Yes that way they’re trapped and need you for tech support, classic move.
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It really depends on who is being helped and the motive for you “helping” them. I’ve had both really good and pretty bad experiences helping and trying to help people with various computer things. As with providing any kind of support, it’s important to get out of your own head and understand what the person your helping wants and needs
As with providing any kind of support, it’s important to get out of your own head and understand what the person your helping wants and needs
Yes because someone that uses MS Word 6-8 hours a day certainly doesn’t want to use Linux and have compatibility issues while sharing documents with others who do the same.
I used to think that helping my other dumb grad mates with installing Linux made me look cool and I would be accepted. On the contrary, I looked like an idiot, now that I think of it. i became that weirdo support tech kid for the idiot professors, who could not tell the difference between Java and Javascript.
I guess the worst part is that people will eventually take advantage of you… and demand for more and more hours of your free support, hold whatever you installed against you like “after you did X… Y stopped working” etc. At the end of the day if you’re proving free support it must be easy, quick why wouldn’t they ask for more.
In their heads your efforts / help doesn’t provide any value and if by any chance one day they are in a situation where you could bill them or someone for tech support they would rather call any other random tech support guy or company instead of calling you - after all they’re looking for a “professional” now :)
So far I’ve switched 4 people to Linux (with approval and interest obviously, plus unlimited tech support lol). 3 are happier with it than Windows and the other liked Linux but had to switch back to Windows due to some audio production software they needed.
It’s also secretly been an experiment to see what distro is the most user friendly. I have one on Linux Mint, one on Debian, and the other on Fedora Silverblue. All three have been great, but I think the winner is Silverblue so far. I don’t love how quick Silverblue versions become EoL, but it’s also the distro with the easiest updater. It’s an Apple level of simplicity; click update, restart at some point, done. No scary package lists or changelogs, just a nice blue button to press.
Also Flatpak + Flathub continues to be a huge contributor in making Linux friendly to normal people, in my opinion.
Id really love to get my mom on Silverblue but she refuses to use Libreoffice.
Office 2023 is a little jank in WINE unfortunately 😞
She’d be such an easy candidate otherwise, she only needs office, email, and Internet and loves the Thinkpad I gave her.
What about onlyoffice? The UI is a lot more modern which is probably the issue right?
The issue I’ve run into is primarily compatibility with existing documents and being able to share it with other in industry. Like it or not, for business in the US, the office suite is pretty much the only document & spreadsheet application you can expect everyone to have.
It’s not fair to ask people who aren’t interested in learning linux to deal with the incompatibilities between Libre/Open office and O365 because “I don’t like Microsoft”. If they’re pushing to move away from MS and understand this, I’d still probably recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice because moving someone from a well maintained industry standard Microsoft product to a less supported and less compatible Oracle app seems irresponsible.
Edit: The whole second paragraph is about OpenOffice and not OnlyOffice. Please disregard
OnlyOffice not OpenOffice
Thank you! It appears I cannot read
Just tell her to get gud and start using ViM for everything
If I did this they wouldn’t be my loved ones for long…
This person here is doing the Lord’s work. Thank you, OP, and have a great day.
I love Linux and I think a lot of my non-technical family members would benefit from it, but I am not as brave as you. The danger with messing around with someone’s computer is that you are basically taking ownership of all tech problems the person may run into. It’s like the “You break it, you buy it” rule. The person may seek help from another tech geek, but as soon as that geek finds out they’re dealing with a “weird” Linux system, they’re going to run away from it. You are effectively volunteering to be 24x7 on-call tech support for the people whose laptops you’ve installed Linux on.
@linux
whoops I did it again.@alpinelinux as a single-boot daily driver for a #windows user with some past @ubuntu experience
Please don’t force Linux onto people, it’ll only make them hate it.
How does this work?? This is a mastodon post but it appears on Lemmy?
@krisfreedain @linux
probably not the right person to ask. I always go for Fedora but am open to hear non-Ubuntu-based alternatives for beginners@krisfreedain @linux
I started from Ubuntu in high school and it felt bloated. I moved to Void which was nice, but not really supported in general. I started recommending Fedora to beginners but started using Alpine as my daily driver. Don’t think I will ever move from Alpine, but maybe I will recommend something other than Fedora in the future.
These days installing Linux and upgrading it is easier than it was years ago. Installing Linux can be a good deed indeed :)
K
