> Refusing to support my friends' and family members' devices that do not run Linux is the next step in my personal fight against products that run bad software
> So, when my mother, sister, brother, or anyone else comes to me begging to have his or her computer fixed
Sorry to be blunt, but you sound like an terrible person with an over-dimensioned ego.
If you do not want to support your family, fine - no need to announce it to the world. You are free to do that of course, but you have to bear the consequences of people saying "what a [put your favourite expletive here]" instead of "what a wise person to battle against mighty [put your least-favourite tech here]".
I support my parents with their tech even if it is often full of things I would not have used. I roll my eyes up and fix it. And ask them not to do this anymore, and they still sometimes do.
This is not that different from them telling me, 40 years back, to not do this and that. And me still doing it. Boy, I am really, really glad they did not decide to stop supporting me until I grow up :)
Honestly, read what you wrote again and take a step back to say "ok, this sounds really bad".
PS. when you gain back a lot of time for not supporting these technical noobs, make sure to fix your site that has plenty of problems - it does not look good for an "Itinerant Engineer" who built the impressive number of 11 web sites.
Posting something on your own blog is hardly announcing to the world. Maybe you should have closed the tab, instead of announcing your disdain for the author to the world.
At the risk of being "that guy", I have to admit that the author lost sympathy with me after reading his "Doctors Don't Seem to Care if They Kill Their Patients"-article.
This is either satire or a really cringeworthy personality.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense to talk about this type thing. So many consumers are utterly dependent on the free support of a small number technically adept family and friends. These people do a staggering amount to support tech companies for little to no recompense, and often their only reward is to be called upon more frequently and by more friends and family, and the network of further social circles in turn.
If it's a child asking for help, obviously then just help them, and teach them how to use problem solving techniques if they're old enough.
If they're adults, then you send them to a local IT support shop, or charge them normal rates for your own time. When the cost of ownership begins to exceed the technical literacy of users, the market may start to correct for some of the exploitation of consumer ignorance.
A large number of adults have no business owning anything more complex than a rotary phone.
It's immensely liberating to cut loose the users in your life when they begin to treat you as free tech support. It's also a really cool thing when people start to think for themselves and learn really basic troubleshooting by searching our watching videos.
Even more liberating, though, is to take a principled stand, whether it's over privacy, free software, or whatever aspect of tech you feel strongly about. Sorry, I won't even visit for family dinners if you've got a Facebook portal or Amazon echo in your house. You can opt out of the panopticon, and I'll gladly give my time helping you do that, but other people don't get to opt me in to unaccountable surveillance networks.
This guy's friends and family aren't entitled to his time in service of Microsoft products. Good on him for drawing a line in the sand.
>>Sorry to be blunt, etc...
Never do anything for free, and don't bend your principles or allow yourself to be used, even by family. The world would be a better place by far if fewer people got taken advantage of, and more people held to their values.
You can only blame corporations for slacking off and following "worst practices". Yes, all my friends' and family's computers run windows 8.1 embedded, without updates, no AV, maxed out firewall. Yes, its insecure. Yes, microsoft decided not to have a separate update channel for security. Et cetera.
It's a complete waste of time to roll back updates and drivers because Windows does something stupid by itself or makes very clickable popups to fool people.
It's 2021 and Linux supports 99.999999% of software on the planet. Use it.
I am not sure if you have used Linux on desktop in any real life situation.
For the record, I use Linux since 1994 when I did some dev for the kernel (not anything fancy, just some variations of code for a NIC). I use it since on all my servers.
I also try, about once a year , to use it on the desktop for a week. It is pure torture, a system that is not even half baked for interactive usage.
> I also try, about once a year , to use it on the desktop for a week. It is pure torture, a system that is not even half baked for interactive usage
You can't seriously claim that when there are lots ( millions? Tens of millions? Who knows) of people running various Linux distros as daily drivers. Hardware support can be spotty in some places depending on the specific hardware vendor ( but funnily enough old stuff works better under Linux than under Windows), and some things might not be as polished, but "pure torture" and "not even half baked" is a terrible exaggeration doing nobody any favours.
