cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46357907
Not for my daughter, I'm starting her early on Arch (she's 4 but she will learn to love the terminal lol)
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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"Now sweetie, find the etc directory or no ice cream."
Idk personally if I was teaching a child how to use Linux I would focus on more practical skills like updating pkgs
In a (rare for me) defense of Boomers, goddamn, the one dude I knew who learned COBOL on his GI Bill out of Vietnam...
that man was a fucking wizard.
He actually cackled to me when he told me how C Suite knew he was retiring in 6 months, they were not planning on hiring a replacement for him... he was planning on being hired back as a contractor within 2 years, seeing as he personally built the company's entire transaction accounting payroll and billing systems in the mid 70s, and no one else had any idea how any of it worked.
... For an international logistics company, with over 100 offices all over the world.
But yes, the rest of the Boomers csn go back to Minions memes and being catfished by AI Brad Pitt or whatever it is they do these days on the 'puter.
We often forget that half the boomers were the hippies, pioneers of the Internet, and activist that got the civil rights act passed.
We forget that it was a minority of them. The majority is like every other generation: kept disinterested and selfish.
Hot take but the hippies fucking sucked and I absolutely despise the entire movement. They had no political message, no demands, no way of achieving their goals, and were an entire movement based on vibes alone. The 70s was a time of great economic upheaval and there was a real chance that things could change, that we could have became a more progressive society, even revolution was possible, but then the hippies came and channeled the revolutionary energy of an entire generation into doing fuck all. Quite frankly I feel the same about the no kings protest today, an entire movement based on vibes with no plans of accomplishing anything.
Well, we (boomers) actually invented the PC…
A few of you. The rest can barely operate a smartphone let alone do online banking, much less understand a phishing scam.
The problem though isn't that people in general lack the understanding or capability to operate computers, it's that we live in a society where continuous learning is not encouraged nor funded. Education is seen a means to an end, and learning isn't seen as a way of life.
If the government either provided or paid for lifelong learning, things would be very very different. For example when new tech comes out affecting everybody, it should be encouraged to take a week or two off work, at full pay or paid for by the government, to stay current. But right now, only the wealthy and lucky few can even afford that.
I mean, for gen alpha, that's an intentional effect. Tech is becoming more and more obfuscated by design.
You mean being made easier for normies?
Year of the Linux desktop and day now.
Ballsy of you to assume that it got "easier for normies", the answer probably lies in asking "easier for what?". Computers have been redefined as consumption devices in a scheme to extract maximal profit out of their captive users. So it's certainly "easy" for a growing number of users baited into dark patterns to hand over their credit card details and get addicted to antisocial networks and whatnot. But using modern devices as traditional computers, with intent, as a productive tool? It got much harder, except maybe for the Linux users, normies and "geeks" alike.