Today at the grocery store a sweet older lady approached me and asked if I knew anything about computers. I said yes I do, and she produced a mouse saying that her son set up Linux mint for her and she was wondering if the mouse was compatible. It needed kernel version 2.6 or newer so I said that the mouse should work, guessing mint itself was probably newer than that kernel. Happy with my answer, we chatted a little, then she thanked me and left.
It was a nice experience, so I thought I should share!
Based boomer ladies embracing open source software.
I tried to install Linux on my mom’s laptop for her, it was too scary. So she is still using windows 7 and probably getting scammed left and right.
Zorin looks easier for the unacquainted.
After I tried to set up her new home internet and she had a melt down because I asked her if she had done any of the items I asked her to do (try connecting her smart tv to the network using the information I gave her) I no longer offer tech support to her, in fact we have barely spoken since then. It has been wonderful.
Back in 2010 or so I got sick of my mother constantly getting viruses, Trojans and spyware and installed Linux on her laptop. It actually worked out great… support calls went from once a month to her just wondering how to get the photos from her camera periodically. After a few years she got a Chromebook, which surprisingly has been more annoying. My dad somehow thought she needed 6 Google accounts or something and she’s constantly confused about which one she’s signed into. Other than that, both are a whole lot easier to deal with for both of us than her having windows.
My dad is running xubuntu for about 6 years now. I didn’t get any questions in the last 2 years. Besides for installing a new printer.
Before that it was mostly which program he needed for something. Never a black screen anymore, malware or anything like that.
They’ll probably enjoy Linux way more than windows. It’s so much less intrusive.
Yeah plus after two hours googling how to make something work, and then another two hours googling why the solution failed they can get used to getting off the PC and internalizing the concept of ‘life’s too short’.
Old lady uses Linux … what’s your excuse?
With the exception of a handful of titles, this is a quickly evaporating problem, due to Valve pouring millions of dollars into the development of the Steam Deck (motivated by wanting to separate themselves from being dependent on their computer Xbox/Microsoft).
Valve recently passed 11,000 playable or verified titles for the Deck, and since the Deck is Linux, that means 11,000 playable games in Linux (with priority on the most played games)
As someone who regularly games on a Deck and occasionally uses Nobara on a desktop, it definitely shows, yeah. Incredible how far we’ve come in that regard.
I do still stick with Windows on desktop 90% of the time because unfortunately it seems some of the more advanced NVIDIA features I use very often like DLDSR are unlikely to ever make their way to the Linux drivers, but that’s a petty me problem.
I definitely agree that for the vast majority of users it’s a pretty good experience nowadays unless one can’t make do without the handful of games with unsupported anticheat and such.
Do most newer fighting games work on Linux? I usually play multiplayer games and the anti cheats usually don’t work on Linux, but I’m not sure how modern fighting games are set up.
I play Strive, SF6 and BBCF fine on my desktop linux PC. Had some technical problems with sf6 when I had a Nvidia gpu, but it wasn’t related to anti cheat. Works great with AMD.
My father, who taught computer science for the US Army, later became a government contractor, and for whom Unix systems were bread and butter, is now retired and farts around on a Mac reading political blogspam all day.
My mother, having never had any interest or real education in computing in her entire life, now uses Linux Mint to take care of important shit and keep the family organized.
I don’t have any reason to not trust OP, but the likelihood of this conversation happening at ALL seems incredibly unlikely. Never mind that it is described as successful.
If true, this is amazing.
I don’t get why she would take her mouse to the grocery store rather than just ask her son, who installed it for her. All I could guess would be, her old mouse didn’t work so she went out and bought one?
I’m assuming OP meant a store like Target or Walmart that have groceries and also a tech section
Yes, it’s a bigger store where the bottom floor is groceries and the top is more of a department store with a few shelves of computer and phone stuff, among other things.
I literally set up Ubuntu for my mother (an old lady by now) 10+ years ago, and she has absolutely no problems with it other than the occasional LTS version updates that I need to do for her. I am pretty sure the overall tech-support I had to do for her over all these years is actually lower as it is much more difficult to accidentally mess up a desktop Linux than some Windows installation.
I live a few hours away from her and can’t just go out and buy her a new mouse (and she doesn’t like online shopping), so the OP story could be exactly her to the letter (except she isn’t using Linux Mint).
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s impossible, just incredibly unlikely.
The number of people out there that fit the description of your mother is low.
The number of people that could have intelligently answered the question is a bit higher, but still low.
The likelihood of those 2 people meeting in a store not dedicated to computer tech, and having this exact conversation, is like… monkeys playing Mozart level unlikely. ;)
Good thing you’re here to sus out the BS, otherwise we might all have been hoodwinked by OP recalling this friendly conversation at a store.
Honestly at this point you’ve spent longer trying to explain why it’s made up than OP took to write it.
Are you happy with the person that you are? I can’t imagine you’re very pleasant to spend time with.
I completely agree, it was one in a million and I was extremely surprised when it happened.
I’ve never been on the receiving end of a “that happened” before. Not really sure what to do about it. But I get it.
I literally set up Ubuntu for my mother…
I’ve never seen someone so brazenly bragging about elder abuse before.
My mother did way better with Ubuntu than Windows (also, that was 2010-2014 and Ubuntu seemed a bit better back then)
I installed Fedora on my aunt’s laptop she runs an eBay business with. She only ever used Excel for a spreadsheet she tracks her accounts with and Chrome for her listings. Replaced them with Libre office calc and Chromium, didn’t really need to explain anything to her
Why is this sweet old lady carrying a mouse around the grocery store asking about decades old kernel versions lol
asked if I knew anything about computers
lol you got profiled. nice that you could help her tho
What grocery store and where? I set up Linux Mint for my Mom. She’s 67.
More Finns should be using Linux, specially considering its Finnish origins.
Also, hello from the other side of Östersjön 👋
