Uh, I don't have a good answer for that, but I'd give them something like Linux Mint anyways. That way they can look up stuff, watch tutorials and don't have a super niche thing running. Or give them one of the popular gaming distros, if it's that.

Idk. Gnome feels very much like Android to me. And KDE follows similar design patterns to Windows. And kids and teenagers tend to figure out all the things they want. If they have the motivation to do so.

I’m hearing a lot of very poor advice in here, at least from my perspective as a Linux user who’s been through the gamut of various distros over the years.

Fedora atomic desktops are not beginner distros. That is not their purpose, and their limitations make many things a person may eventually want to do with their machine a lot more complicated.

Debian? Are we joking here? Debian is an amazing distro for what its purposes are, but it’s not beginner friendly. Debian is bare bones.

Linux Mint is the easiest answer here. Ubuntu LTS (or its classroom based fork edubuntu) is another great answer. I know every Linux user on the internet recoils in horror at the mention of Ubuntu but it really is a drop in plug and play solution for kids and old people.

Ok, let me rephrase this:

Your kid is too young to understand the concept of a mouse, but they arent young enough to not use Tiktok, a Social media known for killing even young adults attention time. And for some reason they are thought how to use a PC? To a 5-7 year old?

That aside, I recommend using literally Any OS and just making a guest user excluded from the sudoers file. To install new Apps, just use flatpak at user level, and for roblox theres Sober

My opinions are likely to be in accord with information found at privacyguides.org/en/desktop/ and privacyguides.org/en/android/d…

As an alternative to making decisions without direct assistance, you might benefit from contracting with another person to make decisions based on requirements you describe (essentially getting a chief information officer (CIO) for yourself). The main reason I'm suggesting this is that having more people involved will make it more likely that someone will know about established best practices relevant to your situation or that someone will have experience with a problem that is similar to the one you're dealing with. Additional reasons I could provide for this would be similar to the reasons people give to discourage someone from handling court appearances without a lawyer or doing surgery on themselves. You might be able to use ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops to find information about how to contact people about your computing needs. Alternatively, you could visit a store (for example, one operated by Walmart).

Private Android Operating Systems

You can replace the operating system on your Android phone with these secure and privacy-respecting alternatives.

^{www.privacyguides.org}

I followed the path Mint>Fedora>openSUSE.

Wanna know my experience? I had issues daily with screen tearing on mint, even though I had the NVIDIA drivers they were probably too old on Mint for my graphics card. The desktop wouldn't load, I had errors on starting and on shutting down Mint. I spent more time troubleshooting Mint than working.

I said fuck it and decided to give fedora (actually Universal Blue's Aurora, which is atomic and fedora-based).

It was pure bliss.

Everything just worked out of the box to the point that I was confused as to why everything was working so well. The only thing I had to "learn" was how to use distrobox through BoxBuddy, which took a whopping 30 minutes of research or so.

Now I moved to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and it feels like going back in time. I know my OS is not as secure due to not being atomic, I have to run the command line daily for updates, and the initial setting up would have been intimidating for a beginner. But at least it also hasn't given me problems yet, unlike what happened with Mint.

So IMO Mint should definitely not be recommended to beginners. The architecture of atomic distros is very familiar to anyone who has a smartphone today, which is practically everyone. You can go to the software store and download Flatpaks as seamlessly as you do on the Google Play or Apple Store. You can even change the apps Permitions using Flatseal. And best of all, you get an OS that is secure, which traditional Linux distros aren't due to every app having root access by default.

I haven't done it yet, but when my wife wants to change her laptop, I'll 100% install a self-maintaining atomic distro for her.

In traditional distros, apps dependencies are mixed with system files. In atomic distros you use flatpaks which are containerized and don't see system files.

This is what I mean. I understand you can also install Flatpaks in traditional distros, but most people don't install only flatpaks.

Check ProtonDB, e.g. protondb.com/search?q=Civiliza… and that, even though very useful ~~initially started~~ for the SteamDeck it is also a very reliable source to know if a game will work well on Linux. Overall the vast VAST majority of games do work unless there is a kernel level anti-cheat which is mostly for competitive online games only.

Now in terms of performances, get the GPU you can afford but overall its comparable with other OSes (not to name them) and sometimes even better, so on average, you can trust whatever the publisher is recommending.

Source : been gaming on Linux, in VR and on "flat" 3D for years now, pretty much daily.

Do you have any preferences (distro, cpu/gpu manufacturer, etc) and a budget?
Most of the games on your list I am familiar with and will run on damn near anything remotely modern.

Lacing direction, with the fairly low requirements (from what i recognize), and assuming you are price conscious id suggest you poke around the used gaming PC market (either gamer friends, or failing that online), which will also completely bypass the tariff issue too.

PopOS is pretty solid for linux gaming and has a distribution specifically for Nvidia too which handles most of the headache with Nvidia if you go that route.

EDIT:
Poked around the requirement pages of the ones i wasn't familiar with, i didn't see a single game that had a requirement of anything newer than 10 year old hardware, depending on your friend network, you could get a computer that could play those games well for a song.

