Today at the grocery store a sweet older lady approached me and asked if I knew anything about computers. I said yes I do, and she produced a mouse saying that her son set up Linux mint for her and she was wondering if the mouse was compatible. It needed kernel version 2.6 or newer so I said that the mouse should work, guessing mint itself was probably newer than that kernel. Happy with my answer, we chatted a little, then she thanked me and left.
It was a nice experience, so I thought I should share!
I don’t have any reason to not trust OP, but the likelihood of this conversation happening at ALL seems incredibly unlikely. Never mind that it is described as successful.
Before I decide whether this story is real I need to know what OP looks like that some lady singled him out in public to ask a Linux related question. OP, do you wear a wizard hat in public? Were you buying Doritos and Mountain Dew? I must know.
i worked in sales long enough to know that No, No sweet older lady ever spoke those words to you "setup on linux mint" and include the capacity for understanding hardware compliances? did everyone in the store clap too? but...it would be a nice fantasy ngl
I did once have a very not technical mate ask for some help with their laptop, and it was randomly running edubuntu? I was like yeah no worries I got this but why TF are you running linux, they didn't even really understand, apparently some random friend had set them up with it because they didn't want to pay for windows lol.
Have an elderly patron at the cafe that I volunteer at as a tech support (basically helping the old sods learn how to use their phones and connect to the new digital services from the government in Denmark) and he is a Linux user too. Dude is 79 and is the fella I go to if I have any linux questions. Think he uses an old IBM ThinkPad and practically consoles everything except his web use. I want to stay as pro as him when I turn 79!
That was really nice but I think the lady was lucky that she met you. Can you imagine if she had met Linux Torvalds himself?
He would have told her off for not knowing that the 2.6 kernel was many years old, the whole Linux world had moved on with strides beyond this old piece of software and reached 6.5 and there was no reason wasting everyone's time with this kind of question. Plus: "we never, ever break the user experience and hence the mouse should work without questions!"
This is both very likely true while also being the peak male Lemmy user fantasy that will confuse future alien archaeologists the most. Thanks for sharing!
Is this satire? Forgive me, but 99.999% of the population has no idea what a kernel is. Also, since when would a mouse care about your kernel version? Puzzling post.
I worked retail in electronics for quite a while and all the linux people I encountered were turbonerds for the most part. Thankfully I think that is changing. I imagine this lady had one of her family members set her up of course.
Assuming this story is true, Linux is going to be a nightmare for that woman. It’s come a long way, but it’s still not as dead simple as it needs to be for non-technical elderly people.
So you're the nice boy from the store? Good to see you here. I got my mouse connected and can now browse fediverse using my Linux Mint.
BTW I've checked and I'm running Linux kernel version 6.2.9. Should I update?