My 2024 in tech (so far):- same old Jan-May- in mid-June I started the blog #TheFutureIsFederated to introduce the Fediverse to people not familiar with it- in July I started interoperability tests between Fediverse projects- in August I federated my W...

[_elena@mastodon.social]

My 2024 in tech (so far):
- same old Jan-May
- in mid-June I started the blog #TheFutureIsFederated to introduce the Fediverse to people not familiar with it
- in July I started interoperability tests between Fediverse projects
- in August I federated my Wordpress site, joined Friendica and 3 content aggregators. More interoperability tests
- in October I joined Sharkey
- yesterday I found out about "eternal September" (thanks @nimi) & went down a Usenet rabbit hole
- now I wanna learn Linux!

[_elena@mastodon.social]

The previous toot is a demonstration of how quickly you get "radicalized" by FOSS projects (joking, obvi).

But really, this is a call for help. How do you get your average, not super technical person to learn about Linux? Where's the best place to start / books to read? I'd like to do a deep dive before Fosdem.

And reminder: I'm just a filmmaker / designer with some Wordpress dev skills, so the learning curve may be steep...

Pinging my guides @stereo @oblomov @informapirata for advice

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@_elena @nimi What a journey, very cool!

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@stefan thanks Stefan! Ran out of text so failed to mention that in September I federated two additional Wordpress sites, joined Matrix and successfully bridged it to 3 centralized messaging apps

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@_elena Nice!

Relevant to https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/113339446754587013, I wish tech CEOs were this interested in technology, rather than optimizing ad-click rates.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@stefan those links are fascinating - thanks for sharing Stefan.

I had never heard of Blaine Cook and his attempts to make Twitter decentralized. Now going down another rabbit hole of research

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@_elena No problem!

And yeah, definitely fascinating to think we could have had a fediverse since the early days of Twitter. Just to imagine what the world would look like if it really happened.

So grateful for all the work people put in to make fediverse happen today.

[lutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com]

@_elena as a creative, maybe @pop_os_official. @elementary has visual appeal. @linuxmint seems to be the beginner-friendly one. For Apple hardware you must look for "Asahi" @AsahiLinux @ubuntuasahi.

My main advise is don't take the big jump, go step by step. Try multiple distros: one with GNOME, with with KDE, one with Mate... you will break the distro so get ready to reinstall. Keep a working device, you'll have to go back to what you know sometimes.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@lutindiscret thank you for the superb advice.

Quick follow-up question: would Michael Kofler's "Linux: The Comprehensive Guide" be a good place to start or is it too overwhelming for a beginner? If you have book recommendations, I'm all ears

[lutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com]

@_elena I don't know what you want to learn but you really don't need to learn bash, vim, command-line, kernel or whatever user-hostile nerdy stuff.

IMO you need a good online tutorial and more important, a community to help: a forum or a chat (matrix!) and a mindset of discovering and playing

Linux is easier to use than to install. If you fail to install, get some help, that doesn't mean you won't be confortable surfing/mailing/tooting/writing/videoediting with it

[lutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com]

@_elena like if you follow https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html you could already learn so much stuff