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”
He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
Your brother is the wise guy of the bell curve
He used a wormhole
Or he’s currently on the left, and he’ll be on the bell’s top by the time @[email protected] is on the other side?
On another note, I feel this so much. I went from “Mint seems comfortable”, to “Ooh slackware, i3 WM, running Arch with i3 completely built up and customised by none other than me!” back to “I can set shortcuts in Mint, and it’s comfier there anyway”
Yeah, same but with Fedora: since Gnome 40+ came out I got back to it and never left again
He only asks me things like “What was the name of PowerPoint for Linux” once in a while
Show him https://alternativeto.net and that also drops to zero :)
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?
Windows doesn’t like to acknowledge that other operating systems exist, so (at least from my experience) it will overwrite your Linux bootloader whenever it updates, or sometimes it’ll just do it because it feels like it…
oh, that’s definitely less than ideal. I can see why a seperate harddrive is almost more than necessary
GRUB is better anyway, imo. It can mess with SecureBoot and BitLocker if you use those, though.
I only have one machine left in use with a single disk shared between the two systems (a laptop) but I haven’t seen that happen for quite some time now (years really, and never on the last two laptops). And it hasn’t happened for a very long time in my main box that has several drives, where Windows gets its own little drive and Linux has the others (back when it happened, it was simpler in that case as I could use the BIOS boot manager to pick a drive to boot from). I don’t boot Windows very often, maybe once a month to run updates, and nothing much happens.
So while it certainly was a problem at some point, I don’t think it still is.Good to know
I will write a guide for you via editing so others don’t need to after they see this message.
Yes. 1 hard drive is enough. 2 provides you few steps less (as in manual partitioning), but the end result is exactly the same in both scenarions.
I hope your storage drive(s) is ssd and not hdd. If not, I highly recommend to buy at least used ssd (my oldest ssd is from 2010 and still works).
Manual partitioning varies a bit between Linux distros, so google the guide for the distro you want ro install.
Windows overrides and formats the Linux boot partition, so install Windows first and at the partitioning “window” write the amount of storage you want to give for Windows and it handles everything else automaticly. If your Windows is already installed, then shrink your drive with the amount you want to use in Linux. Windows has a tool named Disk Management for shrinking the drive.
In Linux you need at least two partitions; boot (In Linux terms: /boot/uefi) and root (in Linux terms: / ). But like I said, Google/Youtube a guide for your distro of choice.
Have you chosen which distro you’ll use? If not, format your biggest usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and it’ll be the last time you ever format your usb stick. Just drag and drop any Linux .iso and try them in Live mode without the need to format or install anything before you’ve chosen which distro you like the most. Linus Tech Tips showed Ventoy2Disk in his latest video.
Try at least Pop_OS! and Linux Mint since they are very beginner friendly distros.
Dual boot isn’t the easiest way to start your Linux journey, but I hope you have fun while learning new skills. If you have anything to ask, don’t hesitate, just ask.
awesome, thanks so much! I really appreciate it
Oh, I forgot to ask. Do you have Nvidia gpu in your computer?
I do in my desktop, not on my laptop.
Do you have a gpu in your pcie slot or do you use integrated gpu?
Because you have a desktop, I’d recommend to use 2 separate disks. Because if you manage to break the Linux system (it might happen if you heavily tinker/customize your Linux and manage do some mistake) then you can just re-install the Linux and start again.
If you have 2 storage drivers, then unplug the Windows drive when you (put tape and write Windows onto it) are installing the Linux. Then the computer will manage the partitioning automatically, so less work for you.
Don’t fear the tinkering/customizing. That’s one big joy in Linux, lol. Remember to backup at least your personal files.
My desktop does have a dedicated gpu in my pcie slot. I just assume my laptop has integrated graphics with the board, its an average/below average hp pavilion from around 2018.
I have 2 SSDs in my desktop, with one containing gaming storage and the other being the boot drive. I would prefer to experiment with linux on my laptop though, and I’m pretty sure it only has the 1 TB HDD. However, all sensitive data should be moved from that shortly so that I may have room to tinker/play around with it.
I recommend that you install Linux on the laptop alone! Linux will work on that hdd, but will be slower. If you can, buy an used ssd for it. 256 GB should be enough for a lot. That 1 TB hdd could serve you as a backup disk.
I also recommend to overhaul your laptop. Remove the dust with compressed air and reolace thermal paste (should be done every 2-3 years anyway).
I’ve read that some people have problems, but I used to dual boot (now I keep each os in a separate hard drive) without issues. Is a really straight forward process but if you get issues the online community is amazing and there are tons of docs (and reddit threads, some of them are deleted now or moved to Lemmy).
Linux is great! I started dual booting windows and Linux Mint, tried a lot of distros (this is called distro hopping) all Ubuntu based while using primarily Windows. After a while I got tired with windows and felt more comfortable with Linux, so I wiped Windows and installed Fedora Workstation (there’s a community for ASUS gaming laptops that have a guide for Fedora).
If you just want to get a feel of Linux, you can also run it in a Virtual Box, setting it to full screen makes you feel like you are using Linux, but obviously that comes with limitations.
