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Comment by eptcyka | Hacker News Reader

When forced to use Linux at an early age, I was given the agency to be made fun of and miss out on social things, i.e. discussing currently relevant games. It got me the jobs and knowledge eventually too, but I really did not learn much from blindly running ./configure and make and make install. I shudder to think exactly how my wine installation worked. There are significant downsides to using Linux and the freedom it brings needs lots of context to appreciate. If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less.

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> discussing currently relevant games

We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran.

If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals.

In many ways, this isn't about Linux at all. It's about parenting.

At the time it was a GTA title. Regardless, the Linux alternatives are useless, there is no alternative to the socially agreed upon phenomena, the child can either participate pr they cannot. The exclusion is not necessarily a bad thing, but you end up having the child swim upstream a bit.

that's fair. unfortunately windows has changed so much since that time that the downsides of allowing kids to use it are much worse now than they were even 10 years ago.

That’s not really the case in 2025. Proton is very good

All games run on Linux in 2025 except multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat.

Does Fortnite? I remember finishing hl2 on dx level 7, and then trying the same with ep1 and ep2. Those games are a lot harder when half the physics objects are not rendered. Do not get me wrong - I run Linux on all of my personal machines today, I play games on them, I know what's the state of gaming on Linux. I also know that every now and then I will get to at the very least read some logs to figure out what's going wrong, e.g. the native port of Civ VI was looking for a version of openssl whose time had passed. Further, relying on Wine/Proton inherently means you will always lag behind the bleeding edge in terms of DX APIs, as wine/mesa people need to catch up to implement them. Even worse if it is not related to graphics,e.g. as the spatial audio APIs don't have an open source analogue that is ferociously trying to keep up with feature parity. And of course we also have kernel level anti-cheat. I have immense respect for everyone who is involved in making games (and windows software in general) work on Linux. But there will always be stumbling blocks when you are playing 2nd fiddle, and you've not been given the sheets. And nobody told you where the gig is happening.

> Does Fortnite?

That falls under the "multiplayer titles that want to install kernel level anti cheat"

Fortnite will work with Heroic Games Launcher. Though I believe you may run a higher risk than normal of being banned by Epic for cheating. So try not to be too good.

It does work in Chrome with Amazon Luna, IIRC.

> If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point. The value is in understanding and leveraging that understanding to achieve your goals.

I don’t know about that. Just to be upfront: I’m not advocating putting your kids through this because I think they have to have that motivation for themselves to really benefit.

However, I basically did blindly follow guides to try and get things working without fully understanding what I was doing. Over time, things stick and I’m able to look under the surface and get a better understanding and better solve the problem I’m facing.

Hell, any “Learn X Language” book works like this! There’s always boilerplate that you need to kinda skip over for a while just so you can get a running program. Hell, I’m leaning Rust and I’m using #[] “decorators” and I couldn’t tell you exactly what they’re doing!

I’m sure you also give out raisins and sugar free mints at Halloween too.

We don't get many kids coming to the house on Halloween. Only two this year. We buy this big bag of candy at Costco, and we always end up with a lot of extra, and my kids end up sitting and eating it. Not great.

>We shun most of this as faddish and low quality. Fortnite and Battlefield are replaced with OpenMW and Veloran.

My parents didn't let me read Song of Ice and Fire Harry Potter (and do a lot of other contemporary culture things) when I was younger because they said they are pop culture fad. Only haute culture literature in this household! I've had a good childhood but I also missed out on a lot of good things because parenting decisions like this.

And Fortnite is actually an awesome game, it's the mugen we were all dreaming for.

The point isn’t to play the best “non-faddish” games. It’s to play what’s in the zeitgeist and form bonds with people their own age.

I’m so glad my parents didn’t override my decisions on literature or video games or TV shows. I watched anime then, my parents didn’t get it, and that’s perfectly fine. I continue to enjoy it now. If they had made me adopt their mindset of “anime = fad” or “anime = cartoon = childish” I’d have been worse off. Instead of enjoying masterpieces like Frieren I’d be snobbishly thinking about what a fad it is.

We avoid fads because they come and go too quickly. My kids connect with their friends on games that are more enduring, like the From Software titles.

