HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ meibo

"How to cripple your workflow worse than Windows 11 could ever hope to"

⬐ Craighead

"How to prevent telemetry Google could only dream of"

⬐ throwawaysea

It would be great to have a privacy-first, censorship-proof, ad-free, free software centric tutorial series that is aimed at the average layperson. Everything from what computer to buy, to how to use Linux, to how to perform backups, to how to safely store passwords, and so on. The software (Linux distributions) has improved, but I feel like the evangelization and education has not.

⬐ mbfg

it's really pretty trivial at this point. Buy yourself an all-in-one raspberry pi 400, and use it, if you are worried about screwing up.

⬐ throwawaysea

I meant more to get your everyday mom and pop to use a software stack that isn’t owned by one of a few giant conglomerates. I think the HN crowd can handle a raspberry pi but it’ll take more for a random person on the street, IMO.

⬐ machinehermiter

People still think it is 15 years ago that it took a week of tinkering to figure out how to get sound from your sound card.

I just don't care enough to become a linux missionary/priest though and try to get people to switch. I can't make the horse drink the water.

⬐ subjectsigma

I installed Pop!_OS 21.04 last week and use a USB mic/headphones. After some googling I had to apply this fix to turn off the power saving subsystem which was turning the card on and off. This is on a desktop computer.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1230833/annoying-click-poppi...

Yeah it's 2021 and we're still dealing with this shit.

⬐ workerdrone451

Let me preface that I love linux. I use it on 98% of my PCs. But Linux is not for everyone. Honestly it SHOULDN'T be. If you want to be free you have to work for it. You have to understand why your open source community app has less features than commercial apps. You have to weigh the costs versus the benefits. You have to be prepared to fix broken things, including submitting your own patches. Grandma doesn't need Linux. Get her a damn Chromebook.

⬐ chovybizzass

Start with Ubuntu if you are not caring about latest and great or Manjaro if you do.

⬐ Koshkin

What I have learned after the countless installs of Linux instead of (or side by side with) Windows is that… life is short, and you better spend it with your family and friends.

⬐ machinehermiter

I have no idea what you are installing or if you are talking about the year 2005.

KDE Neon in 2021 on SSD takes me about 15 min to reinstall completely with no configuration.Everything just works. It is easier than Windows.

I barely even know any unix commands beyond ls after using some form of KDE plasma for around 4 years now. Everything has just worked for a long time now.

⬐ AlfeG

It's like 3 or 4 clicks from winsows settings to reinstall windows from scratch. And everything just works.

⬐ WarChortle18

That's not true at all, 3 to 4 clicks won't even get you through formatting the hard drive. Not to mention Windows Update never seems to install the correct drivers for my motherboard and very outdated drivers for my gpu.

Linux install is pretty similar and the only driver issue I have with it is my video card.

I would say they are pretty even honestly.

⬐ faeriechangling

I use a script for dealing with Windows post-install. It's 120 lines long and still incomplete. My Linux install is around the same ballpark.

Have you ever attempted to install Windows at scale? Windows installation process is not a paragon of just works simplicity. It's a horrendously complex piece of software. Having sane defaults doesn't change things that much.

⬐ nix23

True, i love to type "apt upgrade" instead of Windows Update...restart, update firefox, update libreoffice, update XY, why is latop slow? Ahh windows defender...update nvidia driver...life is just to short for not having a package manager ;)

⬐ fragileone

Or most desktop environments even just use a GUI updater like KDE's Discover, for those who are phobic to the terminal.

⬐ nix23

Or register Ubuntu Livepatch service, let everything install automatically, and stop care about updates and restarts at all ;)

⬐ SheinhardtWigCo

It's wild that you can't pay any amount of money for a reasonable degree of privacy and freedom in personal computing, without also sacrificing a huge amount of time and effort, and in many cases, vital communication channels with family and friends.

⬐ yeuxardents

lol, nice

its true though, at this point, you can give new life to older laptops/desktops with linux by just throwing in a ssd and bam, use that. or even buy a cheap intel NUC and now you have your linux box

dual booting is terrible

⬐ entropyie

Just installed Fedora 34 on a new Lenovo AIO for my elderly parents. It took a max 5 minutes of attention from me (maybe 30 minutes elapsed?), including making the USB boot disk. Everything worked on first boot. Everything.

Also note that the move from Windows 7 (their old machine) to Fedora was no problem for them, since they were already using FireFox, Thunderbird and Skype. Their setup is so minimal there is virtually nothing they can do to break it (no accidentally installing malware anymore).

As for 'spend it with your family', I've spent countless hours 'with my family' trying to debug windows problems over the phone. No more of that now.

Years ago, I bought a new laptop for my other half. Upgrading from windows 7 to windows 8. She tried using Windows 8 for about a week and was so appalled at all the pointless changes (weird PDF viewer with no menus etc...) that she was very much relieved to have Fedora instead, and has never looked back since.