Linux

I don’t get why she would take her mouse to the grocery store rather than just ask her son, who installed it for her. All I could guess would be, her old mouse didn’t work so she went out and bought one?

I literally set up Ubuntu for my mother (an old lady by now) 10+ years ago, and she has absolutely no problems with it other than the occasional LTS version updates that I need to do for her. I am pretty sure the overall tech-support I had to do for her over all these years is actually lower as it is much more difficult to accidentally mess up a desktop Linux than some Windows installation.

I live a few hours away from her and can't just go out and buy her a new mouse (and she doesn't like online shopping), so the OP story could be exactly her to the letter (except she isn't using Linux Mint).

I mean, it could be possible that the box of the mouse said something like kernel 2.6+. Considering that is older than 2011, OP's answer was absolutely spot on.

My father, who taught computer science for the US Army, later became a government contractor, and for whom Unix systems were bread and butter, is now retired and farts around on a Mac reading political blogspam all day.

My mother, having never had any interest or real education in computing in her entire life, now uses Linux Mint to take care of important shit and keep the family organized.

muh vibeo ganes

With what I've been through, I'm beginning to wonder if OP is telling the truth 😂

About 7 years ago I got a call from some random lady in her 70s. Turns out her husband passed away not long ago and every computer in the house had Linux Mint installed. She needed someone to help her with some various simple techy things that her husband used to handle.

I couldn't help but wonder how this random lady got my phone number. Turns out that one day, my Grandfather went on a walk down the road and this lady was outside tending to her garden. I have no clue how the conversation shifted to the topic of Linux, but it did. And my Grandpa knew I was in college for Computer Science, so he just volunteered me for this task.

Fast forward to today and I still help her out once or twice a year with whatever random questions pop up.

edubuntu

An education focused Ubuntu distro, weird. Also getting into Linux because it's free is a great reason to get into Linux, if you get comfortable with it now it can help you in many STEM careers in addition to your own needs and proposes.

If the website doesn't work in lynx, it's not worth visiting

I tried to install Linux on my mom's laptop for her, it was too scary. So she is still using windows 7 and probably getting scammed left and right.

They'll probably enjoy Linux way more than windows. It's so much less intrusive.

Doesn't need Linus for that, the average Arch user should be enough

That doesn't sound like Torvalds at all. The guy doesn't suffer fools, but he doesn't just pop off at people randomly. All accounts are that he's a pretty chill dude.

That really does not sound like Linus to me. The guy can be quite blunt and will gladly reach for swear words in his e-mails. But he can just as well be accommodating. I imagine, he'd be delighted that an old lady is running his software.

I'm imagining, it said on the packaging of the mouse that it needed that kernel version.

In Linux, the kernel delivers most drivers, so it may not yet have had the appropriate mouse driver in kernel versions before that.

Don't really want to doxx myself, but in the Helsinki area