this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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But to be honest, not every child is technologically-inclined. Most are just gonna get annoyed and hate it. This is not a good idea.
I'd have loved it as a child though
Dude he said “introduced”, not forced to learn it well enough to duel Torvalds on the mailing lists.
Was introduced as a teen. Recently even looked back at my book from the times and it had a whole goddamn chapter with linux propaganda.
Hated it. Felt like high maintenance windows. No reason to even get near. Also, hated it doubly because nobody asked.
Best way would be to switch school computers to linux. That way there's no active part - it's here, you have to use it anyway, deal with it. Then you can taste it neutrally, and it becomes just a quirk. Quirk some may like.
Check on EducaandOS. It's my region's school distro. It was absolute crap around 15 years ago, when they launched (names Guadalinex Edu), but it was preinstalled in school laptops so we learned to use it.
Right now it's pretty decent and simple enough to just throw it into a kid's computer, but sadly nobody gives a fuck about it. It would be so cool if more institutions tried to pull projects like this
Exactly this. Barely any child would have cared about free software or whatever. I'd be concerned for the ones that did care.
Linux doesn't have to be high maintenance though. Definitely not more high maintenance than Windows for basic use cases.
It doesn't have to, but for most users on the level of teens/kids it is. You wanna do something in windows? Done. Just done. No problems whatsoever, most devs bend over backwards for compatibility. Meanwhile finding shit for linux is pain. Most things you heard of are not even there. You have to go through weird apps just to run things you're used to, and meanwhile OS asks weird questions like which graphic driver to install,
Linux changed a whole lot from the time I was introduced to it, and it became reaaaaally close to being as easy to use as windows. Hell, I even was considering switching to Mint some time ago ( Then bricked my boot. Thrice. And it's not fault of Linux. I think. ). I like how it looks and feels, and with proton and stuff it's best time to do so but it still isn't on the same level of being non-problematic as windows.
Edit: Cannot talk about Win 11. Touched it once. If I need to upgrade, fuck that, going linux. Not worth it. At all.
Not really most detect the graphics card automatically, unless you are on Nvidia in which case you probably built the thing anyway or are a PC gamer which would know that anyway.
Windows isn't as easy to use and tends to break if given to the computer illiterate from viruses, not doing updates, not rebooting, and so on. I've dealt with these kinds of people, they are better off with Linux Mint, ChromeOS, or similar as it doesn't have these issues. If you are talking about mac then yeah it's easier, you have an argument there. I would point out as well that most of the easy to use devices run Linux, like Android and ChromeOS devices.
Windows 11 is the new default, so that's what we are comparing to here.
Dual boots on a single drive and EFI partition are expected to break at this point. This is because Microsoft like to overwrite the Linux boot loader. You should use a separate drive or at least a different EFI partition. REFIND can be helpful too. Dual boots have always been an advanced use case though.
Most people who don't know their stuff uses nvidia. Happily slowly changing, but nvidia is everywhere, at least where I live. And people who don't know stuff still hold onto "green good, red hot and bad".
How do you break Windows except by downloading malware? It literally hides, or rather masquarades it's settings from you and makes it hard to do anything bad to it. My grandpa uses Windows - I thought about introducing him to linux to breathe second life into his PC but...I doubt he would be able to do much with it. I cede point towards Android.
How is Win 11 new default? I may be out of the loop, but is it now majorly used? If so, I cede all because the only time I tried to use it, goddamn first-time registration died on me. Like, fully. Unfixable. What a mess.
And yeah, again, the boot bricking isn't on linux it's just me being an idiot. Also I love how fast you picked up how I broke the boot.
Every pre-built machine I have seen using Nvidia has it written on the front. Including the laptop I am using now. It works fine on Linux btw, provided you grab the right ISO.
Windows 11 installs itself automatically on newer machines as it did on my parents laptop, nags you if you refuse. Same way Windows 10 did when it came out. It comes with pretty much every new machine too. That's what I mean by it's the default. Windows 10 support also ends next year. You are severely out of the loop if you haven't noticed, or you have an unsupported machine.
As for Windows breaking that's what eventually made me switch to Linux again, Windows 11 taskbar decided to stop working on two different machines.
On Linux you need root permission to do much damage besides deleting files. You can create a non-root account for someone, or just tell them not do anything that prompts them for a password. There are few places where you can break something from a GUI in Linux, and those are things like disk managers that are equally dangerous on Windows. On Windows you can go to device manager and straight up disable devices. I've seen someone do that with their WiFi card. If it's still an issue tell them to use Chrome OS or another immutable Linux. On those systems the OS partition is read only with snapshots in place. Those are almost impossible to fuck up short of reformatting your PC.
Something like Linux Mint is very easy to use and doesn't require much maintenance. You don't need to reformat every year or two either when Windows inevitably shits itself.
I use arch btw
Linux mint shares all the flaws that are common to every Linux distro
My point is Linux doesn't have to be hard to use. You are going out of your way and making things difficult when using something like Arch Linux.
I'm not undermining your point in the first sentence, I was just saying that I use arch, btw
Linux mint shares a few ubuntu bugs, and even if you use LMDE someone like a child cannot understand the essence of linux in a controlled environment.
I'll repeat. You cannot teach linux in a controlled environment to a child.
I've heard of cases where parents are putting kids in front of linux recently!
They are windows illiterate i think is what the kids posted.
Yeah, that's nice to hear.
But that's not necessarily a controlled environment.
You can create controlled Linux environments fairly easily. Heck just disabling root access gets you half way there.
That's not what I mean.
Then what do you mean?
Yes you can! What do you think a Chromebook is or an Android tablet. Modern Linux is quite easy to use, in some areas easier than modern Windows. This is especially true if you have the kind of children who get viruses all the time.
Oh awesome. Leave it to lemmy to be pedantic.
I obviously meant normal linux distros when I referred to linux. Not chromebooks or android.
Also, using those is in no way the same as learning linux. In a chrome book you'll just be using a browser. In a phone, all the apps are locked down and you have no access to cli.
I never said the objective was to learn Linux. The objective is to use it.
You can get terminal access on a smartphone. I can give you a screenshot or two if you like. You can also run Linux apps on ChromeOS now. It leverages containers from my understanding, a technology baked into the modern Linux kernel.
No it's not pedantic you are using a true scotsman fallacy. That being said I don't think using Linux Mint is any harder than using and maintaining Windows especially if you don't have existing knowledge of either. macOS is easier to use than either Linux Mint or Windows.
Well you were replying to a comment of mine where the topic was teaching children linux.
A child will never bother doing that.
Yeah, I never said it couldn't.
It's not a true scotsman fallacy when neither chromeos nor android actively & openly advertise themselves as "Linux". Yes, they are linux and that has been acknowledged, but not advertised.
Is your bar seriously advertising? The mental gymnastics going on here is crazy. Yes it's a true scotsman fallacy. It doesn't matter if someone born in Scotland calls themselves Scottish or not, legally speaking they are still Scottish. That's how that works.
A child might not bother with the terminal on Linux Mint either. Does that mean Linux Mint isn't a real Linux now?
You also severely underestimate what children are capable of. I installed my first Linux distro, and taught myself HTML and CSS while still in primary school. I don't think you have any idea what children can do. I could probably outclass most adults with technology when I was 16 or so.
Um, I started using linux on my own when I was 9-10ish years old. I know perfectly what a child is capable of. But an average child will not do that.
thanks you for not forcing people to use arch, now I don't have to shit on it for a milliont time