Technology

You should have sympathy for people in abusive relationships. Your judgmental attitude is ridiculous in both respects.

And the thing of it is, back in the good old days you actually had to learn how to use your computer. This took effort, comprehension, and skill. And probably reading some manuals. Like, actual words printed on dead trees, bound up into a book. This was normal and expected, and you would build up your skillset to operate the machine you probably paid thousands of dollars for. No one had a problem with this then.

Learning to use Linux is no different, but nowadays everyone just wants everything handed to them and they'll steadfastly refuse to put forth any effort while simultaneously failing to realize that figuring out whatever the next workaround is to get around something that Microsoft broke for them in the last update is basically exactly the same thing. Think back when you were learning to use DOS or trying to install your VESA local bus video card drivers in Windows 3.1, or desperately fiddling around with EMM386 in your config.sys file to try to get enough conventional memory freed up at startup to run Doom. If you had the amount of online resources we have now to just get the answer and not have to call tech support (and probably pay for it), or paw through a manual, or just be fucked and have to figure out by trial and error on your own, we would have all been stoked.

Entitlement breeds complacency, and complacency leads to the Dark Side. If you go out of your way to teach yourself to be helpless, you will be helpless.

Back then you owned your computer. By and large outside of some specific special purpose fuckery with licensing dongles you physically possessed the software you ran. Like, on a disk. You controlled what you ran, not some outside source. With all of the commercial operating systems (this includes OSX and iOS, Android, and Windows all to various degrees) this is now actively being taken away from you. The only way to claim it back is to run one of the open source platforms.

There's a great Linux distro guide here.

Elemental OS if you want a Maclike interface.

According to the guide, Zorin OS would be great for beginners if you want a Microsoft-like interface that's FOSS.

It is now. If someone just uses the browser, they wouldn't really notice if it was Linux. Well, they'll notice because it would be faster. I have my entire Steam and GOG library setup on Linux and every game I want to play regularly works just fine. Yes there are instances where I'd need to get on the terminal but that's quite rare.

A lot of software still requires Windows.

Games are a big one for sure, but there is a lot of productivity and creative software that does not run on Linux.

For me, Minecraft bedrock (for kids) but looks like anything MS tainted will start (or maybe already does) require windows.

Looks like I have to decide what to do soon because they're still on W10.

have to use Adobe suite

You have already been damned. There is no hope.

If you're not willing to try to escape the terrible enshittification of Adobe, I don't think anyone's gonna be able to help you.

That sucks. Sorry you have to deal with their bullshit AND Microsoft's bullshit.

Other software might surprise you. 🤷‍♂️