this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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There are always stories of people installing Linux on their parents computer to provide them a more secure and stable operating system, seems interesting to share experiences.

Edit: I'm assuming that parents are okay with the changes, or do not care. Obviously do not force anyone to switch OS if they don't want to.

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[โ€“] OpenStars@discuss.online -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Boomers in particular are known for extremely often falling into the trap of "ask not what I can do for you but what I can get out of you", so yeah, that makes sense. And when it comes to a personal desktop I actually get it b/c while you may be busy with work + kids & having a real life where you touch grass, and then something doesn't work, at that point it's less of a choice to have to spend hours trying to find why this driver doesn't work with your hardware, and what older dependencies you are not meeting, so you have to roll backwards and then set up multiple concurrent installations of whatever e.g. Python and then change EVERYTHING to either use one or the other by default... it's exhausting.

Which as a "hobby" is fine (is it thogh...?:-P), but if you were simply trying to look at pics of your newest grandkids or something, is standing in the way of the real fun that you want to be having instead.

And using computers - and software - is literally a shittier experience today than it used to be, where even the major vendors (Google, Microsoft, etc.) don't walk you through what you need to do in order to get some particular setting applied or working right. For some reason they cannot be bothered to always put onto their tech pages tiny little details like what version of the software a tidbit of advice is meant for, or what I would want would be to see all of the versions collated together on the same page. It's too much work to keep up, therefore they simply don't. And average people just give up in frustration.

Therefore fwiw I like Macs b/c you need that support far less on one of those, where it truly does "just work", far more often than Linux, yet doesn't have literal ads in the Start Bar like Windows.

[โ€“] realbadat@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago

I don't know if I can agree on that, I personally find osx frustrating even today with how little control users are provided with, but I've also been a Linux user for far longer than just about anything else.

Still though, I do put OSX above Windows these days - purely based on software, not their hardware/price - for being easier than windows.

With package managers and stable desktop solutions (Debian for example), I think it's easier now than ever to ditch the proprietary and have a better experience.overall as a user.