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Not everyone is here to become a Computer Scientist or even a computer professional unfortunately, they want to study their favorite subject, do screen recordin

Not everyone is here to become a Computer Scientist or even a computer professional unfortunately, they want to study their favorite subject, do screen recordings, make nice presentations etc. Our company uses RHEL / CentOS distributions of Linux. And they still suffer from all these weird problems I don't find 'fun' to fix because I have actual work to do, but I have to anyway.

einr 4y ago
Sure. But the article here is specifically about someone who wants their child to learn about computers by tinkering and trial and error.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  Uh, the article isn't about that at all. It's about how cluttered, user-hostile, and specifically kid-unfriendly Windows has become in the latest iteration. Linux isn't the answer because it replaces those "features" with different kinds of user-hostility (everything is geared towards people who are on the road to becoming software developers, or are close friends with someone who is).
  - einr 4y ago
    "Uh," maybe we can both be right. Allow me to quote directly: "I want him to be able to dig deeper. To explore. To try things out, misconfigure, crash, fix, and re-install. To get a feeling for how things work below the surface and how they do not work. To learn how to type fast and efficiently. To create things. Maybe, one day, even to learn how to code if he's interested."
    - gjvc 4y ago
      Only when things are broken and in need of fixing, is one forced one to understand how they work behind the scenes. Necessity becomes the mother of understanding for a while... :-)
  - neogodless 4y ago
    No, there are quite a few distributions geared towards working out of the box, and being easy for new users.
Delk 4y ago
RHEL/CentOS is probably more likely to run into those kinds of problems on the desktop than some other, less conservative and less enterprisey distros. RHEL (and its kin) is a stable server OS. Some organizations that have Linux-based desktops or laptops then also use it on those, perhaps for the sake of homogenisation. But the longer release cycle and conservative update policies that in part make it a stable and predictable server OS also mean that hardware support may lag by years. This is always a topic on which people will have different experiences. Some people will have everything just working. That's perhaps most likely when the hardware has been chosen with compatibility in mind in the first place. In that case it can be pretty smooth sailing with little tweaking required and with things just working, especially compared to how it used to be, which is probably one reason why people react to claims of endless tweaking being required. Other people will have hit a rough spot, and those certainly still exist particularly with non-specifically picked hardware, especially if that hardware is newer than the distro release. CentOS is probably not representative of most people's experiences of running Linux on a desktop or laptop, though.
jchw 4y ago
Not everyone was out to become a computer scientist when microcomputers booted to BASIC, but I don't find many people regretting their time growing up with those computers. I will give you that Linux is needlessly complex due to undesirable issues, but that's the price of admission for a highly hackable system, since there are no serious alternatives. As for kids, I wouldn't underestimate them. If what you want to give someone is a rich and deep experience with computers, it's about all you have right now. On the other hand, and I'm sure this part of my comment will go over swimmingly here, but I imagine... if you start kids out with iPads, what they learn is not that doing interesting things with their computers is challenging, but that it costs a monthly fee.
- corgihamlet 4y ago
  I have read several stories that Gen-Z students often have serious issues understanding the concepts of files and directories. Their main way of interacting with such things is through "sharing" and links to Google Docs and whatever.
- vladfr 4y ago
  Interesting takes on Linux and ipads. My 2-year old is interested in typing with colours. I found that the iPad is better in many ways: its size is perfect, the 1st gen keyboard is light and thin, and the touchscreen is a boon. But I'm not going to let her have one when she's older. I now realise that I would love a Linux tablet. Not a small laptop, but a touch tablet, thin, with a light keyboard too. Is there such a thing out there? Or should I start building one now?
jai_ 4y ago
It feels like of bleak to discourage childish computer tinkering on a website named "Hacker News". Not entirely sure what this says about the direction of this website.
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  I'm totally for computer tinkering, but at the age of learning something like 'MIT Scratch' or even C/C++/Python, if they have to deal with all these problems, a lot of potential computer scientists might actually get discouraged and end up giving it all up thinking 'Computers' are very difficult.
  - thealienthing 4y ago
    This is a valid concern, but one thing I find is that using the more modern walled garden OSS like Mac and windows can be prohibitively abstract and difficult for getting into programming. On Mac, you need Xcode installed before you can even run GCC. And I believe you have to jump through similar hoops for windows. They try to rail you into using a complicated IDE like Xcode of Visual Studio when all you need is a text editor and GCC on Linux. It’s got a learning curve as a daily OS, but give a kid a raspberry pi and everything they need to write and run some python or C++ is pretty much there. You can sit down with them for the setup but they won’t need you after it’s set up and they will have a lot to look at before it comes time to get into the weeds with IDEs, make files, system dependencies etc. no solution is perfect (Linux included) but I find the ready to rock state of a fresh Linux distro to be pretty helpful to getting a developer going.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Honestly the direction of this website in recent years seems to be highly paid wage slaves bitching about not being highly paid enough. It has merely followed the direction of the industry. 15+ years ago the industry was smaller, pay was lower and you still had to be kind of a nerd or an iconoclast or something to get into it. Now it's filled with people who have no love for the tech and frequently even no knowledge of it, just showing up for the buck. So many people on HN now seem like people who would never start a business.

