Do something that will make them laugh and enjoy themselves.

I gave a seminar once that ended with a demonstration of the terminal, ssh, and nginx. I had everyone go to the url where I was hosting a hello world. I killed the server over ssh and told them to refresh the page. Nothing there. I swapped the page, turned it back on, and told them to refresh the page again. I Rick Rolled them. They all laughed. It may not have been the most informative talk, I didn’t really ‘teach’ them anything, but I got some good questions afterwards.

Be creative and make it fun and they will come to you.

You could turn it off and turn it back on every X period of time, but that doesn’t guarantee something doesn’t go wrong in between. It sounds like you don’t have alot of data relatively speaking. Is there a reason not to keep it on your present machine and do the above? Cost? IIRC you can get a 1 tb m.2 for under $150.

We are not worthy!

You might be able to select all. Wait 3 hours. Press ‘mark as read’. Wait another 3 hours. And then unsubscribe as the bullshit hits your inbox

Also. Move read emails to the archive people. That’s what it is there for.

If you are an expert, why are you asking pee ons like us?

Literally cut the cord for them. Seriously though. If they are happy with it and can afford it, I’d just leave it alone

My mom uses them for dog poop too

Email management. Like at all. Set up filters and use the archive. There is a key to do that. And holy fuck 2432 unread emails? You should be ashamed of yourself

Alacritty. Alacritty. Alacritty. And did I mention Alacritty? (I’m just counting how many I have open atm)

Got Liz and Dick Cheney

Linux is grown. BSD is engineered

It’s probably a colonialist name that isn’t used anymore. It’s now known as Eswatini

Swaziland and Switzerland

That’s a very good point

That’s true. Most are perfectly fine provided they have a computer ready to use. Straight out of the box. Immediately. The lack of choice itself is comforting. Everything moves forward. No lateral motion.

We must provide them that type of “thing that just works”. Constantly move forward. What is comfortable. What is familiar.

Most people have had great answers coming from the company side of things. I’ll take it from the standpoint of individuals like us helping someone linux curious see the light, while still having the “just works” experience.

Do not give them any choices. None. Put them on your stable distro of choice for a new user, call whatever that is “Linux”, and be on your way.

But why? Isn’t that antithetical to everything we value? Yes and no. We value choice almost above anything else, but that doesn’t “just work” for most people. Which of those do you value more?

This was a lot of what I was getting at. We artificially build our own walled garden. We’ll let anyone in just as much as we’ll throw turds over the fence. Your shit don’t stink if you throw it at someone else

Get yourself a good therapist. It is their job to help you answer these kinds of questions yourself.

The arch wiki is difficult to use for beginners. Each page is single topic. It is not a guide. Using it daily, it takes at least a month to understand it well enough to “build your own guides”. If you want to do that kind of deep dive, jump on in. If not, you’ll have a better time using just about any distro other than arch.

BTW. If you do decide to take that route. Don’t become one of those miscreants who “uses arch btw” It’s a red flag for someone who doesn’t know wtf they are talking about.

Could you share that script with op?