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> she did not have much interest in the power/freedom The reason I started with Linux with my kids is so they were aware that that power and freedom exists. Ki

> she did not have much interest in the power/freedom The reason I started with Linux with my kids is so they were aware that that power and freedom exists. Kids that grow up in a mobile ecosystem (and increasingly both the Microsoft and Apple ecosystems) are fundamentally disempowered, just as the adults that use that ecosystem are. The goal of having my kids use Linux was to make them understand that they did have agency. Fifteen years on, I have to say it was an excellent decision. They're light years ahead of their peers in terms of their ability to use computers.

eptcyka 1y ago
When forced to use Linux at an early age, I was given the agency to be made fun of and miss out on social things, i.e. discussing currently relevant games. It got me the jobs and knowledge eventually too, but I really did not learn much from blindly running ./configure and make and make install. I shudder to think exactly how my wine installation worked. There are significant downsides to using Linux and the freedom it brings needs lots of context to appreciate. If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  > discussing currently relevant games We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran. If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals. In many ways, this isn't about Linux at all. It's about parenting.
  - eptcyka 1y ago
    At the time it was a GTA title. Regardless, the Linux alternatives are useless, there is no alternative to the socially agreed upon phenomena, the child can either participate pr they cannot. The exclusion is not necessarily a bad thing, but you end up having the child swim upstream a bit.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      that's fair. unfortunately windows has changed so much since that time that the downsides of allowing kids to use it are much worse now than they were even 10 years ago.
    - coffeebeqn 1y ago
      That’s not really the case in 2025. Proton is very good
    - testdelacc1 1y ago
      All games run on Linux in 2025 except multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat.
      - eptcyka 1y ago
        Does Fortnite? I remember finishing hl2 on dx level 7, and then trying the same with ep1 and ep2. Those games are a lot harder when half the physics objects are not rendered. Do not get me wrong - I run Linux on all of my personal machines today, I play games on them, I know what's the state of gaming on Linux. I also know that every now and then I will get to at the very least read some logs to figure out what's going wrong, e.g. the native port of Civ VI was looking for a version of openssl whose time had passed. Further, relying on Wine/Proton inherently means you will always lag behind the bleeding edge in terms of DX APIs, as wine/mesa people need to catch up to implement them. Even worse if it is not related to graphics,e.g. as the spatial audio APIs don't have an open source analogue that is ferociously trying to keep up with feature parity. And of course we also have kernel level anti-cheat. I have immense respect for everyone who is involved in making games (and windows software in general) work on Linux. But there will always be stumbling blocks when you are playing 2nd fiddle, and you've not been given the sheets. And nobody told you where the gig is happening.
        NekkoDroid 1y ago
        > Does Fortnite? That falls under the "multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat"
  - scott_w 1y ago
    > If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals. I don’t know about that. Just to be upfront: I’m not advocating putting your kids through this because I think they have to have that motivation for themselves to really benefit. However, I basically did blindly follow guides to try and get things working without fully understanding what I was doing. Over time, things stick and I’m able to look under the surface and get a better understanding and better solve the problem I’m facing. Hell, any “Learn X Language” book works like this! There’s always boilerplate that you need to kinda skip over for a while just so you can get a running program. Hell, I’m leaning Rust and I’m using #[] “decorators” and I couldn’t tell you exactly what they’re doing!
  - himeexcelanta 1y ago
    I’m sure you also give out raisins and sugar free mints at Halloween too.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      We don't get many kids coming to the house on Halloween. Only two this year. We buy this big bag of candy at Costco, and we always end up with a lot of extra, and my kids end up sitting and eating it. Not great.
  - haunter 1y ago
    >We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran. My parents didn't let me read Song of Ice and Fire Harry Potter (and do a lot of other contemporary culture things) when I was younger because they said they are pop culture fad. Only haute culture literature in this household! I've had a good childhood but I also missed out on a lot of good things because parenting decisions like this. And Fortnite is actually an awesome game, it's the mugen we were all dreaming for.
  - testdelacc1 1y ago
    The point isn’t to play the best “non-faddish” games. It’s to play what’s in the zeitgeist and form bonds with people their own age. I’m so glad my parents didn’t override my decisions on literature or video games or TV shows. I watched anime then, my parents didn’t get it, and that’s perfectly fine. I continue to enjoy it now. If they had made me adopt their mindset of “anime = fad” or “anime = cartoon = childish” I’d have been worse off. Instead of enjoying masterpieces like Frieren I’d be snobbishly thinking about what a fad it is.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      We avoid fads because they come and go too quickly. My kids connect with their friends on games that are more enduring, like the From Software titles.
      - bossyTeacher 1y ago
        I feel so sorry for your kids. They deserve a better parent. Remember: your kids are NOT you and they DESERVE to have agency in their lives EVEN if it goes against your interests and desires.