For the record, I've been running Ubuntu since 2017 on a Dell XPS 13 ( not developer edition). I have the occasional bug ( mostly with third-party stuff like Teams, or the VPN client breaking my DNS config (it also does than on macOS), but sometimes if i connect more than 4 Bluetooth devices reconnecting one of them takes ~10s instead of <3s), but overall it works, the tooling i can ise natively ( Dockers, etc.) is awesome and I'm happy with it. And anecdotally, I've had less issues than some colleagues with Windows (also Dells) or macOS.
I’m not sure which part of the parent you’re claiming can’t be serious. It matches my experience very closely. I do have a hard time believing there are millions of people using Linux as their primary desktop OS though. Dev machines sure, but actual non-developers?
Linux is great from a terminal. Using it as a daily OS with GUI is terrible. Every time I talk to someone who claims otherwise they end up dropping some sort of “sure, well _x_ took some work” or “well I don’t really care about _x_ anyway”.
Maybe not bamboo splinters under your nails torture, but extremely unpleasant.
I work and play on Linux. Sure, I screw around a lot on Arch and Clear, but my mainstay is Manjaro. Once a week something pops up but it's expected because I tinker a lot. Debian is totally fine for real-life situations.
Ooh, new idiom! The dot product of "roll my eyes" and "roll up my sleeves": to privately steel oneself to repetitive, ridiculous, and preventable work.
>This is not that different from them telling me, 40 years back, to not do this and that. And me still doing it
That's exactly it. The patterns and behaviours that they yelled at and fought with us about were harder to adopt than those which they demonstrated with quiet grace.
I do not know how your childhood was but mine was without yells, but with extremely patient parents with two energetic boys.
Said boys now try to be alike to their own children, and understand what parents went through. So they avoid being the assholes who will say "if you do not move to linux, fuck off" (this is how I read the article, at least, with my limited understanding of English)
But he DOES support them, but answer is usually "I will install linux".
Not everyone is Windows or MacOS expert.
I do programming for 30 years. Las time I used Windows was 15 years ago. I never used Mac (maybe like 3 hours total).
If you think supporting your child's crack addiction is in the same category as helping your child's PC problem, you need to take a step back and look at how you arrange your principles.
Not all "bad things" are equivalent, as I hope you are aware.
I agree with the sentiment that not all bad things are equally bad.
However these are all life decisions, whether to be a helpless tech illiterate end-user or at least know how to navigate around a computer. If you want to learn how to use a Linux distro, then I will help you learn a valuable skillset, but if you want me to enable you to become a helpless end-user who doesn't know how to troubleshoot basic problems then I refuse to do it in my free time.
At work I'd help anybody, but that's because I'm being paid to be helpful to my team and reach its maximum efficiency and work isn't the right place to stand by your ideals.
Normally I would say that the difference isn't that great, but Windows 11 does seem to be something that you want people to stay away from, and knowing how Windows 10 was promoted - people will eventually be forced to install it. Just like Apple users are forced to install things, only to have their machine stop working well.
> The only things really stopping average people from using Linux are ignorance of the issues and laziness.
Or, y'a know, they upgraded their system but the new version of the kernel isn't compatible with the bluetooth device unless they patch the bios, but the bios patching tool from the vendor somehow destroys the grub entries due to an unrelated bug, requiring them to boot in a recovery disk, mount the encrypted volume, map the lvm volumes, chroot and ...
I've used Linux exclusively on the desktop for almost 20 years. Has it gotten much better? Yes. Are there still deal intractable problems for normal users which aren't Linux's fault but nonetheless represent deal breakers? Also yes.
Eh, there's a sweet spot. I installed Ubuntu on my dad's computer 12 years ago, showed him how to upload his photos, and to use the browser and abiword, and left him to it. I apply updates remotely every 6 months or so, and do OS upgrades every few years between LTS versions. It's been rock solid.
Otoh my mom was on ubuntu for about 18 months and switched back to windows. She wanted to do more with it, e.g. install photoshop, scan documents (this was pre ubuntu coming out with simple scan or whatever, when xsane was still state of the art), yada yada.
For relatives who just need a stable set-it-and-forget-it computer, linux is fine. For wannabe "power users", they have to be interested in investing the time to get over the learning curve. That's a more evangelical sell. I'm kind of with the author, although am a little less strident about it - "ehh, I haven't used windows in 20 years or so, but let me google that for you and see if I find anything you can try" is my usual approach.