I feel so sorry for your kids. They deserve a better parent. Remember: your kids are NOT you and they DESERVE to have agency in their lives EVEN if it goes against your interests and desires.

That is such a sweeping statement. Part of what a parent does is guides kids to good decisions, and protect them from the consequences of bad ones. They need agency, and more as they get older, but you do not let them just do what you want.

My job is to guide them and use my judgment where their judgment is poor. That is intrinsic in the nature of parenting. Thank you for the guidance though. I understand that you feel strongly and that you hope my kids can be happy even though they're stuck with me as a parent. I do too!

Enduring based on what metrics? Fornite is now an 8-year old massively (and still is) successful game. And the Battlefield series is actually 7 years older than the Souls series if you count from Demon's Souls. Comparing these 3 games is even more absurd because they are from entirely different genres, and they are not mutually exclusive, one can enjoy more than one genre.

I agree with other commenters in here, I feel sorry for your kids and thankful that my parents didn't treat me like what you are doing with your kids now.

When I think about enduring titles, I think about whether the kind of game that you'd pick up 20 years later and still consider to be a good game. I raised them on a curriculum of games starting with 80s titles and as they got older I progressed them all the way up into the 2020s so they would have a perspective on where particular gameplay mechanics came from. I see your point about the longevity of the Battlefield series and Fortnite, but my impression is people don't go back and play earlier Battlefield titles: I have always viewed them a little bit like the FIFA titles where there is a constant treadmill of needing to buy the latest version of the game. This is not true for Dark Souls, for example -- it's a sort of game you could play in decades and it would be as much of a masterpiece then it is today. I didn't really mean to compare the titles, but rather to use them as examples of titles that I would approve or disapprove of.

My kids choose the games they play, but I exercise judgment in vetoing certain decisions. My example of the From Software titles were not games that I bought for them, or even played (in the case of Elden Ring), but rather titles that my boys were into because of their friend group playing it. They've been playing Night Reign lately and enjoying it. I think people read into my dismissal of Battlefield and Fortnite as indicative of some much larger pattern that they've had a really bad experience with, but I'm not sure that conclusion is warranted.

Again, that’s you substituting your judgement for theirs. There’s nothing wrong participating in a fad btw. Free time doesn’t need to be “productive” by only consuming something exalted like From Software.

I substitute my judgment for theirs as a parent; that's intrinsic in the nature of the job.

As I said in my previous comment, my kids chose the From Software titles because their friend group plays it, so I don't think that's a particularly good example of me substituting my judgment for theirs.

[flagged]

I'm proud of my decisions and I'm not here to defend them. I'm here for the conversation because I'm interested in the topic.

I vetoed Minecraft and replaced it with MineTest because Minecraft has the hypixel community, which is essentially an MMO that's built inside of the world of Minecraft and dominates the Minecraft playerbase. I was worried that my 11-year-old would be too young to deal with a massively multiplayer game like that, so I prohibited Minecraft for him. The original joy of Minecraft when I first bought it off of Notch's site in 2009 was that you could build things and exercise creativity. I found that in the MMO versions of Minecraft, this is less of a focus. So instead I host a docker container with a minetest instance that we can all build in together.

I also vetoed Roblox because I feel that the entire economy in that game is going to be a net negative, particularly the aspect where kids beg their parents to use real money to buy them Robux.

But to your point, the list of things I veto is pretty small: I'm socially very liberal, and so the main thing I'm trying to filter for is games that are exploitative of their playerbase in some way. In the case of Battlefield and Fortnite, since I used those examples earlier, these are both games that my kids have independently decided they are not interested in; I think some folks read my original comment that I had removed Battlefield and Fortnite from my household. But if you look at my phrasing, I used the passive voice because it was basically a group decision to never really pick them up. I'm using weasel language because they sometimes go over their neighbor's house and have experience with those games, so I don't want to make it out like they've never played them at all.

I think you've justified your positions more than enough and it's clear you've thought through these decisions and made them along with your kids. Good choices on the game selection!

Forbidding Minecraft is crazy. Helicopter parent 100%.

Sorry about my previous comment. It felt to me like you were deflecting because I was asking about what you’d vetoed and it felt like you were saying you hadn’t vetoed anything.

