Oh, that’s different then… I thought his dad was like “run Debian, or you’re grounded”, lol 😂.

I agree on the last part, that is most definitely true. You can try, but you can’t force it 🤷. After all, his/hers gifts may lay in another field, not tech 😉.

IMO, his aproach was too strict, that’s why it failed and just caused repulsion towards Linux. There are other ways you can “make” children like things.

That’s a good start. Also, include him in your own PC activities (some of them, make some up if you don’t have anything that he can be involved in at the time), like “I need to find a cool new background, I was thinking this and this might be cool, could you help me find something online?”. It gives kids a sense of being useful and wanted, plus a pat on the back, high 5 or something like that when the task is done. And it might inspire him to look for his own background, something he identifies with 😉.

Have a lot smaller kid, he’s 4, but this is just something from the top of my head… or how I would play it.