You know, while I do understand the reasons for the unstable kernel ABIs, that's actually what detracts me from personally recommending Linux unless if I know full well their needs. Even using printers is a pain (which I hope it will solve in the near future with standardised tools). Web browsing and web browsing only? Full speed! But beyond that, I'm not so sure that Linux will be ready.
Plus while GNU and Linux user-level ABIs are stable, and LSB means that portability is nearly seamless (except if the GNU or Linux part is swapped itself), other APIs do break, especially when it comes to desktop elements. Snaps and Flatpaks accentuate the problem to the point that even if the system and app uses the same desktop environment (GTK on GTK / KDE-QT on KDE-QT), it looks like out of place.
More importantly, Microsoft have focused on accessibility to the point that it can be navigated by keyboard, mouse or (recently) touch alone. GNOME settings (aka control center) don't navigate well on keyboard, not even allowing selecting search results (https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes...).
Ever since I learned that something like 98% of printers sold in the past 5 years or so support driverless printing with IPP, my printer woes have largely gone away. Its still more of a pain than would be ideal, but at least you dont have to track down some 32-bit only driver that was only ever released for Red Hat or something in order to print.
We teach people general math skills that 90% of them don't use after graduating high schools. Why not also teach these computer skills that aren't directly relevant to their careers but will be of use given that in modern societies people use computers?
> The only things really stopping average people from using Linux are ignorance of the issues and laziness.
Actually a big part of it is that its community is full of people like this.
...and a huge number of other reasons, but having a high probability of encountering a condescending asshole whenever you engage with the community certainly doesn't help.
“ I spend probably 2% or less of my computer time now in front of Windows computers. I use Zoom a little”
So, Windows user. I spend 0% of my time in front of Windows computers and still wouldn’t refuse to help a non-Linux user. Also zoom is available for Linux. Hypocrite.
So, as a Linux user these past 20 years or more, it's not that I'm unwilling to help my Windows-using family and friends, it's that I am no longer competent to do so.
The last time I tried (perhaps 8 or 10 years ago) the problem turned out to be that Windows insisted on controlling DNS settings that were never going to work. Somebody else had to find this out and fix it after I'd banged on it for an hour or more and failed to figure out what was going on in Windows' rats-nest of system config. It was then that I realised that I should never try to help Windows users ever again: the likelihood is I'd do more harm than good. There've been a couple of newer releases of Windows since those days, so the situation's only got worse.
I'm pretty useless at fixing Windows not because of any holy war or Linux evangelism but simply because I've not used it very regularly in donkey's years and don't have a clue. Last time I dealt with Windows at all was briefly two years ago as a database server for SQL Server, not very useful for the average user. I don't encounter it regularly enough to justify learning it to the point I could fix random user's problems.
I did teach my family about adblockers though, which goes some way to reducing one vector for malware.
That's totally fine in my opinion, Windows 11 actually overhauls most settings pane that it requires re-learning for advanced users (except for Group Policy and equivalent enterprise-level tools).
I have to admit, old Windows network configuration for example was a mess. But once you kinda figured it out you could handle it. I don't think new one is much better...
Still, I don't have much good to say about Linux either. I think on Ubuntu you can manage to get 3 different ways of network configuration all half-working and not working at same time not being visible to each other...
Yup, fought with NetworkManager (is it part of SystemD? Definitely Red Hat though) and resolvconf (not the resolv.conf file) on that one, and that's only on the terminal. Desktop networking, even on macOS, is a pain unless you somehow use terminal-based NetSh/BIND tools/SystemD/IPTools (or registry and the (GUI) management console/MSC on Windows).
Oh, sometimes I do recommend it very strongly. On one memorable occasion I installed Linux for a friend who couldn't afford a Windows-capable machine. Installed the browser she'd need, an email client (this was the days before gmail) and made sure her printer and internet were working. 24 months later she was still happily using Linux without much being aware of the fact or caring. Eventually she went back to Windows, but only because her daughter needed to use some specific, Windows-only app mandated by a college course.
tl;dr: Most people won't know the difference once the basics are working.
It does for the time being, but conflating "android" and AOSP just because of the linux kernel is a bit of a stretch, to me it feels like saying macos is "fine because Darwin is open source"
Numerous Android phones can run mainline Linux and many more can run a Android-based ROM. What's wrong with buying a phone with commercial Android then getting flashed with something different?
