Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
rolling distros are a bit of a pain from time to time, notably if you get a broken package, although i hear fedora is really good in terms of being updated, and also stable, so maybe that’s the ticket. Personally i don’t mind things being out of date, since most of the stuff i host is either externally installed, or stable enough its not going to get significant feature updates anyway.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
there are benefits to being a technically advanced computer user:
Try explaining this to your family.
they wouldn’t listen to me anyway lol.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
What’s a good parent distro in your opinion? I’ve been eyeing Mint since that’s how I started
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
Yeah I like the idea of an “starter” distros for parents, but then rolling packages would probably be easier for when I need to do tech support
rolling distros are a bit of a pain from time to time, notably if you get a broken package, although i hear fedora is really good in terms of being updated, and also stable, so maybe that’s the ticket. Personally i don’t mind things being out of date, since most of the stuff i host is either externally installed, or stable enough its not going to get significant feature updates anyway.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
have you tried not interacting with people? Seems to work well for me.