My brother is 12 and just like other people of his age he can’t use a computer properly because he is only familiar with mobile devices and dumbed-down computers
I recently dual-booted Fedora KDE and Windows 10 on his laptop. Showed him Discovery and told him, “This is the app store. Everything you’ll ever need is here, and if you can’t find something just tell me and I’ll add it there”. I also set up bottles telling him “Your non-steam games are here”. He installed Steam and other apps himself
I guess he is a better Linux user than Linus Sebastian since he installed Steam without breaking his OS…
The tech support questions and stuff like “Can you install this for me?” or “Is this a virus?” dropped to zero. He only asks me things like “What was the name of PowerPoint for Linux” once in a while
After a week I have hardly ever seen my brother use Windows. He says Fedora is “like iOS” and he absolutely loved it
I use Arch and he keeps telling me “Why are you doing that nerdy terminal stuff just use Fedora”. He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
“Is this a virus?”
Your 12-year-old brother is more security-conscious than most of the adults I work with.
Non techies have two settings. Either everything is a virus or nothing is a virus.
Still better security consciousness than 99% of the population.
Nah, my father is one of those who thinks everything is a virus, especially emails. And so he installs all kind of “clean your PC from viruses”-software …
Tell him that those are viruses too
That’s because everything is a virus.
I remember an old story about a father deleting bat.exe off the family computer and blaming his son for breaking the computer with his Batman game.
My dad is in his 70s, but he is thankfully rather aware of these kinds of things. He forwards me messages or calls me to ask “is this legitimate?”
He’s aware of computer viruses, but I think he’s really on the lookout for scams, which is an interesting and effective approach.
My brother is the kind of people that installs stuff without reading a single option, just ‘next next next’ until the installer closes.
My older sibling did something similar - getting Ubuntu installed on my very first laptop (a 9" netbook) back in 2008 and replacing windows XP. But be warned: it is a slippery slope. At the time , I just wanted a computer that I could take class notes on (high school), and never wanted to touch programming or the terminal. Now I have a PhD in computer science. I still don’t use Arch though.
Tangent, what’s it like going for grad and post grad in computer science? I’ve wanted to try teaching for the longest time but I learned very little new material over the course of my Bachelor’s and the only thing that made it worth my time was the math content lol
The further you go, the more specialized it gets. There are people I know doing their PhDs in CS, but it was pretty much just straight math. I’m now an expert in a very specific area of robotics. But it’s only worth it if you have a specific reason to go to grad school, like for a particular career path. If it’s just because you like learning, it’s not worth it. There’s a big opportunity cost.
Totally fair. Thank you!
He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
Your brother is the wise guy of the bell curve
Or he’s currently on the left, and he’ll be on the bell’s top by the time @yogurtwrong@lemmy.world is on the other side?
On another note, I feel this so much. I went from “Mint seems comfortable”, to “Ooh slackware, i3 WM, running Arch with i3 completely built up and customised by none other than me!” back to “I can set shortcuts in Mint, and it’s comfier there anyway”
Is this a made-up story? Be honest
The kid’s name? Little Bobby Tables.
Yes, it’s just for OP to say “I use Arch”.
Not op but I lived with a younger nephew for some years. He looked up to me in every aspect and if I introduced him to something he would learn it to talk about it later. I unfortunately just introduced him to League of Legends, I was too young and wasn’t into linux myself.
From now on I’m only refering to arch as “the nerd OS”
What does that make Gentoo?
The OS for masochists?
He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
lol he’s already a true linux user.
But probably best to have a talk about gatekeeping linux though. There’s no wrong way to run linux.
haha I thought exactly the same thing lol He’s linuxplained why his distro is better. That’s the spirit.
I mean, there are definitely wrong ways to run Linux, like a single root user with no password, but your point is well taken. If Linux fanboys would keep the subjective gatekeeping to themselves the new user experience would be much more pleasant.
Or a disabled root account with unconfigured sudo and/or doas
Tech literacy amongst the youth is rapidly going down. Good on you.
Linus surely just stages things for clicks. No one with his experience could be that dumb.
I actually remember reddit posts complaining they hit the same bug as he did, some days prior and also some days later lol
He played dumb on purpose and it was infuriating. Even since I’ve been using Linux, its become so much easier to install and use. He must think his viewers are idiots if that’s what he was trying to act like.
IDK about plasma, but in GNOME, if you search for PowerPoint, it shows LibreOffice Impress as a result.
I was looking for a similar comment. Plasma does exactly that too. These are probably provided from this line in its
.desktopfile:Keywords=Slideshow;Slides;OpenDocument Presentation;Microsoft PowerPoint;Microsoft Works;OpenOffice Impress;odp;ppt;pptx;im reluctantly impressed
I use NerdOS BTW.
(That’s fantastic, I absolutely love it.)
Good work son
This is a lovely story
I absolutely lost it the first time he called me a nerd for using Arch and straight up started doing Fedora elitism lmao
Time to become a toxic arch elitist user now.
An amazing story! I doubt I ever have kids, but if I do I’ll do something like this. God knows what sort of dumbed down tech crap they’ll be fed in school.
How to copy paste from chatgpt 4 will ne furture
maybe unpopular opinion here but while it was user error, Linus breaking the OS by installing steam is something that should have never been possible, anyways glad to hear your brother is learning Linux!
the os should do as i say, that includes breaking it if i please. the problem are people writing into the terminal “i understand that i uninstall half my os with this command but want to do it anyway” and then wonder why half their os gets uninstalled.
I say this as a desktop Linux user for about 5 years at this point, but there is a big difference between typing “I understand I will uninstall half my OS with this” and typing “do as I say”. One requires directly repeating what is going to happen, and one is a more verbose version of typing Y.
Yes, the user should still be allowed to break their system however they want, but the warning should definitely be more obvious so the user can actively know if something they are changing might completely break their system.
It was as obvious as I said not a simple “do as I say”
wasn’t linus’s issue a rare packaging issue or something that happened and was fixed within a few days’ period?
In a way yes, but the same “bug” is still possible. The dude was given sudo rights AND copy pasted random commands in a terminal instead of “open the GUI, look for package, install package safely” - so now certain parts of the commands are crippled because one person was stupid, but it was a very very rich and famous influencer so … yay.
Look at the image … “unless you know exactly what you’re doing”… Linus was being a moron.
He had over five paths out of the issue, one of them was PUSHED on him but nono…
EDIT: if you are gonna use something that says over and over “are you sure” and “only if you KNOW what you’re doing” and “type out yes do as I say”… seriously no safety net in the world can protect against that level of dumb
https://uploads.golmedia.net/uploads/articles/article_media/6505586791636543814gol1.jpg
EDIT2: I am not angry at you grimaferve I just had the awkward pleasure of talking to folks who “fixed the bug” and it annoys me when rich and powerful social media influencers force others to do work by talking shit about them just because those influencers are absolute hot garbage gaaaaah! (I love you grimaferve, you rock - and you’re amazing and happy holidays <3)
I don’t think I want to meet a 12 year old who uses power point. Jk lol
They all use it if they want to pass school, so you are out of luck.
I mean, it’s pretty much required in school. I had about 5 presentations each grade from late elementary through the end of high school
Well that explains why my job just expects me to know it without any warning… I’m almost 50, I have no problem learning new things if you tell me I need to, but when I was in school, computers were still luxuries…
Lots of kids have to present their school projects etc using powerpoint or similar.