I actually agree with your vetoes and your logic for the vetoes makes sense. An MMO is too much for a 11 year old. And getting kids hooked the real money aspect of Roblox will have negative consequences in the future.

Obviously I’m no one, but it seems to me like you’re a good dad. Good on you. Again, sorry for the contentious tone of my previous comment.

No worries! I enjoy the discussion, and thanks for the kind words.

Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for something different here.

I think you’ve misinterpreted my tone in this thread, I really was approaching it because I was curious about his parenting style. But I’ve apologised to the other guy, because it wasn’t my intention to ruffle any feathers. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873355)

I’ve made a couple of nasty comments about Elon Musk recently. I’m unlikely to change the way I speak about him. I don’t speak about anyone else that way, as far as I know. You can ban me if insulting Elon Musk in particular and no one else is something you don’t like. It is my sincere belief that he warrants an exception, because of the damage he’s done and continues to do. You’re welcome to defend him and ban people who insult him in the name of upholding the rules.

>I’ve made a couple of nasty comments about Elon Musk recently. I’m unlikely to change the way I speak about him.

Writing like this is covered in the site guidelines:

"Edit out swipes"

I believe I covered this when I said

> It is my sincere belief that he warrants an exception, because of the damage he’s done and continues to do.

This site deteriorates when any of us put a personal belief above the beliefs detailed in the guidelines.

I respect your opinion, it is a valid one.

And yet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The issue is not tolerance, or intolerance; it's the site goal of pursuing "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" and doing so while we all, among other things,

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

None of that precludes us here from criticizing someone or something. It's a matter of how we hold such discussions.

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

You’re being curmudgeonly.

Please don’t break site guidelines. Take some time to review them.

I was 100% on your side until you list FromSoftware games. As good as they are, they're a single-genre game developer that has a very narrow design and audience.

There's nothing more substantive or enduring about their games intrinsically, that's 100% you just projecting your own opinions about what games are 'enduring' onto your kids, and is not giving them the 'guidance' you seem to think it is.

Not really. I tend to favor single-player games because they can be effectively archived and played in several decades. Multiplayer games routinely just get killed by their publishers. So I do view single player games as intrinsically more enduring than their multiplayer counterparts.

I'm sorry you see it as projection onto my children. I'm keenly aware that many parents try to force their kids to live the life they lived, and I've been careful to not do that. But I understand that that's not coming through to you in this discussion. I appreciate the advice though.

> Multiplayer games routinely just get killed by their publishers.

You are confusing "multiplayer" with "massively multiplayer online" games. The vast majority of multiplayer games are not MMOs. There are tons of multiplayer games that you can run your own servers for, or which use P2P or local LAN connections to not require any publisher presence or support for.

Hell, set them up a Minecraft or ARK or whatever survival-crafter game server, and they can invite and play with their friends on it.

Yes! I'm a huge fan of those. Increasingly rare, though. Was trying to play No Man's Sky, Sniper Elite v2, Quake/Quake2 Enhanced recently with the kids and all required centralized multiplayer. Super disappointing. I do run servers for MineTest (Luanti, really, but ya know), Xonotic, Starcraft 1, etc. but connect-by-IP on an actual LAN seems like the exception these days, rather than the rule.

Out of curiosity, what games published after 2020 (just making up a year here) can you play on LAN with one player creating a server and another connecting via IP? It's my ideal setup, but it seems to only really be available in open source games.

> what games published after 2020 can you play on LAN with one player creating a server and another connecting via IP?

There are tons, it really just depends on what you want to play. Looking at my steam library (installed only, so I can verify there's a LAN option) gives me:

Misery, Necesse, Voyagers of Nera, Infinite Rails, Windward Horizon, 7 Days to Die, HumanitZ, Barotrauma, Avorion

Keep in mind that those are just from the MP games I have currently installed, that are from 2020 onwards. I have 131 mp games from that release period, and only 33 of those are installed, and I only checked games that I figured would be likely candidates (i.e. I excluded Sniper Elite 5, Remnant 2, MechWarrior 5, etc).

So yeah, LAN/ direct IP connect options are still really common, it's just something to check beforehand. Also, the genre really changes the likelihood of having it.

