I am fucking 🤏 this close to starting a business where I just slam LMDE on poor people’s laptops and put on LXQT and call it a day.
The only problem is that if someone can’t afford a new laptop, they can hardly afford to pay me.
Also, I’m only good enough to just shove linux on a shitty computer, not be a 24/7 linux customiser. Also, getting paid to install linux on people’s computers seems like it violates… something.
Sure, but what’s the price? Too low and it’s not worth the bother, too high and the person that’s trying to get a little extra mileage can’t afford it. I don’t know when I can run classes since I’m taking care of my kid or looking for work and battling mental health stuff.
Also, I’m hardly Mr Torvalds, I can barely get my machine to work properly.
I’ve had the same thoughts as you a lot of the time! Very similar. I’ve been wanting to run install clinics at my local library but…I only work there part time sooo…they won’t let me since it’s far outside my job description.
But as an outsider, you could look into hitting up your local library to run the occasional event. :D
Worked in a PC repair shop years ago, £50 to reinstall windows was a price people would pay fairly happily.
If you get customers happy to wait for bulk work you could probably do better. Plus doing it at home means no workshop to pay rent on. If its something on the side of your main job, even better.
Depends on what you’d charge. $50-100 for your labor is way less than a brand new laptop.
I think you biggest problem is a lot of distros losing support for GTX1000 series Nvidia cards and older. Debian isn’t affected yet, but it’ll be a problem in a couple of years
I am fucking 🤏 this close to starting a business where I just slam LMDE on poor people’s laptops and put on LXQT and call it a day.
The only problem is that if someone can’t afford a new laptop, they can hardly afford to pay me.
Also, I’m only good enough to just shove linux on a shitty computer, not be a 24/7 linux customiser. Also, getting paid to install linux on people’s computers seems like it violates… something.
Nah, even the GNU people themselves explicitly encourage that.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
awesome.
Do you also have a solution for the other problem?
yea, lower your rates to something a bit less than the retail price of a new laptop.
Sure, but what’s the price? Too low and it’s not worth the bother, too high and the person that’s trying to get a little extra mileage can’t afford it. I don’t know when I can run classes since I’m taking care of my kid or looking for work and battling mental health stuff.
Also, I’m hardly Mr Torvalds, I can barely get my machine to work properly.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Now that Torvalds has opened the gate to AI slop in Linux, he doesn’t know how to get it working properly either.
I’ve had the same thoughts as you a lot of the time! Very similar. I’ve been wanting to run install clinics at my local library but…I only work there part time sooo…they won’t let me since it’s far outside my job description.
But as an outsider, you could look into hitting up your local library to run the occasional event. :D
Worked in a PC repair shop years ago, £50 to reinstall windows was a price people would pay fairly happily.
If you get customers happy to wait for bulk work you could probably do better. Plus doing it at home means no workshop to pay rent on. If its something on the side of your main job, even better.
Depends on what you’d charge. $50-100 for your labor is way less than a brand new laptop.
I think you biggest problem is a lot of distros losing support for GTX1000 series Nvidia cards and older. Debian isn’t affected yet, but it’ll be a problem in a couple of years
that is a huge deal. there’s a hell of a lot of 10-series cards out there.
Charge less than the price of a new laptop? 🤷
https://lemmy.world/post/51326745/25588050
Hey, you asked!
You’d be getting paid for the service, not for the software, so it’s fine
Getting paid for the software is fine. It’s Free as well as free
You perform work, and provide expertise. That is basically the description of a job.