Because we, the techies, are a tiny minority. There are billions of comparatively clueless users who can apparently easily be scammed into installing malware. Governments and banks will be exerting significant pressure on Google to make their phones “secure”, and they can actually threaten them. I don’t see this as some grand conspiracy to destroy the hobbyist scene, Google just doesn’t care about the individual.

It was the first android tablet that was actually decent

Not something I noticed from several years of use. Every touchscreen I’ve used has behaved the same since they moved from resistive to capacitive!

Has there ever been a good one?

The original nexus 7 was pretty good (for the first few years of its life)

Here is a good resource for whether you can install another OS on a particular Chromebook

They get what I have so when they have questions I’m more likely to know, and if I don’t I have a machine with me that I can check. It was Mint when I was still learning, now it’s Fedora Atomic. Or for the really tech-averse, ChromeOS Flex.

I have an xbox controller (I think it’s a “series” one, but could be a “one” one, they look the same) and it seems to run fine with a steam deck. There’s probably a little latency, but it’s pretty negligible.

It’s basically what the steam deck does, and that’s very much for Linux noobs!

Amusingly the last Signal outage I remember was actually caused by Musk when he tweeted “use Signal” and so many people did that it took down their sign-up servers

I’ve only been a Linux user for a couple of years though so I’ve got no excuse!

XFCE is fine, it seems to largely behave and while it doesn’t have any bells and whistles it can do everything it tries to do fine. Gnome on the other hand… everything I wanted it to do required a plugin which had since been broken by a new version. Plasma seems great so far!

I just moved to Plasma from XFCE and my first thought was wow, this runs fine on old hardware, why have I been suffering through the 2010 experience when I could have had features all this time!?

Mmm, creamy

Maybe they’d only ever used it headless?

I did my first fedora atomic install yesterday. I’m doing my part!

I set up Mint for a non-techy relative on their old desktop.

• Their use-case is almost entirely web browser, so there was no need to cover installing programs. Click the same browser icon and it should behave basically the same way.
• No need to explain the terminal beyond “this is where you can type advanced commands, you don’t need to worry about it”.
• If there’s an error message, read it and try to understand what it’s actually saying rather than just dismissing it. Do a web search if you’re feeling confident, send me a photo of the screen if you’re not.
• Explain how to install updates (or just configure automatic backups and updates for them).
• Explain when and why the computer will ask for a password (e.g. login and updates) and how that password is for the computer, not for their email or whatever.
• Explain the basics of folders. This is your home directory, here’s where downloads go, here’s how to create a folder and drag your files into it.
• Tell them not to panic. I’ve seen a lot of older people terrified of pressing the wrong button, make sure they know how to understand what they’re doing and undo their mistakes.
• Be patient!

While it does have a paid tier it’s fully useable for free, and I’m pretty sure you can import from keepass

Not even based on, it is Android

Whose legs does Linus have on his desk? They definitely don’t look to be attached to his body…

There’s !linuxphones@lemmy.ca / !linuxphones@lemmy.ml which often have some interesting chats about projects like PostMarketOS. I’ve not seen anything that is a viable replacement for a “daily driver” smartphone yet, but if you’re keen to tinker then there’s probably some cool stuff to try out.