I think I will definitely check out a virtual box first! My uncle actually recommended that to me at our 4th of July gathering and I thought it was a wonderful idea, I just haven’t sat down and done it yet.
I currently have two different SSDs on my desktop- do you think that it’s possible to put a linux distro on my secondary one that I use for videogame storage without causing any problems to my videogame data, or would it be better to get a whole new drive for it? Thanks again for all your help!
Is it possible but you could run into issues. You can shrink that drive and leave space for Linux there, but be careful while setting up your partitions so you don’t accidentally erase your games data.
Its always easier to use a whole drive so you don’t have to worry about partitions. I’ve never done what you’re describing but it shouldn’t be much of a hassle.
@BrandoCalrissian9229 @yogurtwrong I never tried dual boot, but as far as I know the best thing is to have two separated drives in order to avoid problems (which can happen).
yeah, that’s always been the way I’ve understood it, but it seems like not many laptops these days have multiple drives
It is absolutely possible to dual boot from a single harddrive. Don’t know about fedora, but the Ubuntu installer has taken care of that for ages now. Yes, it can fuck your windows install initially, but that is normally reversible.
If you don’t know, a computer uses so called partitions and not the hard drive directly. Think of them as folders. Normally you have one partition which holds the bootloader information (one or two OS, or more) and then a partition for each OS. A little Programm after Turning on the computer let’s you choose which OS you want to boot.
A lone Linux installation often has three partitions on one harddrive. One boot Partition, one for the OS and one for the home directory of all users. This way you can reinstall the OS without loosing your home directory.
I see! The three partition system seems very handy.
@BrandoCalrissian9229 that’s definitely true. You could use an external ssd, if you have problems
I may end up doing that. Or one of those USB 3.0 Flash Drives.
@BrandoCalrissian9229 I think this solution is the one that could give you less headache, if none at all.
thanks!
I don’t think I want to meet a 12 year old who uses power point. Jk lol
They all use it if they want to pass school, so you are out of luck.
I mean, it’s pretty much required in school. I had about 5 presentations each grade from late elementary through the end of high school
Well that explains why my job just expects me to know it without any warning… I’m almost 50, I have no problem learning new things if you tell me I need to, but when I was in school, computers were still luxuries…
i graduated after 2000 and was not expected to do so much as a single powerpoint presentation
Kids spend a large amount of their school time copy/pasting from google images and wikipedia into powerpoint and have done so for a couple of decades in many schools.
It seems very likely the lack of hand writing and illustration creates a huge deficit in fine motor skills. And copy pasting is probably detrimental to comprehension and knowledge retention. As long as educators don’t question the motivation of tech companies using their classrooms to expand mind share and view technology uncritically as some sort of magic nothing will change.
Lots of kids have to present their school projects etc using powerpoint or similar.
OP, give your lil brother this. https://lemmy.ml/post/511377?scrollToComments=true
I need to make minor updates to it this year, but even this is enough to upgrade his skill level to intermediate or advanced within a day or two.
I just realised you’re the creator of it. This is a veru good writeup and I will save it and use it for referencing.
I will take this moment to self shill my content over at [email protected]. I make guides for privacy and write such stuff.
Is this a made-up story? Be honest
Yes, it’s just for OP to say “I use Arch”.
The kid’s name? Little Bobby Tables.
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.
Do you think I would have a similar experience if I got my 70 year old mother to install Linux? She’s on the other side of the country, but she’s always asking me questions about Windows 11 and breaking things. I have never even used Windows 11, so my capacity to help her isn’t great, especially since we haven’t been able to get Remote Desktop working since she switched from 10 to 11.
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My wife is bad with tech and was frustrated with Windows. i set her up with linux and GNOME. Its a simple interface. Settings are all in one place like a phone. Files, Photos in the overview tray. No more frustration with “what is Windows doing now?” and No more “why is this so slow”
Is she happier with it than Windows? Does she struggle less? My mom already used Libra office, so at least that much wouldn’t be an adjustment. My fear is that she’ll lock up the first time she has to use the terminal or install something that isn’t in the software center.
PS, Gnome is simple, but it’s also awesome! I’ve been using Linux off and on for 20 years now and I prefer Gnome.
She could careless about the OS, just as long as it is peppy like her phone and simple. So yes much happier than her Windows experience. some distros do a nice job at presenting a software store that is easy, like ZorinOS or ElementaryOS. if she isn’t getting IT help from anybody and you think terminal install may become an issue, there is OpenSUSE with oneclick install of downloaded RPMs (if you are outside of repos). But SUSE is a bit of its own learning curve.
Thanks for the advice. Learning curves won’t work for her. It needs to be like a phone, like you said. I have a lot of experience with Pop and I think she’d be fine with that as long as she doesn’t need to use the terminal. The first time it asks her to sudo her head will explode.
Yep, understood. For my wife’s I put the apps she needed on the dock and nothing else. And then for the browser I set the default page to always show her main websites as tiles. Backups are automatic to a raspberry pi running samba. So far there has been no issues unless the wifi extender goes goofy and she has to reconnect.
