I've been running openSUSE tumbleweed myself for years, and recommend Linux to like-minded power users. OP is preaching to the choir.

How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.

What do you all do to help them out of this madness? Is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc the best option for seniors? My dad's entire career was in Silicon Valley 1.0 where Excel/Outlook was his bread and butter and feels married to Windows, but ever since leaving the workforce those skills are more of a hindrance than an asset.

Now that he's retired, he still uses Excel to plan vacations for example, but Windows is riddled with this BS and I am powerless to help him navigate this anti-consumer behavior. It's incredible that Microsoft is shooting their most loyal customers in the foot with this BS.

Do you all help your parents remotely? What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?

Senior care and technology is going to be a gold rush over the next couple decades. Society is not prepared for the only generation who grew up on the internet to regress into mental infirmary while still believing technology is an essential need.

For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.

Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.

It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.

SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.

For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.

> How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.

The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.

The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.

For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.

Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.

> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?

Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.

Grandma: See previous.

'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?

'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'

'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'

Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.

I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.

This is why Windows will get away with it.

As much as Windows is deeply flawed, the user interface challenges with Linux are difficult to overcome. Until there is a version of Linux where you don’t have to open the console, Windows will keep its market.