you’re probably making them feel like Linux is second class. kids are smart and they’ll know that elementaryOS isn’t macos. All they’ll think is that they got the “cheap version” or something

If these Macbook Airs are from 2011/2013 (I expect so, based on the prices you mentioned), you might need to buy a usb wifi btw. The Linux driver, and the official broadcomm driver is buggy with latest versions of the kernel. On my mid-2011 macbook air there would be a crash when downloading lots of data (e.g. when updating the system), and on my 2013 one, it wouldn’t wake up from sleep. Both issues were due to the buggy wifi driver. So I bought a tp-link super tiny usb wifi stick, and it works out of the box (I had to blacklist of course the broadcomm drivers before).

One last thing is that Elementary requires 1.2 GB of RAM to boot up, and these machines usually come with 4 GB. Make sure you have created a 4 GB swap file in there. Alternatively, Linux Mint can be made to boot up at 750 MB of RAM after removing some services. Either way, make sure you have created a swap partition.

I’m planning to introduce my kids to Linux at a really early age. I was using DOS at 4-5 years of age. They’ll be using Linux. I hope by hooking them up young, they’ll grow resistance to corporat OSes and devices. Plus I’d be able to delegate the maintenance of the self-hosted services to them. 😄

“Hey girl, Immich is outta date!”