• AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    6 months ago

    Whenever I get to use windows and I face their byzantine directory structure, I wonder how people put up with that shit.

    • Belgdore@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      6 months ago

      The average windows user is tech illiterate. They don’t know what a directory is. I work with a person who opens .docx files by opening Word and using its internal search function. She does not comprehend how or where files are stored.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        I work with a person who opens .docx files by opening Word and using its internal search function

        Unironically one of MS Word (and Google Docs)'s better features. Its easy to lose track of where you save a file when you’ve got a bunch of them open at once, and the ability to recall recently opened files and search by file name is a lifesaver.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      People don’t know what files and folders are anymore.

      Ask a non-tech person where they JUST downloaded something to… they can’t tell you.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        6 months ago

        Ask a non-tech person where they JUST downloaded something to… they can’t tell you.

        Nobody really bothers to change the default though, so it only really matters if they later try to find the file without using their web browser. And if they do try to do that, “Downloads” is a pretty obvious place to look.

      • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        6 months ago

        On my Android phone the Android phone I have, I find it hard to tell where the stuff I downloaded is.
        Until I connect it to the computer and see the directory structure easily.

        The Files app seems to be trying to do some kind of Abstraction over here.

        CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      6 months ago

      Do you mean the byzantine directory structure for system files? The default of installing to “Program Files” doesn’t seem too unusual, although adding “x86” bit seems unnecessarily complicated for a typical end user. Same with the rest of the standard directories that people use most often.

      The directory structure for system files is bad, but that’s true for Unix-derivatives too. Unix has /bin and /lib, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /var/opt, etc. Different versions of Unix have different ideas of what belongs where. Even different flavours of Linux have their own ideas.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          At least with Linux the distro-specific packages install software where it should go.

          I keep explaining this to my grandmother but she just stares at me and says “When I was your age, we wrote things down in our Trapper Keepers”

    • smackjack@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Well going to .local/share/… Isn’t very Intuitive either. Try asking someone who’s new to find their Steam Directory.