        graemep 1y ago
        That is such a sweeping statement. Part of what a parent does is guides kids to good decisions, and protect them from the consequences of bad ones. They need agency, and more as they get older, but you do not let them just do what you want.
        rpdillon 1y ago
        My job is to guide them and use my judgment where their judgment is poor. That is intrinsic in the nature of parenting. Thank you for the guidance though. I understand that you feel strongly and that you hope my kids can be happy even though they're stuck with me as a parent. I do too!
      - anvuong 1y ago
        Enduring based on what metrics? Fornite is now an 8-year old massively (and still is) successful game. And the Battlefield series is actually 7 years older than the Souls series if you count from Demon's Souls. Comparing these 3 games is even more absurd because they are from entirely different genres, and they are not mutually exclusive, one can enjoy more than one genre. I agree with other commenters in here, I feel sorry for your kids and thankful that my parents didn't treat me like what you are doing with your kids now.
  - hamdingers 1y ago
    > We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. This is almost word for word the same way my parents talked about Harry Potter and Pokemon when I was feeling alienated in school for only being allowed to read religious books for entertainment. It leads to some pretty strong resentment, if that's the kind of thing you care about.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      My boys are sitting and reading through this with me as I make comments. They are very surprised by the resentment expressed by many of the comments. My eldest read your comment and said that Battlefield and Fortnite are trash because of the multiplayer component that leads to gameplay that's low quality. He doesn't feel this way about Elden Ring, for example. In short, we exercise judgment.
      - hamdingers 1y ago
        What does that even mean? How can we trust your kid's judgement of games they're not allowed to play? When I was a kid I parroted my parents opinions about Harry Potter books being a pathway to practicing witchcraft. Now in hindsight I recognize those weren't so much my opinions as they were a performance to get my parents approval. To be clear I'm not psychoanalyzing your kids (not liking multiplayer is rational), I'm sharing my own related experience.
        j45 1y ago
        The witchcraft angle as expressed included a personal interpretation that included being righteous towards and at the expense of others externally, to validate one's self internally. It's not the child's fault what they recieve without question and have to do the work to undo. In the case of judgement, we can pick something simple like TV shows. A parent can speak to their kids about the addictive quality of some shows that leave them upset when turned off, vs 15 minutes of something that didn't and have them start to be aware of the difference, and how they seem to get bored of both and want to go back to the real world. Doing that long before it's needed, allows the development of awareness, which as long as it's modeled by the parents, leaves the home as the important teacher of navigating the world, not the households of friends and teachers alone.
  - tietjens 1y ago
    This comment is epically pretentious, but I agree that kids shouldn’t be playing online games designed as skinner boxes to increase playtime and financial spend. Makes kids miss out because everyone is playing them? Eh, too bad. They gotta wait for their late teens, imho.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      I don't see the pretension. We're simply making decisions about how to spend our time. Many times that doesn't align with what the majority of people like to spend their time doing. That's fine.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    Just curious how did you persuade them? From what I see kids usually want to play whatever other kids play, like TikTok or Roblox or Fortnite.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    > If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point I digress. Everyone has to start somewhere and not everything has to have a point in the start When I started using linux, I got so fascinated by open source software that I would just search for software/software types and searched open source alternative to X and go to alternativeto or others and try it out etc. I used to copy paste dnf commands in the start and I still remember that phase. I think I learnt linux from myself and have given challenges along the way and I feel like there are things that I have still done blindly along the way (building linux isos) But the fact was that I still felt proud that I was atleast able to replicate the commands and able to have some familiarity with the process. I feel like if I wanted to able to know more about xorriso and cpio to a deeper degree to understand what wizard magic commands I was running to building custom linux iso s etc. Now I don't know about fortnite etc., I am a kid but surprisingly games don't interest me that much, I am way more in my movies / tv shows (just ended dexter s8) right now. There is some alienated feelings when people online my age mention the games they play but I think that games on linux are genuinely great support from what I know and my pc doesn't have anything beyond integrated gpu so yeah my cousins didn't want me to play much games and so they didn't buy a good gpu during the pc and I think they did succeed in this. Its complicated to how I feel the situation or even let alone think how I would even try to approach this situation if or when I become a parent myself. Honestly, parenting can be a bit hard but I still don't know if you should shun something that you think is faddish or low quality partially because I think that the best thing you could do (imo) is educate them on the positives on linux and how they might outweigh the benefits of fortnite in the short to long term in a fun manner. Its um complicated and there is definitely a feeling inside me on that i do some incredibly niche things which would be so complicated to explain to someone my age in my proximity. I think there is only one or two of my friends who actually know even 1% of the stuff that I do in linux (one of them had installed hyprland because of me haha)