I told my family 20 years ago that I only would administrate Unix-like operating systems. Not because I am in a holy war or because I am an evangelist or I am an a missionary. I am just used to Linux configuration and I find Windows administration frustrating.
This year me mother told me that after 20 years she had to use Windows 10 (instead of her usual XFCE desktop) somewhere. It was horrible, she told me. She didn't got it to do what she wanted and it bothered her with annoying ads and other nonsense.
As you can imagine, this made me feel - somewhat smugly - vindicated.
You know… I stopped supporting Windows years ago. I switched to macOS in 2008, but it might as well have been Linux for all my family knew.
As the years when by, it became easier and easier to say I honestly didn’t have a clue how Windows worked anymore. It helps that my nearest relatives are 8 hours away by car.
Eventually they stopped calling for support. They weren’t interested in switching to something I could help with.
I could have been more pushy, but I have enough problems with the world that I don’t have the energy to go on a religious crusade to make people use an operating system that is unsupported by most consumer repair places.
I agree with most of this, but recommending using computer repair shops is a bit sketchy... The smaller ones would have staff that would need the money more than GeekSquad, too, so it's probably all on lock now.
Not at all surprised. Perhaps it’s better to say, a more widely supported operating system. My relatives have a better chance at finding someone in their church to help them if they use Windows.
I’m the only person in my rather wide friend group that has any Linux experience and most of that is with servers.
I decided to stop supporting non-Unix devices long ago. Microsoft ops/adminsys are gods, honestly. Cryptic messages, error logs that disappear, interfaces everywhere (i'm not against GUI but sometime its too much). I can't really configure networking since XP (or windows 7 i guess), it changed too much. Things that takes one hour to understand with most Unix can take a week for windows (versioning multiple php and multiple php-crypt, what a pleasure...).
Anyway, Mac are sufficently unixy that i don't have that much issues. I recommand chromebooks for non tech-savy people now and i did install linux mint on my grandmother PC shortly before she passed away (no relation hopefully), it was great and i had a remote access without installing a scam enabler. If you don't mind explaining things to your grandmother, this is a great idea. I did shortcut her three apps (and did aliases in the terminal to show her how i work usually, i don't think she ever used ctrl-alt-T after that day but still, great times). 100% would do again.
Windows admin is part of my dayjob and honestly Linux is just as bad, often in the same ways (cryptic errors, logs in random places or none at all, infinity different config file formats...), but also in completely different ways.
> Most people are too hard-headed to listen to common sense or do what is in their own best interests. I am simply doing my small part to encourage average people to see the light, even if just my friends and family.
This could just as well be used as an argument why the homeless/drug addicts/etc shouldn't get help. "If we don't help them, we're encouraging them to see the light and take care of themselves". No, probably not, we're just being assholes.
It's fine to tell people (even people you know and love) that you won't play support for their computer troubles because you're busy or hate using Windows, but framing it as "I'm actually helping you by not helping you" is weird.
Years ago I decided to stop supporting my family's non-Apple devices. They now all have Macs and iPhones and I don't have to support anything - it just works (they've somehow avoided all the hardware issues a lot of people have been having, but I can't support hardware anyway, so it's still a win for me).
Most of their issues nowadays are with their routers but they know how to solve those problems: a reboot or reset. I have to help my mom with a reset. That's about all the family tech support I have to do these days.
HN can complain about Apple all they want but for non-computer savvy consumers it's a very good experience.
My mother-in-law has a computer which she uses to play card games and surf the web. Some family members kept installing trash on it, sometimes with malware. I proposed we switch to Linux so that they wouldn't manage to install anything on it.
We tried Ubuntu and it has been a tremendous success. I even found my sister-in-law happily using LibreOffice on it one day.
People's reservations towards Linux are completely unfounded (nowadays).
Did they get sudo rights? I doubt that if Linux Desktop really comes if there won't be same or bigger amount of crap on it. Or bad instructions just bricking it... After social part the attacks are pretty trivial. Copy this nice command line thing that downloads all the crap from Internet...
What do those other family members play their trash on? Did they buy a second computer? Or move on to another family member's computer? Not sure I'm ready to call it an unqualified success.
