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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Regardless of the reason, the end result is still the same, which is that new users are left with the idea that terminal is essential for using Linux.

    You can say that you set up a distro without using terminal all you want, but as long as new users don’t know how to do that, my point still stands. Frankly, the fact that you even thought to bring up that point feels like, to me, extra proof that experienced users are highly dismissive of the new user experience.



  • As a recent Linux user, I can say that he’s got a point, but he’s making the wrong point. What I’ve learned is that technically, you don’t have to use terminal. But as a new user, you’re never made aware that there are non-terminals options. Every time you try installing a program or really doing anything, the first response on any article or forum is generally going to be to open up terminal and start typing. Linux is in a weird spot because the are so many desktop environments that the only way to make a tutorial that works on all distributions is to tell the user to use terminal. Yet by doing so, you are pushing away new users who will begin to think that Linux is too technical for normal use.

    I see many experienced users dismiss new users’ concerns because “you don’t actually need terminal,” but I don’t think these people really understand that while that’s technically true, the new user experience has been constant tutorials and articles that basically state the exact opposite. I’m not sure what a good solution would be, but I do think that experienced users need to acknowledge that just because new users identify an incorrect problem, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem at all




  • Contramuffin@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlThoughts on parental controls?
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    6 days ago

    My upbringing was extremely “do what you want, but deal with the consequences.”

    “You can watch an R-rated horror movie, but don’t come to me if you can’t sleep at night”-type of situation.

    My impression has generally been that my freedom to do what I want let me learn a lot about decision making, responsibility, curiosity, and modern survival skills like Googling things. I’m genuinely baffled by how poorly some people my age use the computer and find things on Google, and I somewhat suspect many of them probably simply haven’t had the opportunity to explore technology on their own. And a lot of my hobbies were developed exactly because I allowed to do what I wanted when I was a child.

    As for children doing stupid shit and searching up things that aren’t appropriate for their age, my thought has generally been, why is it the parent’s role to keep that from the child? I strongly believe that a parent’s role is to prepare the child to be a functional adult, not to baby them.

    I acknowledge that all children are different, and perhaps there are some cases in which having parental controls would help. But I think my life would be duller if I were raised with parental controls.

    Edit: having read some of the other comments, I think there’s 2 aspects to the question of parental control. The first is the aspect of children learning about age-inappropriate things, which I’ve mainly been focusing on. The other is the aspect of discipline and management (ie, preventing your children from spending 12 hours on YouTube). I think people have made interesting points about this aspect, and I respect their opinions. I personally agree with BananaKing’s take that parental controls is the wrong tool for the job. Train your children properly and you shouldn’t need to use parental controls to control their screen time.







  • If there was something I give up on, it’s gun control. For several reasons:

    1. There’s basically no gun control anyways so it’s not like we’re giving up something.
    2. Compared to abortion rights (ie bodily autonomy) and climate change (ie existential crisis), not having gun control is the least bad. It’s still pretty crucial, to be fair, but comparing to actual existential crises like the other 2, not having gun control doesn’t seem that bad in comparison







  • Honestly, steam deck lol

    It’s an odd form factor that people don’t really have much experience with, hence they don’t really know how useful it’ll be to them. To be fair to myself, I had been holding back on purchasing one until maybe a year after the initial launch, so I think I would personally describe my experience as a leap of faith.

    In any case, it turns out to be a great little thing. There’s a lot of games in my backlog that don’t feel “desktop-y,” and therefore I’ve never played them, if that makes sense. But with a handheld form factor, now I have more motivation to go through those games. Emulation on the steam deck has also been great, for a similar reason. And sometimes I just want to be in bed than on my desktop. Or sometimes I’m just on the bus or waiting for something.

    I think SteamOS also taught me how usable Linux was, and that’s been pretty instrumental in getting me to minimize my Windows dependence