Few months ago I built a gaming PC and chose I not use Windows for multiple reasons. I would suggest sticking to AMD as it would better supported on Linux. For the OS I'm using Arch Linux which is base for a lot of gaming Linux distributions. 99% I have never felt like I was missing out by not using Windows. Wine/Proton works really well OOTB. I highly recommend it if you want to get into Linux gaming. Like others have mentioned, ProtonDB is also a great resource for finding game specific information.

Build: pcpartpicker.com/list/qzwbFs

Bazzite is probably the best Linux distribution for this purpose. It's practically made for it. In terms of hardware, get an AMD GPU. Intel might also be ok, but they are pretty new so might have hidden caveats.

CPU, whatever you can afford I guess.

Do you have a budget?

I highly recommend getting a gaming laptop. You can buy a 4070 lenovo laptop at Walmart for $1k (at least in the US.)

Otherwise, check out old.reddit.com/r/LaptopDeals/ until you find something that fits your needs and budget. (sorry for linking to the other site)

You should use bluetooth controllers instead of ones that take a dongle simply because the dongle is unnecessary. Playstation controllers work well, but they're expensive and I haven't been able to find a 3rd party variant that works properly.

I also recommend getting a wireless keyboard + mouse combo.

Laptop Deals • r/LaptopDeals

A place to share deals & special sales on laptops and laptop related accessories.

^reddit

Portability is a much bigger benefit than people realize.

Right now I'm typing this lying down comfortably in my bed, for example.

I think being tied to a desk to use our computers is unnecessary and reinforces a culture where people stay in their rooms and don't connect with others in person as much as they otherwise would.

My computer is like my 2nd brain, so being able to have it with me just about anywhere I go is important.

I used to have a desktop mostly for gaming and a laptop for work, but managing 2 computers is more hassle than it's worth so I decided to downsize to only 1 gaming laptop. "One machine to rule them all," as I say. My only regret is not making the decision way sooner. I genuinely believe my life would have been better off for it.

I think I understand your point. Personally, I use a desktop for gaming and a laptop for a most other things, like you used to. I use tiling WMs, so not having a real mouse is not so bad, but I prefer real keyboards.

I don't think you need to move a gaming machine around that often and desktops have better thermals, are a lot more upgradeable and are easier to fix than laptops.

But sometimes portable gaming can be nice. For example, I play Mario Kart (Double Dash, of course) with my father every now and then, which wouldn't really work with a desktop. It's nice to be able to take a laptop and a few bluetooth controllers with me and be able to set up a portable retro gaming station literally anywhere.

I guess it's just up to individual preference.

It’s nice to be able to take a laptop and a few bluetooth controllers with me and be able to set up a portable retro gaming station literally anywhere.

Yep. I'm a much bigger fan of co-op games these days, so I have controllers and emulators at the ready to turn my laptop in a play station.

I guess it’s just up to individual preference.

Bingo.

The sustainability argument stems from technological constraints. YouTube as a company has no problem sustaining millions of dollars in server infrastructure to serve media. Most self-hosters wouldn't be able to do that without significant income.

I don't agree with this perspective but also don't know enough about server infrastructure or video streaming to argue against it.

Like others have said, it's way more resource intensive than text based systems. Even discounting higher res vids, if you go to any random larger YT channel and download all their videos in 144p 480p and 720p it'll be quite a lot larger than you might expect. Sure, if you're serious about it you could get an array of hard drives and a small server, but you're talking hundreds of bucks and lots of upkeep. Outsource it to a VPS and AWS buckets and you've still got upkeep but now you've added an extra 0 to your bill.

There's not enough charitable nerds on the internet to host even a fraction of 1% of Youtube. It's even worse if self hosting instances is pushed. Even as a fellow tech nerd, no way I'm hosting my own instance just so I can share a video once in a blue moon. Something that always gets my goat in fediverse discourse is when people always jump to saying something along the lines of "just host your own" then wonder why AP went from ~2.5M users to 0.8M users.

There's also some Fediverse specific issues that hold back a more mainstream audience. There's some fringe political stuff on both sides of the isle which can pretty easily scare off people, and defederation combined with peertube's more siloed approach makes discovery near nil. (can't see content from remote peertube instances unless somebody has already subscribed to that channel on the remote instance from your local instance AFAIK).

Then there's the new platform (or in this case many platforms connected via one protocol) issues. Lack of users, limited/no monetization, limited development/support, and very few pros + a lot of cons at first glance from somebody who doesn't consider tech a hobby and is comparing it to established platforms.

Edit: Can't remember who, but iirc a peertube user I follow who regularly deletes their videos because their host doesn't give them too much space. It's great for a less big tech way to see their latest videos, but not acceptable if anyone's gonna bill something like that as the next big video platform.

I am not a photographer

I beg to differ. these are fantastic. thank you for sharing.

edit: also just noticed a little stowaway on the first image! 🪰