- miningape 1y ago
  > If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less Couldn't agree more - Linux can be a great way to get into computing. But only if done in the right way. Arguably for an older kid / teenager (boys usually) it's important to have access to the same games your friends are playing, otherwise you start to become naturally excluded from lunch table talk. Of course it still depends if the kid is a social butterfly etc., but parents should understand this.
  - doubled112 1y ago
    Agreed. My kids (8 and 11) both have Linux on desktops in the living room. They work really well for what they want now, but someday we might have to make different choices.
- em-bee 1y ago
  the same happens with children not getting mobile phones, or not wearing the same brand expensive clothes that others can afford. sorry, but what you experienced is comparable to peer pressure, and as a parent, giving in to that is the wrong approach. you will not agree because you suffered as a result and i am sorry you had to go through that. my oldest is just getting into the age where these things start to matter, but regardless, my kids won't get phones and or anything besides linux for their own sake. fortunately times are changing and working in our favor. windows 11 is practically unusable already, inpart because it refuses to run on anything but the most recent computers, and in part because it requires an online account, not to mention all the advertising that i refuse to subject my kids to. windows games run on linux better than ever thanks to steam, and my kids school uses linux too for the most part. so admittedly, this will be easier for my kids than it was for you.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    That's a good point. My oldest has root on his own System76 laptop, and he's quite accomplished at administering it. But he is able to play and beat Elden Ring in Dark Souls, which would not have been an option five years ago in terms of compatibility.
    - coffeebeqn 1y ago
      Just in the last 5ish years Linux has turned into one of the best gaming platforms. I’m able to run pretty much anything on my laptop and steam deck both running Linux
- 1718627440 1y ago
  > Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less. As a child, I couldn't stand Windows. Nothing works, you just want to do that, but there is always some stupid error message, that tells you nothing. And it never does what you tell it to do, it always does some random mess, that you do not yet know what it even is, or how to fix it. As a child you need to see causality and have a predictive system, so that you can form a mental model and understand things, or even have the ability to form a question to ask the adults. You do not need a system, that is it's own child and is always mulish yet things it is the smartest thing in the world.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  As someone actually a teen. It is very interesting to share how I started my linux journey I had only got a computer in 6th grade but I was always fascinated by computers in the sense that I was trying to run blindly termux scripts from youtube etc. to run windows programs or linux etc. and I had even successfully done these things earlier But after 6th grade getting a pc, I was trying to learn some python in covid and uh, lets just say that vscode wasn't happy with a 500 mb ram win 7 pc I even installed droidcam/womic etc. and it was a real treat on using your phone as a camera for sometime during online classes Then uh my cousins and brothers bought me a new pc (technically my mum gave the money, so shoutout to you mom, i love you) and I am still rocking that pc That pc has a very nice specs and they are so good except for one thing which is the gpu. it has just gotten an integrated intel 580 graphics card and barely any high power or mid power games can work on it So I was having some games like valorant,portal etc. but mostly it became minecraft and I wasn't enjoying the other games I was watching a lot of privacy content on youtube at the same time and how invasive microsoft is and how linux is just better in that sense. Now I used to play valorant. It used to work on 60 fps but idk what triggered it to become extremely unplayable for me to the point that it was a godsend if it worked on 20fps Tried doing everything but I realized that I am not playing a game at 20 fps and neither do I want to. It has kernel level access and its created by a game which has some chinese influence and Its not even about politics but I would actually not play american games with kernel level access either That being said, First I thought of just reinstalling windows but then realized that if I am actually going through the hassle of re-installing system then might as well use linux (I thought backups were meh and I didn't have any important stuff [i think] anyways, although I wish I would've backuped my fathers occasional folders but eh its 2-3 years now) Instaled nobara after watching linux experiment. To get the best linux gaming. It is so funny but I thought that nobara/glorious eggroll had built all of this from scratch in start, like It was gnome and I was like wow did he make this and that and that oh my god, so cooool Copy pasting dnf commands :sob: (I guess I am on cachy but old habits die hard regarding copy pasting, I still do it sometimes) Then I went to raw archlinux, it was a mess in the start trying to experiment. I had arch kde and the experience was definitely something Personally I used to play minecraft (with prism launcher) and not many games. And I genuinely wanted to play with arch more than gaming. I then was on arch kde and I think I downloaded some games and tried to run it and lets just say that sailing the seas on linux was a very hacky solution but i was able to do that Lets just say that your boy out here was installing a lot of software bloating disks and wanted minimalism and re-installing systems again and again (and always not making backups, I think I barely make backups even now :sob:) I went from arch kde -> voidlinux iirc -> artix (realized that non systemd systems can't run vscode etc. a bit of a mess) -> arch hyprland