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”

  • @rtxn@lemmy.world
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    1662 years ago

    “Is this a virus?”

    Your 12-year-old brother is more security-conscious than most of the adults I work with.

        • @ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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          152 years ago

          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 …

    • @GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      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.

    • @Espi@lemmy.world
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      12 years ago

      My brother is the kind of people that installs stuff without reading a single option, just ‘next next next’ until the installer closes.

  • @pterencephalon@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • Anti-Antidote
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      32 years ago

      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

      • @pterencephalon@lemmy.world
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        162 years ago

        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.

  • @pH3ra@lemmy.ml
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    452 years ago

    He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”

    Your brother is the wise guy of the bell curve

    • @tinho@lemmy.world
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      52 years ago

      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.

    • OmidMnz
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      72 years ago

      I was looking for a similar comment. Plasma does exactly that too. These are probably provided from this line in its .desktop file:

      Keywords=Slideshow;Slides;OpenDocument Presentation;Microsoft PowerPoint;Microsoft Works;OpenOffice Impress;odp;ppt;pptx;
      
  • @SlovenianSocket@lemmy.ca
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    142 years ago

    My elderly mother has been using Linux for almost 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a single tech support phone call from her for it

    • @z00s@lemmy.world
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      -12 years ago

      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.

  • @nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
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    112 years ago

    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.

  • @teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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    112 years ago

    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.

  • chi-chan~
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    102 years ago

    I use NerdOS BTW.

    (That’s fantastic, I absolutely love it.)