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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Try explaining this to your family.
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