I have 23 years of Linux experience (desktop, server, embedded platforms, web app stacks). I also work in the real world where idealistic jerks like this are quickly out of a job.
A question to those dismissing the author: would you help a family member sign up to some random app that tracked their keystrokes, sent them highly targeted ads, sold their personal data to 3rd parties, interrupted their work by forcing them to reboot their devices and constantly violated their privacy?
No? Then why is it okay to encourage it when it's Microsoft? This is how deeply ingrained brand loyalty is, to the point that like Stockholm's syndrome people will think up any excuse to enable their oppressor.
How is it in your benefit in any way to keep cheerleading the corporate behemoth, rather than plucky newcomer who only has your freedom and best interests in mind?
I just say (honestly) that I'm not very familiar with windows anymore.
I've slowly started saying the same thing with MacOS as it's getting longer and longer since I used it, but I'm still relatively competent from helping colleagues out.
I did install Linux on my partners machine ever since a forced windows update (I think it was to windows 10?) bricked her previous laptop.
For me, part of it is I'm generally unhappy having to fix windows machines. They make me somewhat frustrated and I find it relatively simple to diagnose and fix any Linux problems, even on "foreign" distros.
Clicked Home on his website and it took me to a page does not exist error. He should spend less time moaning about his family's choice of OS and more time fixing his website.
I am fairly cheerful in helping family, and a few of my best friends, with computer problems, regardless of what they have.
I appreciate the author’s privacy preserving preferences, but I almost always recommend to non-tech family and friends that they consider getting a Chromebook or iPad as their only non-phone device. I don’t think that most people need a general purpose device so why not just make everyone’s lives easier.
The Chromebook recommendation may seem crazy from a privacy viewpoint, but if you show people how to configure their Google account to only store YouTube history for 30 days while setting all other data retention to zero days, use Duck Duck Go, turn off location, and use the web version of Proton Mail and Calendar then people have a system that is cheap, useable, and is not so bad from a privacy perspective. I have many different computer systems (4 laptops running Linux, 3 MacBooks, iPad), but use a small Lenovo Duet Chromebook with my recommended setup for much of my casual web browsing, reading eBooks, and using streaming media. I accept any criticism for using Google services, but they do have useful services (I love GCP, and use Hetzner, AWS, and Azure as second choices) and with some care I feel like I can use Google in a reasonably privacy respecting way.
Been there, done that. It's a great way to drive your high-flying Linux ideals head-first into the brick wall of average user reality. I highly recommend it. For best results, try this:
1) Get your grandmother/grandfather onto Linux. Set up their facebook and show them how to upload photos they scanned in at Walmart. (This is level 1. If you run into problems here, you're not ready for harder levels).
2) Get your parents to use it. Show them how to install programs from the app store, like Chrome, and get them set up with turbotax, youtube, banking, etc. They'll probably want mahjong or something, so show them how to install that.
3) (Final boss) Get your semi-computer-literate cousins to use Linux. They've been using Windows since childhood. They know how to install games via Steam. Show them how to use WINE/Proton, how to use LibreOffice to write book reports, how to use GIMP to tough up their photos. Show them how to upgrade Java and Minecraft.
This, but I'd argue it's not limited to Ubuntu, or even to Linux.
For the desktop environment, I've been using Cinnamon with my family, since it's ostensibly most similar in the UI metaphor to Windows. That's luckily been a nonissue.
The problem has been Web browsers - looking specifically at Firefox. My mom and my grandmother had pretty big upsets when Firefox released Australis, and Photon knocked my grandmother off the Internet completely (she suffers from dementia and isn't able to comprehend changes in her environment anymore).
It doesn't have to be that way. My dad is still using SeaMonkey, and has almost completely avoided this problem - the UI has been largely consistent since the Netscape 4 days.
I maintain about 5 Mint machines for my family members (all older than 50 though) and it's completely painless for me. I don't remember the last time I had to do phone support.
Linux, and all free software, is at its heart a gift economy. It's all about making amazing things, solving problems, and working together as a community to make everything better together so everyone can have better choices.
So my feeling is that if you're claiming to represent and evangelise that community, using obstinate tribalism to justify commoditising your familial love isn't the way to win hearts and minds. Seems, to me, like a way to perpetrate some pretty terrible stereotypes.