iirc for a very long time and it was here where I tried to genuinely install proton and make games work and it had a very high learning curve (1-2 years flexing my neofetch) -> cachy hyprland (just 1-2 months ago) -> cachyos niri right now Personally I would say that Linux is a W in everything but personally I just didn't have a graphics card at all to play modern games From retrospect, regarding gaming, why not just buy older versions of playstation or xbox, are they not specifically designed for gaming itself. It can be a good physical level of seperation as well I don't know what I do with linux honestly, I just do whatever my heart wants, so if someone asks me my hobbies, I genuinely don't know what to say, tinkering with linux/open source is the answer that I give (building custom linux isos, doing random open source cool stuff etc.) I then go see on normal discord servers, the amount of games people play and I am like damn The number of games I have completed/enjoyed can be counted on both my hands or maybe even just one
fullstop 1y ago
My kids were exposed to many operating systems at a young age, and you couldn't be more right regarding the mobile ecosystem. There's a lot of highschool aged kids who don't understand directories on a file system. They're used to tapping "open" and being presented with a list of files sandboxed in that environment.
- xnyan 1y ago
  The situation you describing is the norm for everyone, including you, for most subjects. Expertise gives you greater understanding and allows for more meaningful engagement with the subject, but most people are experts very few things. When I "dance" (sway to the beat) at a wedding, I am doing the equivalent of tapping open on the file, whereas my parter with their lifetime of dance experience can move with a level of skill that is much more meaningful and nuanced. My best friend is a chef, his daughter has a vasty deeper awareness of flavor and technique vs most kids (including mine) who are just consuming without much thought. The same goes for my colleague who is also a musician and DJ - their kids can hear a song and instantly understand all the layers of production and instrumentation, whereas most children and adults are just nodding along to the beat. If I consider most of the things I do in my life, I am interacting with them at very shallow and superficial level versus an expert, and I would assume the same is true for you.
  - fullstop 1y ago
    I totally agree about expertise in a given domain. With that being said, I would consider navigating a directory tree below the level of swaying to the beat. I'm not expecting them to get into the nitty gritty about page alignment and DMA transfers. A directory tree is more on level with toe tapping.
    - Gerard0 1y ago
      Hee hee, great response to a great response!
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      Personally I always loved computers more than smartphones and really loved the freedom even windows could provide over something like android (in the sense of its interface etc.) I feel that a lot of people my age spend a lot more time on their phones as compared to computers and maybe even using the computer just for gaming or discord or something else (just click open, the games are there in steam, play run, it runs) I feel like it is partially tech's fault as well. Tech really wants us to not interact with things or to create a superapp to abstract everything to get a bigger portion of the cake I personally wouldn't be surprised if with things like AI browsers, we might be coming to the point where they genuinely just convert the whole internet into just a chatbot and would interact with the computer and everything on your behalf in the same interface (most likely) I am pretty sure that if this interface or something similar comes true then most people might not even know about things like www. or internet links in general, and we might be shocked in the same way we are right now to them not knowing what files are.
supriyo-biswas 1y ago
When I was a teenager, I tried to dabble in Linux but the hardware support was abysmal and I couldn't use it, despite my strong intention to permanently switch to Linux. These days the hardware support is usually fine and my employer requires me to use Linux on the desktop, but still, if I was a teenager I'd still be interested in games, a functional office suite, etc. For my Linux hobby at the time, I ended up doing was installing MinGW on Windows XP and using Linux VMs on Windows, albeit I had an interest in that kind of stuff. I don't think forcing people to daily drive Linux for the usual stuff makes much sense unless they want it and have an interest in low level configuration.
hastamelo 1y ago
for many kids TikTok is power, not a terminal
graemep 1y ago
My experience is similar, although my kids are are a bit older (the younger one is 17). There have been issues, mostly with gaming. On the other hand they are happy with the results in retrospect. I just got the 17 year old a laptop with Windows 11 on it she wants Linux installed on it.
ulfw 1y ago
What 'freedom' won't they have on a Mac or Windows computer which could run all their friend's software and/or games?
- tapoxi 1y ago
  Linux can run significantly more games than a Mac at this point. It can run maybe 95% of Windows games without tweaking, it only chokes on games with kernel level anti-cheat. Compared to Windows, freedom from advertising and making your own decisions. Windows has so many dark patterns both out of the box and magically introduced with subsequent updates.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  A linux machine works for its owner. A MacOS machine works for Apple, and a Windows machine works for Microsoft. The difference is rooted in control. Unfortunately, we have an entire generation raised on the idea that they shouldn't have ultimate decision making authority over a device they paid $1000 for. It's bonkers, in my opinion.
markus_zhang 1y ago
Can you please elaborate on this? I have a five years old so it’s still early, but I want to prepare myself to educate him on starting from Linux. Do you use any special setup or go straight to Linux with them? Did they have frustrations using the cli and how did you encourage them? Did they ever want to give up?

