When I first started with Linux, there were not a lot of old people in forums like this. Not a lot of women either, now that I come to think of it. Linux was considered a hackers' OS, and hackers were always young men.

I remember wondering why this was so. In fact I wrote a little blog-type article called "Linux for Senior Citizens" explaining how the security and safety of Linux (especially on the Internet), the excellent documentation, and the easily understandable way it works internally made it an ideal system for us oldies. And I explained how the CLI wasn't particularly frightening to that generation of women who had worked in offices in the 70's and 80's.

Now I've noticed that our generation is embracing Linux with enthusiasm. You can see it particularly if you look at the two current threads on "Why I use Linux" and "Why I use open-source software".

My mother is 66 and, since I installed Linux on her computer about 12 years ago, she hasn't used Windows again, except in very few cases when she needs to use a particular Windows program. She is by no means an experienced user, but Linux fulfils her needs (browsing the web, writing emails and text documents, printing, scanning, etc.). She's so used to KDE and Linux in general that when she needs to boot into Windows for some reason, she quickly does what she needs to do and boots back into Linux.

My parents have no clue what they are doing - and constantly I always see multiple browsers open, even though time and time again I showed them how to use tab browsing so yea I gave up on that. Right now they are on Win7 because of their precious flash based games - since at the time Adobe stated flash would stay at v11 and only have security updates. Now they did a 180 on that, but I am still going to hold off switching them back to Linux. I will just let Win7 reach end-of-life (2020?) - then force them back on Linux, plus by that time it will be ample amount of time to see if Adobe keep their word and continues updating flash for Linux, or if they are going to change their minds again.

That is all that prevented me from migrating my parents to Linux, fscking flash.

-edit

From Google:

Jeebizz, have you tried Google Chrome (if you don't mind it being closed source)? Flash generally works fine with it on my Linux install.

I did, Google's PAPI alternative did not work with any of the sites for flash based games at all.

I must ask, is it that our generation is becoming more open to Linux, or is it that we are becoming the older generation?

I was around 60 when I started.

Probably both. So far. Age is a state of mind for me.
Being a jock all my life.
I still ride out in the open under the sun and camp under the sky.

I never had a clue I could drive one of these electronic devices, though.