Computers aren't inherently useful, or good. They are just boxes with a number inside. If we use them to make people we love happy, only then are they useful and good.
For about 20 years I've been "the IT guy" for my friends and family. I also stopped using Windows during the Windows 7 era, and I've never used Windows 8+ on my own hardware.
Reliance happens because you demonstrate both the willingness and knowledge to fix something. I'm still willing, but I'm utterly lost in front of a Windows 10 PC. That is what now makes people less likely to reach out to me for help.
> Perhaps my fellow nerds and geeks will call me naive.
I don’t think it’s naive, but the way it’s being presented as, “I’m doing this for your own good” is obstinate and frustrating in a way I wouldn’t want to be towards my friends and family.
Newbie question: In the corporate world, where for instance people need to run QuickBooks, what would be the solution? Is there a way to wrap QuickBook in a container/emulator?
You can run anything in a VM. With something like QuickBooks it's not like performance will be a problem either. The great thing about a VM is that someone else can set it up for you and then you can reset to a good configuration easily if they break it. (Why aren't non-VM systems like that with checkpointing?)
GNUCash is a great alternative to QuickBooks. However, you do say "in the corporate world", which in my experience wouldn't be using QuickBooks. Be that as it may, GNUCash is every bit as capable as QuickBooks, I'd highly recommend it.
This is very different from my experience supporting family members' Linux machines. Linux simply doesn't break and get constantly polluted/corrupted like Windows did very regularly. One of my parents is thousands of miles away. It must "just work", and it has for years with some careful initial setup. It's also great that I can't remember the last time they had to buy a computer.
> I have Decided to Stop Supporting My Family's Non-Linux Devices
Oh dear, however will they recover from this?
> I have no illusions that by writing this article I will be firing the first shot in the war of the nerds against big tech.
Really? Ego much? Plenty of shots have been fired for decades.
> I spend probably 2% or less of my computer time now in front of Windows computers. I use Zoom a little and rarely play two Windows PC games.
Good for you, but don't hold others to that. If they use Windows 100% of the time then that's their choice.
If you can't sell Linux on its benefits then I really doubt refusing to help your loved ones with Windows issues is going to change their minds. They'll just find help elsewhere and likely despise Linux users like you more.
> But, my feeling is that many Linux distributions are now only slightly harder to use than MacOS or Windows. The only things really stopping average people from using Linux are ignorance of the issues and laziness. They simply are not willing to spend the time to understand their need for privacy and good software. Nor are they willing to spend a few hours learning the basics of Linux.
They will just Google it themselves on their Windows or MacOS machine, rather than installing whatever 'Linux' distro you want them to.
Why waste time installing a 'Linux' distro when WSL exists and they can continue to use Windows but have a Linux ecosystem sitting in a VM.
> If we wait much longer, we may lose Linux as a viable option.
Exactly. it's called Fuchsia and it is going to replace Android and ChromeOS. Better hurry up then.
> But, I can no longer help my friends and family members to get into bed with the big-tech python that is slowly unhinging its jaw in preparation for devouring them. If they choose to lie down, I can do nothing about it, but I can refuse to continue helping them into bed!
Googling will help them instead and you don't need to 'install Linux' for that. So what is your point?
> So, when my mother, sister, brother, or anyone else comes to me begging to have his or her computer fixed
Sorry to be blunt, but you sound like an terrible person with an over-dimensioned ego.
If you do not want to support your family, fine - no need to announce it to the world. You are free to do that of course, but you have to bear the consequences of people saying "what a [put your favourite expletive here]" instead of "what a wise person to battle against mighty [put your least-favourite tech here]".
I support my parents with their tech even if it is often full of things I would not have used. I roll my eyes up and fix it. And ask them not to do this anymore, and they still sometimes do.
This is not that different from them telling me, 40 years back, to not do this and that. And me still doing it. Boy, I am really, really glad they did not decide to stop supporting me until I grow up :)
Honestly, read what you wrote again and take a step back to say "ok, this sounds really bad".
PS. when you gain back a lot of time for not supporting these technical noobs, make sure to fix your site that has plenty of problems - it does not look good for an "Itinerant Engineer" who built the impressive number of 11 web sites.