einr 4y ago

Sure. But the article here is specifically about someone who wants their child to learn about computers by tinkering and trial and error.

phendrenad2 4y ago
Uh, the article isn't about that at all. It's about how cluttered, user-hostile, and specifically kid-unfriendly Windows has become in the latest iteration. Linux isn't the answer because it replaces those "features" with different kinds of user-hostility (everything is geared towards people who are on the road to becoming software developers, or are close friends with someone who is).
- einr 4y ago
  "Uh," maybe we can both be right. Allow me to quote directly: "I want him to be able to dig deeper. To explore. To try things out, misconfigure, crash, fix, and re-install. To get a feeling for how things work below the surface and how they do not work. To learn how to type fast and efficiently. To create things. Maybe, one day, even to learn how to code if he's interested."
  - gjvc 4y ago
    Only when things are broken and in need of fixing, is one forced one to understand how they work behind the scenes. Necessity becomes the mother of understanding for a while... :-)
- neogodless 4y ago
  No, there are quite a few distributions geared towards working out of the box, and being easy for new users.

Delk 4y ago

RHEL/CentOS is probably more likely to run into those kinds of problems on the desktop than some other, less conservative and less enterprisey distros. RHEL (and its kin) is a stable server OS. Some organizations that have Linux-based desktops or laptops then also use it on those, perhaps for the sake of homogenisation. But the longer release cycle and conservative update policies that in part make it a stable and predictable server OS also mean that hardware support may lag by years. This is always a topic on which people will have different experiences. Some people will have everything just working. That's perhaps most likely when the hardware has been chosen with compatibility in mind in the first place. In that case it can be pretty smooth sailing with little tweaking required and with things just working, especially compared to how it used to be, which is probably one reason why people react to claims of endless tweaking being required. Other people will have hit a rough spot, and those certainly still exist particularly with non-specifically picked hardware, especially if that hardware is newer than the distro release. CentOS is probably not representative of most people's experiences of running Linux on a desktop or laptop, though.

jchw 4y ago

Not everyone was out to become a computer scientist when microcomputers booted to BASIC, but I don't find many people regretting their time growing up with those computers. I will give you that Linux is needlessly complex due to undesirable issues, but that's the price of admission for a highly hackable system, since there are no serious alternatives. As for kids, I wouldn't underestimate them. If what you want to give someone is a rich and deep experience with computers, it's about all you have right now. On the other hand, and I'm sure this part of my comment will go over swimmingly here, but I imagine... if you start kids out with iPads, what they learn is not that doing interesting things with their computers is challenging, but that it costs a monthly fee.

corgihamlet 4y ago
I have read several stories that Gen-Z students often have serious issues understanding the concepts of files and directories. Their main way of interacting with such things is through "sharing" and links to Google Docs and whatever.
vladfr 4y ago
Interesting takes on Linux and ipads. My 2-year old is interested in typing with colours. I found that the iPad is better in many ways: its size is perfect, the 1st gen keyboard is light and thin, and the touchscreen is a boon. But I'm not going to let her have one when she's older. I now realise that I would love a Linux tablet. Not a small laptop, but a touch tablet, thin, with a light keyboard too. Is there such a thing out there? Or should I start building one now?

jai_ 4y ago

It feels like of bleak to discourage childish computer tinkering on a website named "Hacker News". Not entirely sure what this says about the direction of this website.

piyush_soni 4y ago
I'm totally for computer tinkering, but at the age of learning something like 'MIT Scratch' or even C/C++/Python, if they have to deal with all these problems, a lot of potential computer scientists might actually get discouraged and end up giving it all up thinking 'Computers' are very difficult.
- thealienthing 4y ago
  This is a valid concern, but one thing I find is that using the more modern walled garden OSS like Mac and windows can be prohibitively abstract and difficult for getting into programming. On Mac, you need Xcode installed before you can even run GCC. And I believe you have to jump through similar hoops for windows. They try to rail you into using a complicated IDE like Xcode of Visual Studio when all you need is a text editor and GCC on Linux. It’s got a learning curve as a daily OS, but give a kid a raspberry pi and everything they need to write and run some python or C++ is pretty much there. You can sit down with them for the setup but they won’t need you after it’s set up and they will have a lot to look at before it comes time to get into the weeds with IDEs, make files, system dependencies etc. no solution is perfect (Linux included) but I find the ready to rock state of a fresh Linux distro to be pretty helpful to getting a developer going.
safety1st 4y ago
Honestly the direction of this website in recent years seems to be highly paid wage slaves bitching about not being highly paid enough. It has merely followed the direction of the industry. 15+ years ago the industry was smaller, pay was lower and you still had to be kind of a nerd or an iconoclast or something to get into it. Now it's filled with people who have no love for the tech and frequently even no knowledge of it, just showing up for the buck. So many people on HN now seem like people who would never start a business.