Some smaller titles in there, which makes sense! I'll admit I haven't heard of any of those games, so this may be ignorance on my part. I was thinking of the games from the bigger studios and their general desire to retain complete control of the multiplayer aspects of their games, but I concede that while they have the most players, they are not most of the games. =)

Appreciate you doing some legwork to make your point!

Come on, you can't claim with a straight face that something like Sekiro is not more substantive or enduring than, say, that Rocksteady Suicide Squad game.

Yeah, I'd mentioned the From Software titles because they have received universal acclaim. They were intended to be an example that was not contentious. So much for that!

> We shun most of this as faddish and low quality.

This is almost word for word the same way my parents talked about Harry Potter and Pokemon when I was feeling alienated in school for only being allowed to read religious books for entertainment.

It leads to some pretty strong resentment, if that's the kind of thing you care about.

My boys are sitting and reading through this with me as I make comments. They are very surprised by the resentment expressed by many of the comments.

My eldest read your comment and said that Battlefield and Fortnite are trash because of the multiplayer component that leads to gameplay that's low quality. He doesn't feel this way about Elden Ring, for example. In short, we exercise judgment.

What does that even mean? How can we trust your kid's judgement of games they're not allowed to play?

When I was a kid I parroted my parents opinions about Harry Potter books being a pathway to practicing witchcraft. Now in hindsight I recognize those weren't so much my opinions as they were a performance to get my parents approval.

To be clear I'm not psychoanalyzing your kids (not liking multiplayer is rational), I'm sharing my own related experience.

The witchcraft angle as expressed included a personal interpretation that included being righteous towards and at the expense of others externally, to validate one's self internally. It's not the child's fault what they recieve without question and have to do the work to undo.

In the case of judgement, we can pick something simple like TV shows. A parent can speak to their kids about the addictive quality of some shows that leave them upset when turned off, vs 15 minutes of something that didn't and have them start to be aware of the difference, and how they seem to get bored of both and want to go back to the real world.

Doing that long before it's needed, allows the development of awareness, which as long as it's modeled by the parents, leaves the home as the important teacher of navigating the world, not the households of friends and teachers alone.

That's an opinion... All multiplayer games are bad.

I didn't want to paraphrase what he said too much, but since you're inquiring, I think the general idea is that multiplayer games strive for particular types of engagement and the techniques that companies use to drive that engagement is often negative. I can see that this also exists in single-player games, particularly in mobile apps. We tend to avoid those as well.

Multiplayer is a special category of risk in my opinion because I was an ever quest player and I built a feeling of responsibility toward the players that were relying on me and this led me away from schoolwork. I'm trying to avoid that same pitfall by still allowing them to game, even in a multiplayer setting, just only to a limited degree.

We simply try to avoid the games that are the most egregious in this particular way because they're the riskiest.

After a ~20 year break from first person shooters I’ve recently played Call of Duty Multiplayer and what struck me was how many superficial skins or various rewards were visible to others - it seems to steer the player to accumulate these things (through play or $), to show others in the game.

And the odd pumpkin heads (literally players with pumpkins as heads) running around coinciding with Halloween.

Very different than Counter Strike circa 2005.

Roughly the same mechanics but much more commercialised, playing to the psychological weaknesses of players.

I think you've articulated his point better than I could!

Gaming today is very much based in retention and hijacking the retention by any means necessary.

Playing originals is a different experience and possibly what might give kids a different experience of gaming.

A lower-fi game leaves more to the imagination as well.

Just to be clear, I don’t think your parenting decisions here are harmful, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the centimeter thick gentoo manual. My only plea is to acknowledge the downsides- and it might well be the case they are minimal. I wish you luck and patience in parenting.

No worries. I'm here for the discussion, and appreciate how others see things. Thanks for your thoughts!

It sounds like the difference may be— if your boys are able to make the comparison— that you also did not forbid them from those games? That would explain some of the difference from resentment in these areas that is often born from the material being banned. That leads to social isolation, because multiplayer w/ people you know is really not so much about the game mechanics compared to the shared social experience.

Developing social intelligence and not following social proof are two valuable skills that parents can develop themselves and with their little ones.

