Old profile: luccus@feddit.de

Mastodon: luccus@chaos.social

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2024

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  • My guess is that if most things “just work”, Linux may be fine. I mean, there’s a whole second laptop available and I’m reachable most of the time. I just don’t want to play support all the time.

    I’m also not that worried about locking things down. The parents can’t even lock down Windows properly and have resorted to restricting internet time via a router setting. It’s MAC based, and I think if the kid figures out how to change MAC addresses, they deserve a little extra Roblox time until the parents notice.

    At the moment I think I’ll sit down with them and we’ll set this thing up together. That way I can teach them a bit about the differences and show them cool things like ad blocking or Steam and see how they do by themselves … and then make my (hopefully final) decision.


  • I would just like to say that I really appreciate everyone’s contributions so far; even the little off-topic discussions.

    But you are completely misjudging the situation. When I spoke of “first assumption”, said they "know their way around Windows" and stated they found ways around prior parental locks, I was actually referring to the fact that “my kid” hasn’t even been born yet. We’ve just slipped two iPads in, one with a YouTube-Kids Elsa Gate loop and the other constantly doom scrolling TikTok and Twitter.

    I’m definitely not talking about someone who is a several years older than I was, when I got my first internet connected PC.


    Sarcasm aside; they are more than old enough, according to their actual parents. They had a phone for quite some time; same for a Windows notebook. I just happen to have a better notebook laying around, but feel like Windows is sort of shit, and I need a little help with judging if Linux is the right call.



  • I daily drive Silverblue (and the terminal is not useless >:c), and in a vacuum I would probably install Silverblue or another atomic desktop. But I worry about Windows compatibility.

    Imagine the feeling when “you just click the .exe and everything installs itself” works for everyone but you. It doesn’t matter that downloading executables from random websites is way worse than a proper package manager in pretty much every way.

    It’s still alienating. Going along with everyones technical dept may still be a nicer experience, because at least it doesn’t require the effort of doing something different.

    That’s what I’m worried about.




  • I understand LLMs well enough that I really don’t want to use them because they are inherently incapable of judging the validity of information they are passing along.

    Sometimes it’s wrong. Sometimes it’s right. But they don’t tell you when they’re wrong, and to find out if they were wrong, you now have to do the research you were trying to avoid in the first place.

    I tried programming with it once, because a friend insisted it was good. But it wasn’t, and it was extremly confidend, while being exceptionally wrong.


  • Man. Every time I read an unsolicited comment like this, I get moved a bit more to the “optics matter” camp.

    If someone is interested, they will ask. And if they ask, you get to camly explain your thoughts and feelings.

    That’s how I managed to get everyone to think of the “haha, my food eats your food” guy in my social circle as the weird “berates people for their personal choices” guy, rather than me. He brought it up in the most childish, naive way, and I got to be the adult in the room.

    And that stuck. A bunch of my friends lost their fear of meat alternatives, because of me wordlessly picking the meat alternative from the fridge in the grocery store, while picking things out for the BBQ. People do notice these things. And some will copy you, if you seem cool enough to copy.


  • Man. Last time I just wanted to check if my new laptop was working properly, so I booted up it’s preinstalled Windows. I literally had to look up how to get Windows to get me into Explorer without creating an account or connecting it to my network.

    It took me about 25 minutes and Windows was already installed on the damn thing.

    It took 15 minutes from booting a prepared Fedora stick to logging in.

    I honestly believe that, by now, Linux is no more difficult than Windows. People are just not used to the differences.





  • it even has a tutor

    Yeah, people are just lazy. I remember when I invented a new login screen and was told it was “difficult”, “confusing” and “took some getting used to”.

    It even came with a free 100-page manual and a 4-hour master class. Some people, I tell you!

    ^This is meant more as a joke than an actual critique, even if it kind of reflects my thoughts. But ultimatly, I thought it was a funny bit.^