eptcyka 1y ago

When forced to use Linux at an early age, I was given the agency to be made fun of and miss out on social things, i.e. discussing currently relevant games. It got me the jobs and knowledge eventually too, but I really did not learn much from blindly running ./configure and make and make install. I shudder to think exactly how my wine installation worked. There are significant downsides to using Linux and the freedom it brings needs lots of context to appreciate. If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less.

rpdillon 1y ago
> discussing currently relevant games We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran. If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals. In many ways, this isn't about Linux at all. It's about parenting.
- eptcyka 1y ago
  At the time it was a GTA title. Regardless, the Linux alternatives are useless, there is no alternative to the socially agreed upon phenomena, the child can either participate pr they cannot. The exclusion is not necessarily a bad thing, but you end up having the child swim upstream a bit.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    that's fair. unfortunately windows has changed so much since that time that the downsides of allowing kids to use it are much worse now than they were even 10 years ago.
  - coffeebeqn 1y ago
    That’s not really the case in 2025. Proton is very good
  - testdelacc1 1y ago
    All games run on Linux in 2025 except multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat.
    - eptcyka 1y ago
      Does Fortnite? I remember finishing hl2 on dx level 7, and then trying the same with ep1 and ep2. Those games are a lot harder when half the physics objects are not rendered. Do not get me wrong - I run Linux on all of my personal machines today, I play games on them, I know what's the state of gaming on Linux. I also know that every now and then I will get to at the very least read some logs to figure out what's going wrong, e.g. the native port of Civ VI was looking for a version of openssl whose time had passed. Further, relying on Wine/Proton inherently means you will always lag behind the bleeding edge in terms of DX APIs, as wine/mesa people need to catch up to implement them. Even worse if it is not related to graphics,e.g. as the spatial audio APIs don't have an open source analogue that is ferociously trying to keep up with feature parity. And of course we also have kernel level anti-cheat. I have immense respect for everyone who is involved in making games (and windows software in general) work on Linux. But there will always be stumbling blocks when you are playing 2nd fiddle, and you've not been given the sheets. And nobody told you where the gig is happening.
      - NekkoDroid 1y ago
        > Does Fortnite? That falls under the "multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat"
- scott_w 1y ago
  > If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals. I don’t know about that. Just to be upfront: I’m not advocating putting your kids through this because I think they have to have that motivation for themselves to really benefit. However, I basically did blindly follow guides to try and get things working without fully understanding what I was doing. Over time, things stick and I’m able to look under the surface and get a better understanding and better solve the problem I’m facing. Hell, any “Learn X Language” book works like this! There’s always boilerplate that you need to kinda skip over for a while just so you can get a running program. Hell, I’m leaning Rust and I’m using #[] “decorators” and I couldn’t tell you exactly what they’re doing!
- himeexcelanta 1y ago
  I’m sure you also give out raisins and sugar free mints at Halloween too.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    We don't get many kids coming to the house on Halloween. Only two this year. We buy this big bag of candy at Costco, and we always end up with a lot of extra, and my kids end up sitting and eating it. Not great.
- haunter 1y ago
  >We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran. My parents didn't let me read Song of Ice and Fire Harry Potter (and do a lot of other contemporary culture things) when I was younger because they said they are pop culture fad. Only haute culture literature in this household! I've had a good childhood but I also missed out on a lot of good things because parenting decisions like this. And Fortnite is actually an awesome game, it's the mugen we were all dreaming for.
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  The point isn’t to play the best “non-faddish” games. It’s to play what’s in the zeitgeist and form bonds with people their own age. I’m so glad my parents didn’t override my decisions on literature or video games or TV shows. I watched anime then, my parents didn’t get it, and that’s perfectly fine. I continue to enjoy it now. If they had made me adopt their mindset of “anime = fad” or “anime = cartoon = childish” I’d have been worse off. Instead of enjoying masterpieces like Frieren I’d be snobbishly thinking about what a fad it is.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    We avoid fads because they come and go too quickly. My kids connect with their friends on games that are more enduring, like the From Software titles.
    - bossyTeacher 1y ago
      I feel so sorry for your kids. They deserve a better parent. Remember: your kids are NOT you and they DESERVE to have agency in their lives EVEN if it goes against your interests and desires.
      - graemep 1y ago
        That is such a sweeping statement. Part of what a parent does is guides kids to good decisions, and protect them from the consequences of bad ones. They need agency, and more as they get older, but you do not let them just do what you want.
      - rpdillon 1y ago
        My job is to guide them and use my judgment where their judgment is poor. That is intrinsic in the nature of parenting. Thank you for the guidance though. I understand that you feel strongly and that you hope my kids can be happy even though they're stuck with me as a parent. I do too!
    - anvuong 1y ago