Limiting reading like that is extremely restrictive and unnecessary.

I do not think it can be compared to choice of OS where you have to choose one per machine (unless you dual boot or run VMs).

I am guessing when you say "religious books" you mean a narrow range of books approved of by a very narrow minded religious group. Not much mention of, say, scriptures and mystics using sexual imagery, for example. right? Of the many deeply religious major authors who did not fit that particular groups views?

If you follow the context of the thread it should be clear my reply is about GP prohibiting their kids from playing games with their friends, not the OS choice.

My kids play games with their friends, just to be clear. What we don't do is pick up any game that their friends happen to be playing without evaluating it first. And this is a discussion that I have with my children, not some mandate from on high.

The discussion is the most important part because they see review and thinking it over modelled for them instead of told to them and decided for them.

This comment is epically pretentious, but I agree that kids shouldn’t be playing online games designed as skinner boxes to increase playtime and financial spend. Makes kids miss out because everyone is playing them? Eh, too bad. They gotta wait for their late teens, imho.

I don't see the pretension. We're simply making decisions about how to spend our time. Many times that doesn't align with what the majority of people like to spend their time doing. That's fine.

Just curious how did you persuade them? From what I see kids usually want to play whatever other kids play, like TikTok or Roblox or Fortnite.

> If you're doing things blindly in Linux, there's no point

I digress. Everyone has to start somewhere and not everything has to have a point in the start

When I started using linux, I got so fascinated by open source software that I would just search for software/software types and searched open source alternative to X and go to alternativeto or others and try it out etc.

I used to copy paste dnf commands in the start and I still remember that phase.

I think I learnt linux from myself and have given challenges along the way and I feel like there are things that I have still done blindly along the way (building linux isos)

But the fact was that I still felt proud that I was atleast able to replicate the commands and able to have some familiarity with the process. I feel like if I wanted to able to know more about xorriso and cpio to a deeper degree to understand what wizard magic commands I was running to building custom linux iso s etc.

Now I don't know about fortnite etc., I am a kid but surprisingly games don't interest me that much, I am way more in my movies / tv shows (just ended dexter s8) right now.

There is some alienated feelings when people online my age mention the games they play but I think that games on linux are genuinely great support from what I know and my pc doesn't have anything beyond integrated gpu so yeah

my cousins didn't want me to play much games and so they didn't buy a good gpu during the pc and I think they did succeed in this.

Its complicated to how I feel the situation or even let alone think how I would even try to approach this situation if or when I become a parent myself. Honestly, parenting can be a bit hard but I still don't know if you should shun something that you think is faddish or low quality partially because I think that the best thing you could do (imo) is educate them on the positives on linux and how they might outweigh the benefits of fortnite in the short to long term in a fun manner.

Its um complicated and there is definitely a feeling inside me on that i do some incredibly niche things which would be so complicated to explain to someone my age in my proximity. I think there is only one or two of my friends who actually know even 1% of the stuff that I do in linux (one of them had installed hyprland because of me haha)

> If you don’t provide the context, Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less

Couldn't agree more - Linux can be a great way to get into computing. But only if done in the right way. Arguably for an older kid / teenager (boys usually) it's important to have access to the same games your friends are playing, otherwise you start to become naturally excluded from lunch table talk.

Of course it still depends if the kid is a social butterfly etc., but parents should understand this.

Agreed. My kids (8 and 11) both have Linux on desktops in the living room. They work really well for what they want now, but someday we might have to make different choices.

> Linux is not empowering- it is just a windows that works less.

As a child, I couldn't stand Windows. Nothing works, you just want to do that, but there is always some stupid error message, that tells you nothing. And it never does what you tell it to do, it always does some random mess, that you do not yet know what it even is, or how to fix it.

