JPSep 19, 2025
Linux has plenty of its own problems and I am not the type to push it on even adventurous nontechnical people. But I feel confident in saying that a Linux system will never get this deeply toxically screwed up. To screw up this badly two trillion dollar corporations made a pact, and thousands of resultant engineering and UX decisions, in the belief their users are cattle who do not deserve even the most basic respect. Absolutely cooked company.
https://www.osnews.com/story/143376/dark-patterns-killed-my-wifes-windows-11-installation/
Dark patterns killed my wife’s Windows 11 installation – OSnews

Show threadchristian mockSep 19, 2025

@jplebreton deep inside that story, there's probably also some code that writes to disk and doesn't check the return code, thereby corrupting some important file. That's a very sad thing give we're a quarter thru the 21st century, but it is common...

(And am I a bad son for giving my mom her first computer for her 70th birthday with Linux on it? 😃 )

Show threadJP
@cm I've heard of many cases like that, younger technical folks giving their nontechnical parents a nice simple Linux system! I would absolutely do it if I understood their needs well enough to be sure they'd be covered by a good Linux setup.
Sep 19, 2025 at 3:58pmWeb
Show threadchristian mockSep 19, 2025
@jplebreton (That was basically a joke referring to your "not push linux on people", but anyways) Yes, she was a complete novice and said "mail, and web, and text processing", and she's happy with it and much less support effort than my dad, who at the time was still using windows, but followed her example and switched to Linux when WinXP was EOLd... but he still has a Windows VM under virtualbox there.