      Enduring based on what metrics? Fornite is now an 8-year old massively (and still is) successful game. And the Battlefield series is actually 7 years older than the Souls series if you count from Demon's Souls. Comparing these 3 games is even more absurd because they are from entirely different genres, and they are not mutually exclusive, one can enjoy more than one genre. I agree with other commenters in here, I feel sorry for your kids and thankful that my parents didn't treat me like what you are doing with your kids now.
- hamdingers 1y ago
  > We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. This is almost word for word the same way my parents talked about Harry Potter and Pokemon when I was feeling alienated in school for only being allowed to read religious books for entertainment. It leads to some pretty strong resentment, if that's the kind of thing you care about.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    My boys are sitting and reading through this with me as I make comments. They are very surprised by the resentment expressed by many of the comments. My eldest read your comment and said that Battlefield and Fortnite are trash because of the multiplayer component that leads to gameplay that's low quality. He doesn't feel this way about Elden Ring, for example. In short, we exercise judgment.
    - hamdingers 1y ago
      What does that even mean? How can we trust your kid's judgement of games they're not allowed to play? When I was a kid I parroted my parents opinions about Harry Potter books being a pathway to practicing witchcraft. Now in hindsight I recognize those weren't so much my opinions as they were a performance to get my parents approval. To be clear I'm not psychoanalyzing your kids (not liking multiplayer is rational), I'm sharing my own related experience.
      - j45 1y ago
        The witchcraft angle as expressed included a personal interpretation that included being righteous towards and at the expense of others externally, to validate one's self internally. It's not the child's fault what they recieve without question and have to do the work to undo. In the case of judgement, we can pick something simple like TV shows. A parent can speak to their kids about the addictive quality of some shows that leave them upset when turned off, vs 15 minutes of something that didn't and have them start to be aware of the difference, and how they seem to get bored of both and want to go back to the real world. Doing that long before it's needed, allows the development of awareness, which as long as it's modeled by the parents, leaves the home as the important teacher of navigating the world, not the households of friends and teachers alone.
- tietjens 1y ago
  This comment is epically pretentious, but I agree that kids shouldn’t be playing online games designed as skinner boxes to increase playtime and financial spend. Makes kids miss out because everyone is playing them? Eh, too bad. They gotta wait for their late teens, imho.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    I don't see the pretension. We're simply making decisions about how to spend our time. Many times that doesn't align with what the majority of people like to spend their time doing. That's fine.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  Just curious how did you persuade them? From what I see kids usually want to play whatever other kids play, like TikTok or Roblox or Fortnite.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  > If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point I digress. Everyone has to start somewhere and not everything has to have a point in the start When I started using linux, I got so fascinated by open source software that I would just search for software/software types and searched open source alternative to X and go to alternativeto or others and try it out etc. I used to copy paste dnf commands in the start and I still remember that phase. I think I learnt linux from myself and have given challenges along the way and I feel like there are things that I have still done blindly along the way (building linux isos) But the fact was that I still felt proud that I was atleast able to replicate the commands and able to have some familiarity with the process. I feel like if I wanted to able to know more about xorriso and cpio to a deeper degree to understand what wizard magic commands I was running to building custom linux iso s etc. Now I don't know about fortnite etc., I am a kid but surprisingly games don't interest me that much, I am way more in my movies / tv shows (just ended dexter s8) right now. There is some alienated feelings when people online my age mention the games they play but I think that games on linux are genuinely great support from what I know and my pc doesn't have anything beyond integrated gpu so yeah my cousins didn't want me to play much games and so they didn't buy a good gpu during the pc and I think they did succeed in this. Its complicated to how I feel the situation or even let alone think how I would even try to approach this situation if or when I become a parent myself. Honestly, parenting can be a bit hard but I still don't know if you should shun something that you think is faddish or low quality partially because I think that the best thing you could do (imo) is educate them on the positives on linux and how they might outweigh the benefits of fortnite in the short to long term in a fun manner. Its um complicated and there is definitely a feeling inside me on that i do some incredibly niche things which would be so complicated to explain to someone my age in my proximity. I think there is only one or two of my friends who actually know even 1% of the stuff that I do in linux (one of them had installed hyprland because of me haha)
miningape 1y ago
> If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less Couldn't agree more - Linux can be a great way to get into computing. But only if done in the right way. Arguably for an older kid / teenager (boys usually) it's important to have access to the same games your friends are playing, otherwise you start to become naturally excluded from lunch table talk. Of course it still depends if the kid is a social butterfly etc., but parents should understand this.
- doubled112 1y ago
  Agreed. My kids (8 and 11) both have Linux on desktops in the living room. They work really well for what they want now, but someday we might have to make different choices.
em-bee 1y ago