As a child you need to see causality and have a predictive system, so that you can form a mental model and understand things, or even have the ability to form a question to ask the adults. You do not need a system, that is it's own child and is always mulish yet things it is the smartest thing in the world.

the same happens with children not getting mobile phones, or not wearing the same brand expensive clothes that others can afford.

sorry, but what you experienced is comparable to peer pressure, and as a parent, giving in to that is the wrong approach. you will not agree because you suffered as a result and i am sorry you had to go through that. my oldest is just getting into the age where these things start to matter, but regardless, my kids won't get phones and or anything besides linux for their own sake.

fortunately times are changing and working in our favor. windows 11 is practically unusable already, inpart because it refuses to run on anything but the most recent computers, and in part because it requires an online account, not to mention all the advertising that i refuse to subject my kids to. windows games run on linux better than ever thanks to steam, and my kids school uses linux too for the most part. so admittedly, this will be easier for my kids than it was for you.

That's a good point. My oldest has root on his own System76 laptop, and he's quite accomplished at administering it. But he is able to play and beat Elden Ring in Dark Souls, which would not have been an option five years ago in terms of compatibility.

Just in the last 5ish years Linux has turned into one of the best gaming platforms. I’m able to run pretty much anything on my laptop and steam deck both running Linux

As someone actually a teen. It is very interesting to share how I started my linux journey

I had only got a computer in 6th grade but I was always fascinated by computers in the sense that I was trying to run blindly termux scripts from youtube etc. to run windows programs or linux etc. and I had even successfully done these things earlier

But after 6th grade getting a pc, I was trying to learn some python in covid and uh, lets just say that vscode wasn't happy with a 500 mb ram win 7 pc

I even installed droidcam/womic etc. and it was a real treat on using your phone as a camera for sometime during online classes

Then uh my cousins and brothers bought me a new pc (technically my mum gave the money, so shoutout to you mom, i love you) and I am still rocking that pc

That pc has a very nice specs and they are so good except for one thing which is the gpu. it has just gotten an integrated intel 580 graphics card and barely any high power or mid power games can work on it

So I was having some games like valorant,portal etc. but mostly it became minecraft and I wasn't enjoying the other games

I was watching a lot of privacy content on youtube at the same time and how invasive microsoft is and how linux is just better in that sense.

Now I used to play valorant. It used to work on 60 fps but idk what triggered it to become extremely unplayable for me to the point that it was a godsend if it worked on 20fps

Tried doing everything but I realized that I am not playing a game at 20 fps and neither do I want to. It has kernel level access and its created by a game which has some chinese influence and Its not even about politics but I would actually not play american games with kernel level access either

That being said, First I thought of just reinstalling windows but then realized that if I am actually going through the hassle of re-installing system then might as well use linux (I thought backups were meh and I didn't have any important stuff [i think] anyways, although I wish I would've backuped my fathers occasional folders but eh its 2-3 years now)

Instaled nobara after watching linux experiment. To get the best linux gaming.

It is so funny but I thought that nobara/glorious eggroll had built all of this from scratch in start, like It was gnome and I was like wow did he make this and that and that oh my god, so cooool

Copy pasting dnf commands :sob: (I guess I am on cachy but old habits die hard regarding copy pasting, I still do it sometimes)

Then I went to raw archlinux, it was a mess in the start trying to experiment. I had arch kde and the experience was definitely something

Personally I used to play minecraft (with prism launcher) and not many games. And I genuinely wanted to play with arch more than gaming.

I then was on arch kde and I think I downloaded some games and tried to run it and lets just say that sailing the seas on linux was a very hacky solution but i was able to do that

Lets just say that your boy out here was installing a lot of software bloating disks and wanted minimalism and re-installing systems again and again (and always not making backups, I think I barely make backups even now :sob:)

I went from arch kde -> voidlinux iirc -> artix (realized that non systemd systems can't run vscode etc. a bit of a mess) -> arch hyprland iirc for a very long time and it was here where I tried to genuinely install proton and make games work and it had a very high learning curve (1-2 years flexing my neofetch) -> cachy hyprland (just 1-2 months ago) -> cachyos niri right now

Personally I would say that Linux is a W in everything but personally I just didn't have a graphics card at all to play modern games

From retrospect, regarding gaming, why not just buy older versions of playstation or xbox, are they not specifically designed for gaming itself. It can be a good physical level of seperation as well

I don't know what I do with linux honestly, I just do whatever my heart wants, so if someone asks me my hobbies, I genuinely don't know what to say, tinkering with linux/open source is the answer that I give (building custom linux isos, doing random open source cool stuff etc.)

