Well, there’s your problem ;-)
This is great, though, really. I broke our computer so many times growing up, I couldn’t possibly count. I don’t think I ever lost anything of import, other than some savegames of mine. I keep telling people who ask, “how do I learn Linux?” that they need to use it, tinker with it, break it, and fix it, ideally without anything other than man pages and distro docs. It is a shockingly effective way to learn how things work.
It isn't that he could do that, but what else to give up?
Examples (I've been on desktop Linux since 2009): shutdown actually reboots except for a few months with some lucky combination of kernel and nvidia driver. The brightness control keys didn't work for at least half of the years. They currently work. All of that has workarounds but I understand that some people legitimately fold and go using another OS.
Oh he'll figure it out eventually. This kid might be going places.
I started with Linux installing it from floppy disks in about 1996.
In 1995, I was back on Windows 95 within a week because I needed to get something done.
In 2000, I was back on Windows 2000 within a week because I needed to get something done.
In 2005, I was back on Windows XP within a week because I needed to get something done.
In 2012, I was back on Windows 7 within a week because I needed to get something done.
In 2015, I was back on macOS within a week because I needed to get something done.
In 2020, I worked out I'm wasting my time on this.
I watch my colleagues and friend struggling with it. Lots of small papercuts. Lots of weirdness. Lots of regressions. Plus many years of server-side experience says to me "I should probably just use FreeBSD" in that space.
It just worked in Linux. I don't get where this comes from, because every time I hit a problem in Linux, there's a solution.
In windows, you get a vague hex error code that leads you to a support page where the error could be caused by one of a dozen reasons.
And on top of that, MS is constantly hostile to any user who just wants a basic OS to use their computer with.
Secondly, there isn't always a solution in Linux. I've got one now where something is utterly broken and it's 5 layers of maintainers down and no one gives a shit.
I want to upgrade in order to retain that local account.
Then use massgrave hwid activator.
Steam getting proton was a godsend, all those years of games became playable so now I have a huge back catalog.
Not a bad idea. This is exactly what I do on my daily driver.
It's harder as a parent to know that you're capable of solving their problem and still say no, but by age 12 that's pretty much your primary job: to find more and more things that they can start doing for themselves, express your confidence in them, and let them figure out how to adult bit by bit. Breaking a Linux install and fixing it again is among the lowest stakes ways that dynamic will play out from here on.
and now I’m constantly getting these complaints “I can’t get screen capture to work under Wayland… I switched from lightdm to sddm and I can’t work out how to switch back… I accidentally started an i3 session and I can’t work out how to log out of it.”
It makes me kind of miss Windows, in a way. It is good he’s learning so much. But the downside is Linux gives him lots more ways to break things and then ask me to fix them for him. And a lot of this stuff I then have to learn myself before I can fix it, because most of my Linux experience is with using it as a server OS, where desktop environments aren’t even installed