Just tell them to RTFM
Convinced my boomer dad to switch to Linux Mint and, much to my shock, he was tech literate enough to figure everything out on his own.
I then realized the idiot was ME here. When I was a kid, my dad got into piracy because of those “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR” things as they made him realize you can get shit for free on the internet.
My boomer dad was the one who taught me about torrenting, proxies, VPNs, burning CDs, and private trackers when I was a kid because he just loved stealing so much.
Yeah really, getting free movies is what got my dad into being more techy than the average American. He just never used Linux till like 2025.
I love Linux but man I get stuck sometimes, 20+ concussions will do that. I have an ARM phone and I can’t remember how to remove an unwanted repository so I can update. Part of it is having to use a touchscreen but also not reading enough.
I had a windows 7 disc to lend out whenever people I actually knew in real life had OS problems. I’ll recommend Linux all day to strangers online, but I’m not doing your tech support.
How about one infographic or flowchart to rule them all explaining all the different ways to install a program, for starters?
My mom’s laptop was dying and as she works on it it was more and more annoying to use due to constant slowdowns and freezes, she asked me to recommend her a new laptop maybe to buy in installments.
Instead, I went ahead and pulled my mint xfce drive, jiggled it, turned it face down, then up, then down again, I slot it deep into her dell laptop, straight up no lube, then filled it up to the brim with the new OS, even though we started at 50/50 win/mint ratio, mint slowly spilled over windows, eating it up, absorbing it, ripping pieces off, just how Alice stole from Jensen. Consuming it.
Now win10 is reduced to its cuck chair, still installed, but never picked, every day it passes he falls deeper on the realization he’s not mom’s favorite’s toy anymore, and will probably never be touched or started again, unless by accident.
Look all I’m gonna say that about this it is fucking fucked and what the shit. What the heeeeeeeellllll?
That’s wack yo
For a time I made “little old lady” PCs. My neighbors and customers had no money for a new machine, needed their old system to keep going.
I’d clean it up, throw in whatever extra RAM I had on hand (HA! “extra RAM”!), update the BIOS, maybe update the CPU if I had one that fit, replace the HDD with an SSD, load Linux Lite. “Here’s your browser. Here’s your email. Any questions?”
Never once got a call from those ladies to come back and fix a thing.
Linux rules for simple stuff like unattended servers and FaceBook/email machines. It’s only a PITA when you start trying to stretch out, do more.
I run Windows for my desktop, Debian Server for servers. Bring the hate! :)
Stretch it out like how?
installing nvidia drivers 5 years ago, maybe
This is subtle but sweet.
Send them to me, I love fixing problems and researching. It’s genuinely fun for me.
Linux is love, Linux is life.
I’ll be using this at work
Emily would be honored 😁
Ah, good ol’ thing-thing penguin. I haven’t seen you misused in a while.
Put linux mint on my roomate’s yoga laptop. There was about 3 days intermittently peppered with questions that were easy to answer, and there hasn’t been anything since. Probably the smoothest transition I’ve seen so far.
Mint has been my main distro for over 15 years. It works the best.
Mint definitely is a god send for non tech people with a generic computer usage.
I love it even as a technical person
It’s great for gaming too
It’s my daily driver and honestly the main reason why I have a separate gaming computer seems to be owed to the Intel GPU just… Not yet having the drivers it would need
I put CachyOS on the TV PC (hubby’s old gaming rig, he got a new one last year before prices went insane), but I only have Steam on it and haven’t really played much.
Mint is the one I usually recommend for people at the Linux Repair Café I run. I have it on an old HP Pavilion Beats edition laptop. Works well. Helps show what it can do on older hardware.
Last year I gave my stepdad a refurbished Lenovo laptop with Cinnamon edition Mint. He has yet to ask for any help with it, so I’m hoping that means it is working flawlessly
Ah dang, yeah if you’re not playing something with kernel anti-level cheat it’s great
Evil tongues might insinuate that they stopped using their laptop in frustration because your roommate doesn’t want to bother you all the time lol.
In sincerity, good job :-)
Maybe. But I installed Mint on my 90 year old grandma’s laptop last year and she’s been using it to attend her church’s zoom meetings with no problems.
Now if I could just get the printer to work without having to constantly delete the CUPS cert…
deleted by creator
“This is unfixable, sir. I’m sorry. D’ya wanna hear our prayer line?”.
“It’s ‘fuck you NVIDIA!’”
“and all the other greedy companies”
Colors are flipped
