Hey Bryan: I don't know how to use Windows!

Hey Bryan: I don't know how to use Windows!

One of the highlights of many Open Source, Free Software, and Linux conferences is a regular talk given by +Bryan Lunduke  call "Linux Sucks".
It's always an entertaining and thought provoking presentation, and is well worth watching it if you are interested in Linux.
Bryan also occasionally does a talk entitled "Windows is AWESOME!", which can can be found on Youtube:

Near the beginning of the presentation, Bryan asks the question: "How many of you know how to use Windows?".

I claim, with all seriousness, that I do not know how to use Windows!

It is important to point out a large part of Bryan's talks are comedic and the whole point of them is that he places emphasis on things which he later debunks. This is one of them. So this isn't in any way a criticism of Bryan or his presentations.

It's just that, something niggled with me after watching the above video. I thought about it quite hard, and this is my own little rant against the "familiarity" argument.

Surely you know how to use Windows?

On a basic level, of course I do. I have to point out I'm an IT professional and have been using Windows since Windows 3.1 back in the early 1990's. At several points in my career, Windows was the desktop I used regularly every day and I have, at periods of time, been very competent at it. Back in the late 1990s I was developing complex workflow applications on Microsoft Exchange and Outlook on a Windows 97 desktop.

So how can I say I don't know Windows? Surely I know it better than most?

I simply don't use Windows 

Well, consider that I've also used many other OS's including Linux. Linux has been my desktop platform of choice for personal use since the late 1990s, and my desktop platform of choice for professional/business use since around 2005. Since 2007 I have almost exclusively used Linux on my desktop, and rarely use Windows.
Arguably, I'm in a privileged position here, but I know a lot of people who have used MacOS almost exclusively for the last few years.

Windows has changed

Windows XP is the last Windows OS I consider to know well, and Windows has changed a lot since then.
Every iteration of Windows from XP to Windows 7, to Windows 8 and 8.1, and now Windows 10, has been substantially different.
By comparison, my Linux desktop has had one substantial change (from KDE3 to KDE4 plasma) in the last decade, despite going through several changes of distro, and several major version upgrades of each of those.

It's all relative

I have used some of these later versions of Windows, of course, and I can just about find my way around them, but not with anything I regard as competence.  I simply don't use them enough to be familiar with them. I basically bumble around until I find what I need.
And, in my experience, this is how most people use Windows, especially in corporate environments. And by this benchmarks, most people know how to use Linux desktops just as well as they know how to use Windows.
In fact, I have let people borrow my Linux desktop to do things and they have had no trouble at all using it, or at least no more trouble than they would trying to use someone else's Windows system. Most of them didn't even realise it wasn't Windows (and, no, I'm not using a Windows theme).

In conclusion

It boils down to that you consider the definition of "able to use" is. I would argue that the benchmark that people tend to use for being "able to use" Windows is substantially different from that commonly used when judging if people are "able to use" Desktop Linux. When you normalize those benchmarks, most people are equally able to use both platforms.