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I’ve been teaching Linux to a lot of high-school age kids this year. I picked Fedora Workstation for us to experiment with. It of course, uses GNOME. Like I mentioned in the above post I talked to them for 5-10 minutes about GNOME design and how it’s supposed to be used. One thing that surprised me is how much the younger generation found GNOME intuitive as soon as they learned to use the Super key. Many have spent more time on iOS than they have Windows. So some of the common pain points for us older folks, like not having a task bar, preferring each “App” to be full a screen and switching between them felt very natural for the kids. Very iOS like.

You can of course have your different opinion on if this is good or bad or if GNOME shouldn’t be the default on most distro.

Perhaps GNOME is a good default for distro because it’s similar to the interfaces young people are growing up with.

I’ve found GNOME a pleasure to use. From my experience many folks that use Linux like to tinker with their computers. Even those new to Linux see a world of possibilities. GNOME doesn’t really embrace this tinkerer philosophy. They have an opinion on what at desktop manager should be and they’re constantly working towards that vision.

When I introduce GNOME to new people I explain to them some the project goals, design elements and how it’s intended to be used. Then I tell them that GNOME is opinionated on how things should behave and look, and if you try to force GNOME to be something it’s not you’ll probably end up using poorly documented or unsupported third-party extensions that break things. Generally the advice is, GNOME is great, but not for everyone, take the time to learn the GNOME way of doing things and if you don’t like it you're better off switching to another desktop environment than trying to change GNOME.

Patience. Same things will work differently than you’re used to, and that can be frustrating.

Also be really sure to help true beginners understand software centers and package managers. I’ve been helping a lot of young people use Linux for the first time this year. Even though I mentioned it the first day and remind them frequently, if for example I ask them to install Java, half of them will download installers from Oracle’s website or wherever.

In 2025, the package manager and frequency of updates are the only real differences between most distributions. I’ve been enjoying Flatpak for years now and hope it continues to build momentum. It offers the possibility of shared effort between distributions who depend on legions of volunteers constantly updating debs/rpms/whatever.

It feels like one of the last hurdles to eliminate so much of the duplicated effort associated with all these distributions.

I started using Linux right in the late 90’s. The small things I recall that might be amusing.

1. The installation process was easier than installing Arch (before Arch got an installer)
2. I don’t recall doing any regular updates after things were working except for when a new major release came out.
3. You needed to buy a modem to get online since none of the “winmodems” ever worked.
4. Dependency hell was real. When you were trying to install an RPM from Fresh Meat and then it would fail with all the missing libraries.
5. GNOME and KDE felt sincerely bloated. They seemed to always run painfully slow on modern computers. Moving a lot of people to Window Managers.
6. it was hard to have a good web browser. Before Firefox came out you struggled along with Netscape. I recall having to use a statically compiled ancient (even for the time) version of Netscape as that was the only thing available at the time for OpenBSD.
7. Configuring XFree86 (pre-cursor to X.org) was excruciating. I think I still have an old book that cautioned if you configured your refresh rates and monitor settings incorrectly your monitor could catch on fire.
8. As a follow on to the last statement. I once went about 6 months without any sort of GUI because I couldn’t get X working correctly.
9. Before PulseAudio you’d have to go into every application that used sound and pick from a giant drop down list of your current sound card drivers (ALSA and OSS) combined with whatever mixer you were using. You’d hope the combo you were using was supported.
10. Everyone cheered when you no longer had to fight to get flash working to get a decent web browsing experience.

I really don’t agree with choosing to release with the UEFI bug they found. They describe it as cosmetic but those entries can last the lifetime of your computer, even if you wipe your hard drive. It’s bound to cause some confusion for years to come for Linux tinkerers.

As a midwesterner, it’s the first Tuesday of the month at 10 AM. At least for my state.

I have such mixed feelings on articles like this. It’s valid economic news, but this fees like “spin”. A way for the Trump administration to change the conversation from a problem they caused to something they can blame on someone else. Stay focused, keep talking about tariffs and their impact.

I have hobbies that are considered masculine and more popular amongst folks who lean to the right politically. It makes it hard to form any friends group. Hobbies are firearms, amateur radio, and cars.

I haven’t enjoyed this season so far. I’ve noticed when shows are as mysterious as Severance is right now it’s usually because the writers don’t know what story they’re trying to tell. Several episodes this season only moved the plot forward in small ways. Im probably going to skip out on season 3 unless season 2 starts picking up.

Psych. A cliche “murder mystery of the week” show has no business being as wholesome, kind, friendly, and upbeat as Psych. I realized a few years ago when I was going through some personal issues and had started rewatching Psych that it was helping me deal with the stress, and it wasn’t the first time I’ve done that with the show.

Maybe a year ago I went to Psych’s first convention near Chicago. It was both surprising and reassuring to hear other fans go up to ask the actors questions and they all shared similar stories to me. People have used to show to help them briefly escape from challenging situations from dealing with the death of loved ones all the way to someone using it as background TV while trying to study in medical school.

One of the few things I miss from Reddit is the active Psych subreddit over there.

Also, the 80’s references are fantastic.

I bought a new 2024 vehicle last year with a manual transmission. This will be the last manual I ever own. I don’t expect them to be around by the next time I get a car.

I’ve enjoyed driving stick since I was a teenager. It still makes my commute more enjoyable. A good rev matched downshift still makes me smile. I’m going to miss the experience when it finally comes to an end, but hopefully I can keep it up another 20 years.