the same happens with children not getting mobile phones, or not wearing the same brand expensive clothes that others can afford. sorry, but what you experienced is comparable to peer pressure, and as a parent, giving in to that is the wrong approach. you will not agree because you suffered as a result and i am sorry you had to go through that. my oldest is just getting into the age where these things start to matter, but regardless, my kids won't get phones and or anything besides linux for their own sake. fortunately times are changing and working in our favor. windows 11 is practically unusable already, inpart because it refuses to run on anything but the most recent computers, and in part because it requires an online account, not to mention all the advertising that i refuse to subject my kids to. windows games run on linux better than ever thanks to steam, and my kids school uses linux too for the most part. so admittedly, this will be easier for my kids than it was for you.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  That's a good point. My oldest has root on his own System76 laptop, and he's quite accomplished at administering it. But he is able to play and beat Elden Ring in Dark Souls, which would not have been an option five years ago in terms of compatibility.
  - coffeebeqn 1y ago
    Just in the last 5ish years Linux has turned into one of the best gaming platforms. I’m able to run pretty much anything on my laptop and steam deck both running Linux
1718627440 1y ago
> Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less. As a child, I couldn't stand Windows. Nothing works, you just want to do that, but there is always some stupid error message, that tells you nothing. And it never does what you tell it to do, it always does some random mess, that you do not yet know what it even is, or how to fix it. As a child you need to see causality and have a predictive system, so that you can form a mental model and understand things, or even have the ability to form a question to ask the adults. You do not need a system, that is it's own child and is always mulish yet things it is the smartest thing in the world.
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
As someone actually a teen. It is very interesting to share how I started my linux journey I had only got a computer in 6th grade but I was always fascinated by computers in the sense that I was trying to run blindly termux scripts from youtube etc. to run windows programs or linux etc. and I had even successfully done these things earlier But after 6th grade getting a pc, I was trying to learn some python in covid and uh, lets just say that vscode wasn't happy with a 500 mb ram win 7 pc I even installed droidcam/womic etc. and it was a real treat on using your phone as a camera for sometime during online classes Then uh my cousins and brothers bought me a new pc (technically my mum gave the money, so shoutout to you mom, i love you) and I am still rocking that pc That pc has a very nice specs and they are so good except for one thing which is the gpu. it has just gotten an integrated intel 580 graphics card and barely any high power or mid power games can work on it So I was having some games like valorant,portal etc. but mostly it became minecraft and I wasn't enjoying the other games I was watching a lot of privacy content on youtube at the same time and how invasive microsoft is and how linux is just better in that sense. Now I used to play valorant. It used to work on 60 fps but idk what triggered it to become extremely unplayable for me to the point that it was a godsend if it worked on 20fps Tried doing everything but I realized that I am not playing a game at 20 fps and neither do I want to. It has kernel level access and its created by a game which has some chinese influence and Its not even about politics but I would actually not play american games with kernel level access either That being said, First I thought of just reinstalling windows but then realized that if I am actually going through the hassle of re-installing system then might as well use linux (I thought backups were meh and I didn't have any important stuff [i think] anyways, although I wish I would've backuped my fathers occasional folders but eh its 2-3 years now) Instaled nobara after watching linux experiment. To get the best linux gaming. It is so funny but I thought that nobara/glorious eggroll had built all of this from scratch in start, like It was gnome and I was like wow did he make this and that and that oh my god, so cooool Copy pasting dnf commands :sob: (I guess I am on cachy but old habits die hard regarding copy pasting, I still do it sometimes) Then I went to raw archlinux, it was a mess in the start trying to experiment. I had arch kde and the experience was definitely something Personally I used to play minecraft (with prism launcher) and not many games. And I genuinely wanted to play with arch more than gaming. I then was on arch kde and I think I downloaded some games and tried to run it and lets just say that sailing the seas on linux was a very hacky solution but i was able to do that Lets just say that your boy out here was installing a lot of software bloating disks and wanted minimalism and re-installing systems again and again (and always not making backups, I think I barely make backups even now :sob:) I went from arch kde -> voidlinux iirc -> artix (realized that non systemd systems can't run vscode etc. a bit of a mess) -> arch hyprland iirc for a very long time and it was here where I tried to genuinely install proton and make games work and it had a very high learning curve (1-2 years flexing my neofetch) -> cachy hyprland (just 1-2 months ago) -> cachyos niri right now Personally I would say that Linux is a W in everything but personally I just didn't have a graphics card at all to play modern games From retrospect, regarding gaming, why not just buy older versions of playstation or xbox, are they not specifically designed for gaming itself. It can be a good physical level of seperation as well I don't know what I do with linux honestly, I just do whatever my heart wants, so if someone asks me my hobbies, I genuinely don't know what to say, tinkering with linux/open source is the answer that I give (building custom linux isos, doing random open source cool stuff etc.) I then go see on normal discord servers, the amount of games people play and I am like damn The number of games I have completed/enjoyed can be counted on both my hands or maybe even just one

