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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s amazing and encouraging, I want to hear more stories like this because when my kid grows up I plan on trying to guide him into not being tech illiterate, so far my plan is (more or less, but not exactly) to start him with a crappy but usable computer and give him upgrades he has to work for or tinker for, I feel like I learned the most by trying to squeeze performance and usability out of outdated hardware.
I don’t intend to make him have my passion for computers, my intention is that he’ll have the initiative to Google problems and the curiosity to solve them when it’s not that easy, just having those two can get you 80%-90% there.
I had the same thought process seeing the software repository on Linux Mint for the first time. It really is set up like a MacOS or general Appstore interface.
Happy for your brother getting comfortable with Linux so quickly! Way to go!
As someone who is interested in starting into the world of linux, was having a second hard drive necessary for creating a dual boot system or were you able to do it all on one hard drive?
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.
My kids have been gaming all day on Steam. They have zero intellectual curiosity about the system they are using. They have been using Arch for years but it might as well be a console or Mac. They log in and launch a web browser, Steam or a Minecraft launcher and that is it. It makes me a bit sad.
You have to give them a reason to get interested in the OS and the programs they’re using. I gave Linux a try because I was concerned about privacy and I wanted to use more ethical and user respecting OS and software than what I used at that time. Linux and the FOSS world was an obvious choice for me. Custom ROM on Android was sort of the bridge which allowed me to transition. If it wasn’t for that, I would still be on Windows and I wouldn’t learn that much on how an operating system works and what differentiate them, aside from the look. The fact they’re kids or that they play games have nothing to do with it: a lot of adults don’t know either what type of OS they’re using, despite it being in their best interest. The problem is that we don’t give or show them the reason they should be interested, or at least be curious about it and most of time, before people get a degree, we end up killing their curiosity.
As they play Minecraft, you can advise them to switch to Prism Launcher instead of the minecraft launcher, especially if they mod the game, it’s much better for that. It could be a good start.
To be fair, my curiosity for the system when I was a kid came from having a win98 computer without internet or any games installed, other than some freemium CDs and a neo-geo emulator.
I’d spend time just going through the menus, and I had no idea how anything worked, but it was interesting just seeing what was there. Also I spoke no English at all, so many things were out of my reach/understanding.
If I had Steam and Minecraft? I wouldn’t have explored the OS so much. Probably. That stemmed out of boredom as much as from curiosity.
The fact that they’re gaming on it means they’ll know how to use it later
When I was that age I didn’t think much about the system I was using, it doesn’t really appeal to kids but they’ll still be learning
My 11 year old brother had been using PopOS for a while. Unfortunately Roblox recently intentionally broke Wine support and I had to put Windows on his computer.
Windows really screwed itself over with how it handled its integrated app store. By making it Microsoft-owned and moderated with a bunch of caveats on the format (compared to most Linux package repositories) you ended up with shit like FOSS apps being repackaged and sold for money, low quality ports of apps, and a bunch of bullshit that made people avoid it like the plague.
Linux for its faults with how package management works is far superior to even MacOS when it comes to finding free or low cost software. You get 80% of your apps available thanks to flatpaks and new apps can be uploaded with very little hassle compared to even iOS or Android. No fees, no lengthy review process (which could be a disadvantage arguably) and software is much restricted by the platform host.
While GenZ/A may be known for being bad with computers, I think it might just be a sign that Windows is so outdated and poorly designed that people coming from better-designed platforms are confused at shit older folk just put up with for decades.
Did you add Flathub or rpmfusion? the store without those things is kinda barren
yup I did
Such a wholesome story 😊
So happy to hear that he is enjoying Linux and you guys are doing things together.
He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
Complaining about what works for other people? It is tradition. It’s innate Linux user behavior.
He’s learning
Su Linux is most likely the answer to lering younger people to use computers fedora is especially good becouse it has a nice package manager (dnf) that is easy to understand
