Why would I get tired of helping friends and family out?

I voted yes, because anytime someone asks me for help, it's usually something broke in Vista on a machine that could barely run XP.

I use to, but it was a never ending stream of requests, I started saying "Only if I put Linux on it", and I get "will excel work ?". Now I do not get asked. A cousin of mine 'took over', and I get to hear his complaints He even branched out to MACs and one person is constantly breaking that.

I just chuckle now. BTW the way the last straw was when I went into one relatives PC and started M/S WEB browser (forgot it's name) and she had AOL as the home page, that was 3 years ago.

I voted "yes".

Normally I like helping my family out, but my brother-in-law kept calling me to fix things his kids messed up. He was supposed to keep the administrator password to himself. I found out later he gave the password to his kids so they can download and install whatever they want without bugging him.

If you'd given him Linux, he'd have given them the root password! Better software is no answer to stupidity.

I voted sometimes. In reality all I did to fix many windows issues for my folks were google searches and wah-lah, problem solved! Too bad, they can't do the same though

I had installd Linux for someone willing to try it. I had given them the root password since it was their machine. Not long after I had found out they had deleted Konquerer, while using Konquerer, along with apt-get and several other important programs.

That's where sudo comes into play. sudo gives a fine level of control, it is often misconfigured as an all-or-nothing proposition, but it can be set to run just specific programs with specific parameters by specific accounts. It can be configured to allow him or his kids to run only the proper package manager in a configuration which uses only the official repositories. There is relatively little mischief they can get into with that, at least compared to a situation where random stuff is downloaded and installed.

If you install linux for them, then you are now the linux administrator for their system. Which is in a way not bad, I'd rather help them with linux than windows. I would recommend to them the linux distro you are using if you are more familiar with it.

I'm NO LINUX EXPERT. I still use google searches to fix my linux issues.

my stance used to be "i'll be happy to fix your computer by installing linux to it".

of the 2 friends i helped this way, 1 is still running it after 1+ year.

i am happy to help her.

but i will not make this recommendation as lightly as i used to because, as the previous poster pointed out, it does give me some responsibility.

also, i think i would be more willing to help with windows issues these days.
or android, or iOS.
most people are so clueless, they are awed when you find a suitable app for them. operating systems and administration don't really come into it.

another thought: people who have used their own computer (or similar electronic device) for a while, they know that they are responsible, and things just tend to break regardless of which operating system they use.
so maybe my responsibility isn't so big after all.

In spite of what I said earlier, I have helped relatives or the occasional friend. If it iterates, and the person isn't putting in any effort, but manages to break their system repeatedly, then I find ways, active or passive/aggressive to indicate that this is not OK.

But understand that "Mom" is a special case, right? In-laws are a special case.

Anyways, long, long ago an uncle got into computers and he asked me some questions about WordPerfect, at like a family gathering. I found it interesting because even though I was in my 20's, I'm the baby of my family and my mother was the baby of hers. So he actually was in his 60s when I was just out of college. To have a retired guy "getting into" computers was a bit intriguing.

But then at EVERY get together to have him come over and say, "Hey, in WordPerfect, ... when you hit CTRL-ALT-F7-SHIFT-LEFT-ARROW to cause it to un-indent, how come that won't work all the time?!?" Got very old, very fast. But I did manage to say, "Hey, I've USED it, but I don't live in it, you've gone way beyond my level of expertise." He seemed to like the fact that he had one up on me. And he went into printing family cards galore, printing pictures, etc, etc. A lot of this was all before the Internet was big at all. I think he did his daughter's wedding invitations and my Mom crowed all over how beautiful they were.

But in all honestly, he worked at it, and still does today. When I see him, yeah he's pushing 100, we joke about how you can get WordPerfect to work on a cell phone! And he says "8 or 10 keys are covered by my fingertip!!!" (soft keyboard and small screen size).

That's good stuff and I respond to him. People who act like perpetual idiots who just want you to fix it, I sort of stay away from them.

I hate people, but I'll do anything for them.

As is typical for mechanics, most of the time it's my own Windows machine that needs more attention than I care to give it.