I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
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I normally do a fresh install and leave my /home partition untouched, but mounted with my files and configurations, but after a while it all gets convoluted (I distro- and desktop-environment-hop).
So this last time, I installed Fedora 26 (which the installation experience is a whole 'nother write-up) I opted to again not touch my /home partition, BUT made my username different than all of the other times.
It created a nice, clean /home directory to start but at the same time all of my files are still present in my old /home directory. So if/when I need anything I can move it over, if it isn't in my ownCloud directory and already synchronizing.
I haven't had much luck with updating in-place, which is why I have come to this system of splitting out the root and /home (and /boot) directories into partitions, formatting the root (and /boot) partitions each time and leaving the /home mounted, but untouched.
Then I run a script I set up beforehand that installs everything for me so I get all my apps back.
When my kids started using the computer it was on the only computer we had, so everybody was using the same distribution; Edubuntu at that time (6.06?).
I picked Edubuntu because it looked a little more "fun" than the run-of-the-mill distributions out there at the time with cartoon-y icons and bright colors.
I was nervous in the beginning about if they could log in. I made their username and their password the same; their name. I knew it wasn't a problem when my son tried logging in with "daddy" as the username and password! ;)
In the beginning I set gCompris to start when they logged in. When school introduced them to computers I adjusted their environment so the programs are there, but so are all the others.
I also included some games to make it fun like Super Tux Kart and kPatience. Then when they found online (flash) games and moved up to them.
Eventually the computer was refreshed and I put regular Ubuntu on it (8.04 LTS?).
I was nervous about the programs being different between them and their friends but they understood and didn't make a big stink about it. I would look for alternatives and talk to them how they were learning how to use a word processor, not Microsoft Word. Now they use Google for everything since the schools give them accounts and use Google Classrooms.
Now one uses a Chromebook they purchased with their own money, another plays games on Windows and manages 2 Minecraft Servers on Linux servers that their friends access from home (I'm just the backup sys admin) and the third uses mostly online apps. Only a couple key games influence what they use.