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!

  • RustedSwitch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    If true, this is amazing.

    • squiblet@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • Still@programming.dev
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’m assuming OP meant a store like Target or Walmart that have groceries and also a tech section

        • _n9@lemmy.mlOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yes, it’s a bigger store where the bottom floor is groceries and the top is more of a department store with a few shelves of computer and phone stuff, among other things.

          • lunarul@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            Changing the setting from a grocery isle to an electronics department makes for a completely different story. Goes from “yeah, sure, that happened” to “perfectly credible encounter.”

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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).

      • Aggravationstation@lemmy.ml
        0·
        1 year ago

        I installed Fedora on my aunt’s laptop she runs an eBay business with. She only ever used Excel for a spreadsheet she tracks her accounts with and Chrome for her listings. Replaced them with Libre office calc and Chromium, didn’t really need to explain anything to her