The only advice I have is to try to make it interesting for them and not just additional practical information they have to memorize. You don’t want to be the weird dad that insists on using stuff nobody else does, you have to show them what’s cool about it, and also accept maybe they’ll just stick with Windows for now.
I also think the main takeaway they should have out of it is that there’s many ways of doing the same thing and none is “the correct and only way”. They should learn to think critically, navigate unfamiliar user interfaces, learn some more general concepts and connect the dots on how things work, and that computers are logical machines, they don’t just do random things because they’re weird. Teach them the value of being able to dig into how it works even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit them immediately.
Maybe set up a computer or VM with all sorts of WMs and DEs with the express permission to wreck it if they want, or a VM they can set up (even better if they learn they can make their own VMs as well!). Probably have some games on there as well. Maybe tour some old operating systems for the historical context of how we got where we are today. Show them how you can make the computers do things via a terminal and it does the same thing as in the GUI. Show different GUIs, different file managers, different text/document editors, maybe different DE’s, maybe even tiling vs floating. What is a file, how are ways you can organize them, how you can move them around, how some programs can open other program’s files.
Teach them the computer works for them not the other way around. They can make the computer do literally anything they want if they wish so. But it’s okay to use other people’s stuff too.
But when the time comes and the kid needs to write some assignments for school, you can be like Your Steam Deck can do that too, have a look at what this dock does
Imagine if handheld gaming is all they’ve ever used it and known it for, and all of a sudden you show them than it can be a full desktop experience, too
I love Linux gaming. Got the Steam deck for my SO. She kind of hates it BECAUSE it’s not a no tinker device.
Like if you pick the right games you’re good, but want to play the “wrong” game, or want to mod, and your back to tinkering.
I don’t mind it at all, it’s just what PC gaming has been for me my whole life, but for her, someone who only experienced gaming on newer consoles it’s a pain in the tush.
For me what planted the Linux seed is when I tried Mandrake Linux when I was 9-10ish. I didn’t end up sticking with it for all that long, but I absolutely loved trying out all those DEs. I had downloaded the full fat 5 CD version and checked almost everything during setup, so it came jam packed with all sorts of random software to try out. The games were nice, played the shit out of Frozen Bubble. I really liked Konqueror too, coming from Internet Explorer. It was pretty snappy overall. And there’s virtual desktops for more space! People were really helpful on IRC, even though I was asking about installing my Windows drivers in Wine. Unfortunately I kinda wanted games and my friends were getting annoyed we couldn’t play games on my computer.
It stuck with me however, so later on when some of my online friends were trying it out, I wanted to try it out again too. I wasn’t much into games anymore, had started coding a little bit. So on my computer went Kubuntu 7.10, and I’m still on Linux to this day.
But that seed is what taught me there’s more. I didn’t hate Windows, I wasn’t looking to replace it. I hadn’t fallen in love with FOSS yet. It was cool and different and fun. It wasn’t as sterile and as… grey as Windows 98. You could pop up some googly eyes that followed your mouse, because you could. There were all those weird DEs with all sorts of bars and features.
You don’t want to be the weird dad that insists on using stuff nobody else does, you have to show them what’s cool about it, and also accept maybe they’ll just stick with Windows for now.
This 👆. Be weird, but be cool at the same time. None of the other dads can do this, but yours can 🦸 ☺️… and, he can teach you how to do a lot more cool stuff as well 😉.
I also think the main takeaway they should have out of it is that there’s many ways of doing the same thing and none is “the correct and only way”. They should learn to think critically, navigate unfamiliar user interfaces, learn some more general concepts and connect the dots on how things work, and that computers are logical machines, they don’t just do random things because they’re weird. Teach them the value of being able to dig into how it works even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit them immediately.
This will come gradually. First, show him one way of doing things, let it sink in, let him get comfortable with it, then say “you know, you could do that in another way as well 😉”. I bet he’ll start asking you if there are other ways as well in no time 😂.
So if someone starts using EndeavorOS daily, can they claim to be an arch user? Edit: I’m now wiping my laptop clean and using it as my daily driver from now on. This is probably my first experience with Plasma, and I am loving it way more than gnome so far.
Yup my best Plasma experience was on Manjaro, Arch based KDE is just good. But actually modern KDE at all is just good, so no Kubuntu or damn MXLinux XD
Oh my God the more I use it the more amazing it is already. The customization in the Plasma appearance settings is exactly what I’ve missed this whole time. I feel like I’ve wasted all these years now. Better late than never I s’pose.
Hahahaha. I tried out Mint once, crashed randomly so no Mint. Then Manjaro and it was great but said to be shady. So MX Linux which was also great but software was outdated. Then KDENeon and Kubuntu, broke both, then Fedora KDE, broke that too.
Now I am on Fedora Kinoite, KDE is all user folders so everything is still customizable.
