake I made as a teenager.
- pushupentry1219 2y ago
  Arch wiki would've almost definitely been a way better start! But I had _just_ ventured into this space. And at the time the wiki format wasn't something I'd ever seen outside of Wikipedia so i never put 2-2 together to figure out the wiki could be used as an install guide. Plus the walls of text were kind of intimidating? So I jumped to what i knew; YouTube tutorials.

bee_rider 2y ago

I wonder if the wiki would have been an easier start, than YouTube. YouTube is nice for learning things with a visual component, but installing Linux is all text, all the time. The ability to easily hop around and re-read sections on the wiki where necessary (I mean, jumping around is possible on YouTube of course, but it is really easy on the wiki) seem like it would be a big help.

pino82 2y ago
Reading and actually understanding non-trivial text is hard if you are part of a generation that was never challenged to actually learn it. For those people, YouTube (and a few similar shops) are the default way to consume any content. That's what they do all the time. Sure, they somehow know those legacy emojis that you call the latin alphabet. It will just not lead to a deep understanding of text. Another aspect is probably that watching YT clips always has a feeling of being part of something. Some movement, some bubble, some society, whatever. They don't install Arch bcs they want to learn sth, or make some use of the OS. They do it _because_ they found it on YT and they want to be part of it. Maybe they even write comments or make a 'reaction' video. Today it's Arch, tomorrow it's a special pizza recipe from that other guy on Insta. It doesn't really matter.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I dunno. I’m a millennial so all sorts of stuff was just ascribed to my generation. As a result, I tend to just assume these differences are overstated. I worked with college students fairly recently. They did often reach reflexively for video. But when the written material was good enough, they used it.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Us millenials are old. My 43rd birthday is coming up fast. College students are the next generation. Most millenials remember dialup or at most a time before mainstream streaming video. College students today have seen their formative years being constantly on with instant access to more material in any format they want than they could ever grasp the concept of.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Yeah, I was just abstracting from the experience of having everything I did attributed to my generation, and then applying that experience to the next generation. They handle some things a little differently and sometimes reach for different defaults, but in the end, it isn’t like they are coming from some totally alien planet or anything like that.
      - pino82 2y ago
        Very often when I discuss it, someone argues along the lines of "yes, it looks different, and maybe even weird at first glance, but everything is indeed fine, and look how access to all that content even makes them more competent than older generations in many ways". And I'm always asking myself what is wrong with me that all that completely does not reflect my practical experiences at all.
        bee_rider 2y ago
        I dunno, hard to say, if our experiences don’t match maybe we’re just in different environments. No particular reason to assume mine is the ground truth of course. One possible skew could be: often it is professors who complain about this stuff, but the type of person who goes on to be a professor tends to be pretty clever and surround themselves with clever friends. So if you are a professor or a highly skilled programmer or something, keep in mind that you probably have a rosy picture of the average competence of the past.
- pushupentry1219 2y ago
  > Reading and actually understanding non-trivial text is hard if you are part of a generation that was never challenged to actually learn it. I don't think this is fair to say. Could be said for the generation after me. Maybe not. I think this kind of sweeping generalisation is not fair on any generation though. There are motivated and lazy people in all generations, as there are people with good/bad attention spans. And what you've said about YouTube might be true, but it wasn't for me. I did not go to YouTube for the community aspect, but only because like I said before I didn't even know that the Arch wiki was an install guide as well.
  - pino82 2y ago
    You tried (and failed) to install Arch many many times, based on YT, and you have not even considered that there might be some kinds of helpful resources directly from Arch outside of YT. Sorry to say that, and even more sorry that you'll probably not even understand what I mean, but this actually doesn't need any further comments.
    - pushupentry1219 2y ago
      I was 13 and had never touched any OSS software in my entire life give me a break. > you have not even considered that there might be some kinds of helpful resources directly from Arch outside of YT. You're speaking about this as if it happened yesterday. This experience happened over a decade ago. I am not a teenager, and I am now accustomed to reading and actually learning on the internet. Don't fault me or my entire attention span for some minor, naïve behaviour/mistake I made as a teenager.
pushupentry1219 2y ago
Arch wiki would've almost definitely been a way better start! But I had _just_ ventured into this space. And at the time the wiki format wasn't something I'd ever seen outside of Wikipedia so i never put 2-2 together to figure out the wiki could be used as an install guide. Plus the walls of text were kind of intimidating? So I jumped to what i knew; YouTube tutorials.