this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
316 points (98.8% liked)

Linux

59569 readers
809 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

My parents have this old 2015 MacBook Air that they wanted to use but couldn’t due to no security updates and slow running. I convinced them to let me load up fedora on it instead of junking it. They only really need it for some basic document writing, email, and web surfing so I figured this is perfect for them.

Made a bootable drive with Fedora 43 work station on it, figured gnome would be the most Apple like spin. Everything went super smooth until I realized that the WiFi drivers weren’t installed lol. I also didn’t have a Ethernet adapter for usb-a so I had to overnight it to me while my parents swore I bricked their Mac all night. Got the adapter this AM, hooked it up, installed the drivers and other necessary tweaks, and viola! This Mac has new life.

So far my parents are liking it and understanding it (even though my mom seems more excited about the snoopy wallpaper and Firefox theme, lol). Getting their emails on thunderbird was driving me crazy. Nothing to do with thunderbird, they just didn’t know their passwords smh. All in all not bad. To new Linux converts

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 52 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

I got a laugh at the end as I have also experienced that the hardest part about converting parents to Linux is them not knowing their passwords.

[–] Wfh@lemmy.zip 13 points 13 hours ago

This. Migrating my father to Bluefin was absolutely eventless. Except the 8 hours of fighting over passwords. Because I'm supposed to know all his passwords, apparently.

[–] Kelp@lemmy.world 23 points 18 hours ago

Oh the pain. You should’ve heard the accusations of someone else changing their passwords…somehow. Yet they’ll both bring up me bricking the fam computer dl linkin park from limewire…like 20+ years ago lol

[–] elvith@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago

Mine didn’t want to migrate and I had to build them a new PC with Win11 (their old one was barely able to run win 10 and had already some hardware problems, so a new one was on my bucket list for a while) - but… yeah the most time was spent tracking down all these passwords and accounts they were constantly using without knowing which email address and which password was used for the account…