fullstop 1y ago

My kids were exposed to many operating systems at a young age, and you couldn't be more right regarding the mobile ecosystem. There's a lot of highschool aged kids who don't understand directories on a file system. They're used to tapping "open" and being presented with a list of files sandboxed in that environment.

xnyan 1y ago
The situation you describing is the norm for everyone, including you, for most subjects. Expertise gives you greater understanding and allows for more meaningful engagement with the subject, but most people are experts very few things. When I "dance" (sway to the beat) at a wedding, I am doing the equivalent of tapping open on the file, whereas my parter with their lifetime of dance experience can move with a level of skill that is much more meaningful and nuanced. My best friend is a chef, his daughter has a vasty deeper awareness of flavor and technique vs most kids (including mine) who are just consuming without much thought. The same goes for my colleague who is also a musician and DJ - their kids can hear a song and instantly understand all the layers of production and instrumentation, whereas most children and adults are just nodding along to the beat. If I consider most of the things I do in my life, I am interacting with them at very shallow and superficial level versus an expert, and I would assume the same is true for you.
- fullstop 1y ago
  I totally agree about expertise in a given domain. With that being said, I would consider navigating a directory tree below the level of swaying to the beat. I'm not expecting them to get into the nitty gritty about page alignment and DMA transfers. A directory tree is more on level with toe tapping.
  - Gerard0 1y ago
    Hee hee, great response to a great response!
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    Personally I always loved computers more than smartphones and really loved the freedom even windows could provide over something like android (in the sense of its interface etc.) I feel that a lot of people my age spend a lot more time on their phones as compared to computers and maybe even using the computer just for gaming or discord or something else (just click open, the games are there in steam, play run, it runs) I feel like it is partially tech's fault as well. Tech really wants us to not interact with things or to create a superapp to abstract everything to get a bigger portion of the cake I personally wouldn't be surprised if with things like AI browsers, we might be coming to the point where they genuinely just convert the whole internet into just a chatbot and would interact with the computer and everything on your behalf in the same interface (most likely) I am pretty sure that if this interface or something similar comes true then most people might not even know about things like www. or internet links in general, and we might be shocked in the same way we are right now to them not knowing what files are.

supriyo-biswas 1y ago

When I was a teenager, I tried to dabble in Linux but the hardware support was abysmal and I couldn't use it, despite my strong intention to permanently switch to Linux. These days the hardware support is usually fine and my employer requires me to use Linux on the desktop, but still, if I was a teenager I'd still be interested in games, a functional office suite, etc. For my Linux hobby at the time, I ended up doing was installing MinGW on Windows XP and using Linux VMs on Windows, albeit I had an interest in that kind of stuff. I don't think forcing people to daily drive Linux for the usual stuff makes much sense unless they want it and have an interest in low level configuration.

hastamelo 1y ago

for many kids TikTok is power, not a terminal

graemep 1y ago

My experience is similar, although my kids are are a bit older (the younger one is 17). There have been issues, mostly with gaming. On the other hand they are happy with the results in retrospect. I just got the 17 year old a laptop with Windows 11 on it she wants Linux installed on it.

ulfw 1y ago

What 'freedom' won't they have on a Mac or Windows computer which could run all their friend's software and/or games?

tapoxi 1y ago
Linux can run significantly more games than a Mac at this point. It can run maybe 95% of Windows games without tweaking, it only chokes on games with kernel level anti-cheat. Compared to Windows, freedom from advertising and making your own decisions. Windows has so many dark patterns both out of the box and magically introduced with subsequent updates.
rpdillon 1y ago
A linux machine works for its owner. A MacOS machine works for Apple, and a Windows machine works for Microsoft. The difference is rooted in control. Unfortunately, we have an entire generation raised on the idea that they shouldn't have ultimate decision making authority over a device they paid $1000 for. It's bonkers, in my opinion.

markus_zhang 1y ago

Can you please elaborate on this? I have a five years old so it’s still early, but I want to prepare myself to educate him on starting from Linux. Do you use any special setup or go straight to Linux with them? Did they have frustrations using the cli and how did you encourage them? Did they ever want to give up?