I then go see on normal discord servers, the amount of games people play and I am like damn

The number of games I have completed/enjoyed can be counted on both my hands or maybe even just one

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this up! Your experience is excellent, and it sounds like you're approaching it with good judgment and curiosity! Linux is a ton of fun, because it's a toolbox you can, as you say, "do whatever your heart wants". Much of computing has lost that ethos, and I think it's a real step backwards.

One of my favorite computer scientists, Alan Perlis, wrote the dedication for a very famous computer science textbook that used to be used to teach students at MIT. The book is sometimes called "The Wizard Book", but it's real name is "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". The dedication said this:

> This book is dedicated, in respect and admiration, to the spirit that lives in the computer.

> I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.

I think your journey is a great example of that spirit!

Thanks I was going through a rough time(rather not comment) but your comment helped me a little bit.

Thanks once agian, have a nice day.

I guess my hobby is computing :p

Also feel free to take the comments other people have created regarding you being strict etc. or their opinions etc. in a positive manner. I am sure you want the best for your children and parenting can be complicated and there is no fit one approach and its glad that your children like linux/computing as well

Singleplayer support on linux is absolutely top notch imo and its only some very anti kernel leavel multiplayer cheats supports which get troubled and honestly i am not sure what is the best way to counter against that in linux

But there are some good games I can suggest but you might know them as well: Minecraft,Counter strike etc.

Although they don't share the open source, they share a similar spirit of modding etc. and its gotten almost mainstream enough. Open source games are mixed story with the only good I know being tuxkart haha

I think there is a point in trying to teach children something for their own benefit, since if you might not teach them about open source, I wonder who might teach them (I technically figured things by my own but trying to one up my brother was my motivation, read my other comments to know more)

Its a mixed bag and one of the advices I can give with my supremely limited knowledge but maybe you can try to take more advices from similar people etc. whether its on HN etc. and actually try to get more advice from everything to try to find if that was the best equilibria etc.

But I mean if your children have no objection (like as an example, I am teen and I also don't have much objections with not playing valorant in fact it was the reason technically I installed linux)

SO I guess everything is subjective and we are all just yolo'ing it in this sense but I do think its so crazy that we can comment on this platform and not know each other but have a weird sense of faith that we are talking to a human with similar-ish hobbies/interests living probably hundreds of miles away in an instant.

I think this is the fun of computing just as much as well :)

Have a nice day once again.

Right on. I really loved Minecraft in the early days, but I think it's changed a bit since then, so I focus on Luanti (MineTest is the name most people know, I think) these days. But yes, I'm a big fan of both Minecraft and Counter-Strike. You have good taste. =) I understand that MineCraft is taking steps to deobfuscate its source a bit, to embrace modding a bit more. I was excited to hear that! The early days with Bucket were a real hack based on decompiled sources, IIRC.

Agree with you about discussing things online with others being kind of crazy; I first ran into the internet in the late 90s, and the ability to find others based on interest was amazing. But as you said, always a measure of faith involved (that they are humans somewhere that are like us and have similar interests). As a guy that makes a lot of choices that put me in a minority, I find that online is often the only place I can actually meet someone with my interests, though I've gotten quite used to this. I would say I run into someone IRL with my interests once every 10 years or so.

My kids and I have tons of discussions about all this, and I've been chatting with them about this entire thread for a couple of days now, getting their thoughts and explaining the counter-points that people are offering (I try to steelman opposing views if I'm really passionate about the topic). It's been a fun exercise, both in putting my ego aside a bit, and also stepping into others perspectives. I'm not sure I know anywhere else online I could have conversations quite this way.

Again, thanks for reply. Hope to chat again in future threads. =)

You may not feel like you are completing or have completed a lot, but it is the journey that you are accomplishing. Clearly an incredible amount already! I had a similar story as you from a prior decade of tinkering (initially MSDOS/Windows, eventually Linux), and even chasing gaming. I never built any significant finished projects but I learned a ton of skills in the process of tinkering, hacking, and experimenting, all of which has resulted in a rewarding career and personal computing experiences.

It's great to read about younger people here treading the same path towards intellectual curiosity in computing. Keep up the great work!

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