Is there anything I can sign up to to use Zorin for something useful?

Not sure if this is appropriate, but Ill try anyway.

I am long retired (age 77) and hardly use the computer nowadays apart from looking up stuff on the Internet and email. I really really love Zorin (I newly migrated from Windows on my old computer) and would like to use it for something productive. On Windows, I tried things like BOINC, but that was a bit boring, as you never see a result. Any ideas what I can do to use my lovely Zorin for something useful? By useful, I mean helping out with something.

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A few things that you will commonly see in a lot of open source projects is helping out with troubleshooting issues, writing documentation, providing translations, etc. This applies to any open source project, not just Zorin OS.

You can try your hand at creating your own icons, themes, wallpapers, Conky widgets, etc. People love customizing their system, and seeing what others come up with.

What about creating tutorials? Set up a website or a YouTube channel and share your knowledge about something that you are good at, or that you want to get good at. You can use your computer to record yourself while you stream the video to platforms like YouTube or Twitch. A lot of popular "content creators" making the big bucks started this way.

These days, with AI you can get started quickly with things that you know little or nothing about, like programming. @Abdulhalim created a tool to edit videos easily. Maybe there's something that you wish existed in Zorin OS?

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I think it depends first a bit what You define as ''useful''.

There are also many STEM projects that need processing power. A well known example is SETI-at-home.

If you have any scientific leanings, you might look into the many programs which allow you to donate some processing power to projects that search for cures to diseases, process astronomical data, genetic research, etc.

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I think I used that when we used to have teams doing Distributed Computing back in the day. I remember working on the Human Genome Project. I was on Team TNT but Team Dutch Power Cows always won everything. Welcome to Zorin!

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  1. Learn how to design programs (and maths) for kids https://www.bootstrapworld.org

  2. Learn how to design programs for adult Software Development Foundations MicroMastersĀ® Program (can be taken without fees, called ā€œauditā€), a book course is included in Racket, too.

  3. Teach both to neighbours' children, or even better, children in less well-to-do neighbourhoods.

If in doubt about what this all is about, read: Developing Developers by Matthias Felleisen

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Get Zoom, Discord or similar. There are (Asian) parents who want their children to speak proper English, you can offer dialogue hours. (There is an 8 hours timezone difference, though.)

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Sadly not a computer person

Hi @Aravisian . I tried BOINC and other sites needing processing power, but it was very boring. I need to see results fast