I love Fedora. It was my OS of preference 20y ago. Now I am old and use Debian. Arch was a very shortlived adventure in a transitional period that I felt tired of keep breaking all my OSs out of boredom.
My 3 year old daughter has a 2010 MacBook running AntiX. She knows how to boot it, press Enter on the dual-boot screen, and is getting close to being able to select Stardew Valley from the app menu. She also enjoys playing GCompris.
Heyy, you should install this grub theme for your lil brother. I think he might love it
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
I still maintained that Linus fucked up those Linux videos on purpose. Not sure why but for a guy in the tech industry he really played dumb.
Really pissed me off. What has he got against Linux?
Blaming Linus for breaking Linux is what’s wrong with the Linux community. You guys are so blind to the obvious glaring issues with Linux Desktop that any time something goes wrong, it must have been the user who did something stupid.
Sure, you CAN get it working the first time without issues, but the amount of times I tried Linux Desktop without any issues is 0. Every single time I installed Linux, I had some kind of breaking issue. I have tried multiple times between 2007 and 2021 and I’ll likely try again soon, but don’t kid yourself that people “play dumb” or something. Linux is as stable as the user makes it, and with instable, fragile, incompetent users (like most new users) come a fragile OS that cannot be relied upon.
I’m 100% sure if I try to install Ubuntu Desktop right now on my desktop, I’ll again encounter some BS thing that just doesn’t work like it should. Maybe the audio won’t work, or bluetooth just drops out constantly, or it randomly freezes, or YT videos don’t play at any decent framerate. Maybe everything works fine, but in 4 days some random thing doesn’t. And once some thing doesn’t work, you’ll have to waddle through a sea of sudo commands that you have no clue what they’re doing and you either fix the issue or break something else.
Note that I specifically mention Linux Desktop every time. Linux as a Server is great.
I’ve had a very similar experience. It’s always something, drivers, video codecs, you name it. If it gives you any confidence, it’s happened less and less as I’ve gained more experience and I’m daily driving fedora now.
I wonder if some people have just been so lucky to never have issues.
It’s true, I’m somebody who has run DIY distros daily for years and decided to try out Debian on a spare computer recently. I couldn’t even update the system after the initial install. It took me like forty minutes to find a thread which explained to me that Debian 12 has a bug with some raspi firmware that requires you to delete three files before apt will work, and there is 0 indication on the paths themselves, just people who have figured it out and were generous enough to share the knowledge. You can’t blame new users for those things, we as a community need to improve the software and the attitudes
This is where I suggest OpenSUSE, since it shares binaries and matched release cycle with SUSE it is highly stable, and nVidia provides a direct download for the drivers. Not saying it is perfect, but it is much more dependable than cobbling together your own distro.
don’t blame Linus
incompetent users
Which one is it?
All those claims you make about things not working in 2023 is ridiculous. I’ve been using various distros since 2009 and maybe you could have claimed those things back then. But if you can’t make Linux work at least as easily as windows in 2023, that’s on you.
Linus demonstrated his willful ignorance right from when he ignored that warning in the command prompt.
Linux: WARNING DONT DO THIS Linus: well I guess I’m going to have to do that. Linux: breaks Linus: Linux sucks
Fanboys: LINUX SUX LINUX SUX LINUX SUX LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
I’m 100% sure if I try to install Ubuntu Desktop right now on my desktop, I’ll again encounter some BS thing that just doesn’t work like it should
I installed Ubuntu a few months back and I honestly don’t see where anything could go wrong assuming you were remotely familuar with installing any OS, even if you’ve only worked with windows.
Hell, getting separate devices like printers to vonnect were even wasier on Linux than Windows. O Windows I had to go to manufacturer sites to install bullshit bloatware to get things to work righr, while on Linux they literally just worked immediately - I had to the 1 button to tell Linux to connect and that was it.
That’s awesome. I wish I had a sibling with an interest like this.
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.
Who would’ve thought tech literacy was going to go down with the years? Not me…
Well, it has been obvious for quite a while now, pretty much since we noticed that it wasn’t just the old people who “didn’t grow up with it” who needed excessive amounts of hand holding when using a PC.
Glad to be part of Gen Y then.
maybe unpopular opinion here but while it was user error, Linus breaking the OS by installing steam is something that should have never been possible, anyways glad to hear your brother is learning Linux!
the os should do as i say, that includes breaking it if i please. the problem are people writing into the terminal “i understand that i uninstall half my os with this command but want to do it anyway” and then wonder why half their os gets uninstalled.
I say this as a desktop Linux user for about 5 years at this point, but there is a big difference between typing “I understand I will uninstall half my OS with this” and typing “do as I say”. One requires directly repeating what is going to happen, and one is a more verbose version of typing Y.
Yes, the user should still be allowed to break their system however they want, but the warning should definitely be more obvious so the user can actively know if something they are changing might completely break their system.
It was as obvious as I said not a simple “do as I say”
wasn’t linus’s issue a rare packaging issue or something that happened and was fixed within a few days’ period?
