Not sustainable but probably learned some new stuff
Nope, as mentioned, I do it on my free time, aside from my real job. The goal isn’t to make money, but to lend a hand to people in need. That’s why it’s pay-what-you-want. This also gives me a rare perspective : I get to know truly how much people value my services.
Very nice! How do people find you? Is the number of people asking for linux increasing?
Thank you !
How do people find you?
On an app called “AlloVoisins” (I’m French btw), which in English would sound close to Nextdoor I suppose (literal translation would be “HelloNeighbor”), but it’s not the same kind of app. People can post about their need of a good or service (and only that, it’s not social media), then people who can provide will answer (and it only works one-way like this), so it’s closer to Craigslist but not exactly (we do have a 1:1 equivalent of Craigslist, it works well for goods but not for services).
One funny thing is a lot of people say they will recommend me to people, yet in the 3 years that I’ve been doing this, it only happened once that I was actually contacted directly after being recommended by someone esle.
One even funnier thing : only a few weeks apart, I received requests from two people literally living next to each other, neighbors, who talk to each other daily where their respective yards connect, yet they both went through the app.
Is the number of people asking for linux increasing?
Actually nobody asks for Linux, most of the people I install Linux for don’t even know what Windows is, despite having been using it for years. I offer to install it, when I know that the person could use it and not loose one bit of their routine while enjoying their computer almost as if it was new just because the system will be lighter (and not harrassing them about updates).
Actually nobody asks for Linux, most of the people I install Linux for don’t even know what Windows is
Classic!
Thank you for your responses. The AlloVoisins app sounds pretty nice. Is it new?
You’re welcome !
Apparently, it’s 12 years old, though I haven’t heard of it until 3 years ago when I started using it.
Well, thank you for spreading Linux and helping out others for 3 years!
How much they value, or how much they feel obligated to pay. (Theoretically)
When they asked about how much to pay, my exact words are : I ask you pay me based on what you can afford and how satisfied you are.
But yeah, sometimes, they say : “come on, you gotta give me an amount, pal”. In which case, I’ll just say people usually pay me between 20 and 40 bucks.
Very cool, thanks for sharing !
Thank you for your appreciation !
What’s the average age of the people you help?
I would have liked to include this, but it wouldn’t really be data nor beautiful cause I don’t have accurate statistics, not even with approximate ranges.
However, I can tell you that most of the people I help are at least middle-aged and often seniors.
One notable exception is the one data recovery entry : they were a university student using a very cheap and/or old HDD (IDE, not even SATA) until they suddenly couldn’t access anything, I was able to save everything they needed into a new one.
Another one is a few weeks ago (so not on this chart because 2026), I received a request from a mom who had bought their young son their first computer, a noname desktop from Amazon, that was poorly assembled : their issue was the monitor would turn off between 30-90 mins after starting a game, they thought it was a GPU overloading/overheating issue, but no, it was a false contact due to the GPU’s power plug being stuck in a twisting position against the case door.
Do you have a data visualization of impacted population sorted by age range?
I would have liked to include this, but no, I never took note of this. Maybe I will in 2026.
If you’d like a few more details though, I answered a previous comment about this.
Wise
![[OC] 1 year of doing pay-what-you-want computer repairs on my free time](https://jlai.lu/pictrs/image/cee26d18-a4f2-40cf-9b3f-40b499740983.jpeg){kind=link}