Quazatron

Let me count the ways:

• Edited /etc/sudoers with vi instead of visudo.
• The classic rm -fr /
• The typical chown myuser: / -R
• Removed the bootloader dunno why
• Some shenanigans involving dd and the wrong device

I could go on, but my memory tends to erase the painful memories.

I’ll add that if you do use cloud storage (a.k.a. someone else’s computer) for backups, make sure all your data is encrypted (preferably also compressed and deduplicated). If you value your data you’ll also keep a separate, offline copy.

I had a look at some of the more recommended options out there and decided to invest my money in physical storage instead. I know this is not the answer you are looking for, but it makes more sense in my use case.

My 73 year old mother never had a computer before when she asked me for one, so she could talk online with her friends.

I installed Xubuntu and it has been working wonderfully for her. She just browses the web, types some poems using Libre Office and plays solitaire.

I just have to do a system update every year or so.

She’s now 87.

Not a secret, but annoying as hell. I usually replace it with a Flatpak and uninstall Snap.

A Linux VirtualBox instance.

Can’t be bothered to work around WSL’s idiosyncrasies.

Don’t.

Everybody hates preachers.

Lead by example.

It seems that you need to read up on Linux and how it is different from closed source systems.

You are getting downvoted by people that were once where you are, but have since forgotten what it is to be a newbie.

I’m gonna go with Tom’s Root Boot. Or maybe the father of all live distros, Knoppix.

Someone gave me a PowerMac and of course I had to try to run Linux. It was an interesting experience, it would boot to MacOS and then run the Yellow Dog bootloader. Couldn’t get it to boot directly. That little experiment showed me how tightly Apple controlled what would run on Apple machines back then.

Good old Smoothie. Served me well back then. I think it went commercial at some point.

The bottom of the top.

That ship, my friend, has already sailed.

Remember when HP made great printers? I still have an old HP Laserjet 1100 in use. When that one dies, I don’t think I’ll be buying any other printer.

Let me be the first to say “meh”.

Two can play that game. I bet it is possible to create an AI tool that generates and posts Mario pictures faster than they can take them down. Why you’d want to do that I don’t know.

My mom (85) has been using Xubuntu for some 10 years now. She uses Facebook and Gmail and plays card and puzzle games. She had no prior contact with computers, and learned it mostly by herself.

Just give thema stable solid distro. It will make their and your life easier.

I can confirm it works as advertised, has very low maintenance and good performance.

I use it for gaming with Steam, Heroic, Lutris and a bunch of emulators, web browsing, some light development and home lab.

I’ve been doing that for years. I genuinely do not know how to fix Windows anymore. Took a while for my family and friends to accept since I “work with computers” but now they don’t automatically come to me when Windows breaks.

No. You can layer ext4 with LVM and LUKS to get a lot of features (but not all) that you get with BTRFS or ZFS. FAT is not suitable for anything other than legacy stuff.