Have you looked at local LLMs? You can download and run them off your own machine - no connecting to an external server. They aren’t any more power intensive than a lot of video games. I downloaded a DeepSeek model and I use ComfyUI to operate it locally

Outside of steam will be a case by case basis. I wouldn’t expect a lot of luck, and it may require that you use a compatibility layer like Wine.

I genuinely find LLMs to be helpful with a wide variety of tasks. I have never once found an NFT to be useful.

Here’s a random little example: I took a photo of my bookcase, with about 200 books on it, and had my LLM make a spreadsheet of all the books with their title, author, date of publication, cover art image, and estimated price. I then used this spreadsheet to mass upload them to Facebook Marketplace in bulk. In about 20 minutes I had over 200 facebook ads posted for every one of my books, which resulted in getting far more money than if I made one ad to sell all the books in bulk; I only had to do a quick review of the spreadsheet to fix any glaring issues. I also had it use some marketing psychology to write attractive descriptions for the ads.

ISWYMBIHTD

This thing is so early 2000s; I kinda love it for that

The thing that I appreciated most about Lemmy and my transition from Reddit is how cordial everyone has been. Even if a comment is taken out of context, people tend not to jump down each others throat and assume the worst, or make bad faith arguments full of fallacies. I’ve had legitimate back and forths with people, something that basically never happens on Reddit.

I find this interesting as I’m a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).

The additional ‘bloat’ in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.

Most of those points are why I mentioned that setting up the iso on a removable drive is probably the hardest part. If you can boot to it then the rest of the installation process at that point is pressing ‘next’ through the W10 initialization.

But I’ll also concede that an average mom and pop likely can’t handle opening powershell to run massgravel and activate windows, even though it’s as simple as copying and pasting, then pressing ‘1’

So Mint is the ‘distro’, which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.

A ‘desktop environment’ is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you’re likely using right now is called ‘Cinnamon’, which I personally didn’t like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.

Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: https://www.pling.com/p/2142957/

Have you ever seen how to draw a circle in GIMP?

It’s super easy, particularly if you follow a guide your first time. Your parents could absolutely do the install if you set up the USB for them. The hardest part is finding a safe download for the OS (they are .iso files) and setting it up on a USB stick (I recommend using a program called ‘Ventoy’ to do this).

I know that it’s a fediverse sin to post reddit links here, but there’s a genuinely superb megathread for Windows 10 LTSC IoT available that I recommend:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/comments/15rfdjo/windows_ltsc_megathread/

In terms of actually installing you can initiate it by plugging the USB stick in and going through the start menu settings; or, when you boot up the computer you press F2/F12 to enter the BIOS screen, and you select the plugged in USB stick as your “boot drive”. This makes the computer open the USB stick instead of your already-installed OS.

I couldn’t name another Microsoft employee if a gun was to my head. but I can still vividly remember myself in 4th grade reading about Bill Gate’s mega mansion in Popular Mechanics for Kids

Already did and it’s glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.

I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the ‘Debian’ distribution, and use the ‘KDE Plasma’ desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.

I moved into a tiny home and got one for measuring the current draw of my kitchen appliances and keeping track of the cost of my electric space heater ($40/month so far, yeesh)

I remove defender on my installs as it’s resource heavy and it doesn’t provide me any additional security that I require. I don’t download any software to the PC aside from the run-of-the-mill apps, so I don’t need Defender constantly scanning my system and files.

I don’t replace the anti-virus with anything. You can use the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) to scan files if needed but I haven’t needed it yet. For a firewall I use Simplewall, which is a fantastic lightweight FOSS app I recommend to everyone

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Oof that’s a challenge, but one can assume they’ve grown quite a bit as a studio and are up to taking on the task. I wish them luck!

Try a less popular VPN server by your provider. Sometimes I have to use Uzbekistan to get Reddit and other sites to allow me on