Well, for one, it’s network attached storage. If it’s not present in the network for one reason or another, guess what, your OS doesn’t boot… or it errors during boot, depending on how the kernel was compiled and what switches your bootloader sends to the kernel during boot. Second, this is an easy way for malware to spread, especially if it’s set to run after user logon.

Mounting it in fstab is a bad idea… in home even worse.

Just make some desktop entries with the shares and that should be enough.

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.