You may want to disable file indexing as its really weird and crashy. For security also CUPS and bluetooth, no GUI switches poorly
I’ve done a lot of bluetooth work and know how terrible it is as a protocol, but do you see any issues with only using it for a speaker/earphone, assuming no other devices even within a valid proximity of the transceiver? If nothing can hijack or manipulate or listen to the session, is it that insecure? I disable it and use wired earbuds when I’m mobile for that reason.
I’m a ham radio guy, so I’m licensed by the FCC to transmit 1500 watts in the ham bands. Talk about a flashlight glowing. It’s on my todo list to make a good antenna for directional finding of signals.
afaik linux and windows shows different GPU memory clock speeds but it’s basically the same (1:2 conversion)
most likely because bigger number = better?
I think i found the answer. Windows counts the total speed including the effective bandwidth, while most Linux utilities only report the raw clock speed.
This is controversial but will I be able to map right click to erase or another tool/brush preset/color? It just feels wrong to keep switchimg with N and Shift+E while making pixel art.
The GTK3 port has been in the making for a very long time. Long before anyone even mentioned GTK4. Porting an application to a different GUI toolkit is a lot of work.
And it shouldn’t be. Sure, there are some new features you may want to take advantage of, but it’s lamentable that GTK doesn’t try harder to maintain backwards compatability.
You know who does major version changes well? Go. Excellent backwards compatible over a decade of very active development, and when there are recommended or required changes, the compiler provides tooling to update source code to the new API.
GTK2->GTK3 was a major leap. For something like a GUI toolkit, changes and advancements are inevitable. A GTK4 port would be much less difficult, as the developer-facing changes are an order of magnitude smaller.
Yes, it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, the developers of GTK thrived on changes to the API during the GTK3 era. I don’t know why Go devs don’t (and I am indeed very glad that they don’t). Perhaps it’s because of the different structures of the development teams or perhaps because GTK has more hazy goals. 🤷♂️
According to the GTK team, trying to maintain backwards compatibility dragged the whole project down. I agree that a basics' automatic porting tool would've been nice.
Thank you, I am glad you like it. I have been trying to improve it, adding functionalities, improving the selection mechanism with cursor and scrolling etc.
I don’t need any of the advanced tools, I just want a cleaner interface for the tools that already exist. The only thing I’m able to do is make header pics for my posts. The 2.x UI is really, really old now. The time for a refresh was a few years back, but I do understand the limitations of a small team. Like others have said, I’ll likely run both and migrate to 3.x when it’s stable. Though, I do like the idea of non-destructive editing :)
Krita has been adding photo manipulation tools faster than GIMP is fixing their UX/UI, so at this point I think Krita will be the first to become the most viable FOSS alternative to Photoshop.
Wayland is Wayland. If you use a Wayland compositor, you’re getting a lot of security by virtue of design alone. Things like keyloggers and screenrecorders will not be able to intrude on your session barring vulnerability exploits. I’m not going to touch on the relative vulnerability risk of each environment since a) they’re all relatively new & b) I’ve never implemented Wayland myself
With that being said, here’s what’s not protected by Wayland regardless of the chosen compositor: microphones, webcams, keyrings, and files.
For microphones & webcams, any distro which rolls Pipewire in combination with Wayland will be sufficient to secure these. Pretty much all Wayland environments roll Pipewire so this is only important to consider if you’re running your own customized environment (be sure to disable any pre-existing PulseAudio daemon after setting up Pipewire to close this security hole)
For keyrings, these are handled by your environment’s polkit implementation. Much like Wayland, there are several implementations of polkit and they’re all just about equally secure barring any potential vulnerabilities… Just make sure that you’re using an encrypted database (usually on by default) and that you have it configured to always relock & properly prompt for the unlock key.
For file access, this is actually a core probelm with Linux as a whole – any unsandboxed application you run will be able to read any file that you can read. The solution is to use sandboxed applications whenever possible. The easiest way to achieve this is through using flathub/flatpak applications, since they will always list out and enforce their required permissions on a per-application basis. For non-flatkpak applications, you’ll need to use “jail” environments (e.g.: bubblejail, firejail) in order to artificially restrict application permissions by hand.
would recommend linking the phrase “a fuckload of distros” to DistroWatch – give newcomers a heads-up on just how deep that particular rabbit hole goes …
I got a stick with Neon unstable on it, and so far the experience is pretty damn good. Haven’t tried anything gaming related, but the shell itself is functioning really well. The only thing that’s straight up not working is Discover, but when did it, really
My son’s windows focused ICT curriculum is pissing me off a bit. So I guess what I wanna teach is something similar to what a kid’s ICT text book would teach, except that it will be for Linux.
Huh, may be I should look for kid friendly linux books first.
I don’t know what your - and your kid’s - situation is, but I worry pushing Linux onto someone would be counterproductive to getting them to like it.
I only use it because I genuinely like and appreciate it. I’d probably start by getting him interested in it. If he likes it enough then he’ll try and learn more by himself.
I recently got an LLM running locally on an AMD GPU. This was only possible on Linux. Depending on your son, something like that could be a cool way to get him interested.
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