People who have installed Linux on their parents computer, how did it go? Which distro do you recommend? Any tips?

There are always stories of people installing Linux on their parents computer to provide them a more secure and stable operating system, seems interesting to share experiences.

Edit: I'm assuming that parents are okay with the changes, or do not care. Obviously do not force anyone to switch OS if they don't want to.

Mikina ,

I've just ben talking with my kind of tech illiterate gf about switching hers to Linux too, since she saw some articles about Copilot and Recall, which she hates with passion. Should I go for Mint or PopOS, assuming she does game on steam a lot (nothing with anticheat, thankfully)? She's working in a GSuite/Slack workshop, so there shouldn't be any problems with that. However, she does have NVIDIA GPU, which was the cause for most troubles for me.

I'm on Nobara, but that's because I've always preferred Fedora, and it isn't exactly a smooth sailing. Nothing major, but I suppose one of the two I mentioned would be a better choice.

MonkderDritte , (edited )

The PC i gave my dad on birthday to replace his 10-year cheapo Medion pc with random bluescreens on boot.

Had initially a bit of trouble to get his work software running in wine, with integrated TeamViewer for support and all. But since then it's smooth sailing, he thought it was the new Windows for the first two years (Materia theme on XFCE).

Motivation was that Debian stable and unattended upgrades with occasional support for linux-vs-Windows things is less trouble (for me) than fighting an OS working against you long-term.

He did manage to have xfce-panels disappear once though.

Remote support via rustdesk.

PlexSheep ,

Rustdesk is so good for us family admins

hellofriend ,

He did manage to have xfce-panels disappear once though.

Tbf even I've done this.

eluvatar ,

Poorly, I setup Mint while I was in town, a couple weeks later it won't boot, can't troubleshoot that kind of thing from out of state, so... Yeah

KISSmyOSFeddit ,

I'm considering installing Fedora Silverblue on my dad's PC. Install Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice as Flatpaks, show him the software center, set up his printer and wifi, set updates to automatic with no notifications, and hide the terminal from Gnome menus.
It would be like a debloated phone OS that requires no maintenance at all.

Im just not sure if updates are reliable enough to work without intervention.

TheV2 ,

When my mom used her laptop, she was using arch btw! It was only for browsing though. Firefox was auto launched and she didn't have to learn anything. It obviously wouldn't have been a good choice, if I wasn't able to do the updates.

crozilla ,

I installed Ubuntu about 15 years ago and my Dad thought it was the new Windows. Had far fewer problems with it, but he kept hitting random keys and causing the most amazing errors. I just heard about EndlessOS which seems perfect for old folks.

https://www.endlessos.org/os

SeikoAlpinist ,
@SeikoAlpinist@slrpnk.net avatar

The last computer I built for my dad before he passed ran Xubuntu LTS exclusively for about half a decade. No problems. He did updates himself.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

I installed ElementaryOS for my parents because it looked slick and gorgeous.

I actually have a lot of high praise for that product. But maybe it's a bit too slick, like there's an expectation of things "just working".

When an error hits, I was on the phone or a zoom call immediately. It felt like windows again.

Mojave ,

I put Zorin OS on my mother-in-law's laptop, she just uses Facebook as far as I know and it's been fine. Only one call for tech support in the last two years.

On a sample size of one, I give Zorin OS a thumbs up to send to tech illiterate family.

MarshReaper ,
@MarshReaper@lemmy.world avatar

Linux Mint. She opens Firefox to check her emails and work panel. Only complaint is that it is my old giant laptop that I let her have. I will give her a different one soon.

299792458ms ,
@299792458ms@lemmy.zip avatar

Ubuntu on my nanny's PC. Windows was choking its 4GB of ram and now it boots in 3min instead of 15min. She is super happy with it because you can actually do stuff on it.

Anyway, made the mistake of choosing Ubuntu because I knew the installer offered a minimal Gnome installation (yes minimal Gnome XD) For the future I'll do Debian/XFCE. Btw at the time I installed that Ubuntu I was 3 Months into switching to Linux.

In the end its all good.

MonkderDritte ,

3 minutes? Must be an old pc.

299792458ms , (edited )
@299792458ms@lemmy.zip avatar

Its actually less than 3, I was being generous. I would think it has to do more with Ubuntu more than the PC. Plus i think it does not have one of the newer SSD that boot faster.

papabobolious ,

I put Pop_Os! on my mums MacBook and stopped having to do remote support almost entirely.

dinckelman ,

I gave my mom my old XPS 9350, with Fedora installed on it. Zero complaints whatsoever, so far, after like 3 years

Rentlar ,

During the pandemic after Win 7 went out of support Jan 2020, I changed the harddrive to an SSD, and installed KDE Neon on a laptop from around 2014. At the time it was an Ubuntu 18.04 based distro with a KDE frontend.

All I had to do was put Chess, Go apps, shortcuts to use common sites, put two web browsers (Chromium and Firefox) to separate my parents' browsing and it was ready to go.

For the most part after I showed them how to use it they had no issues. I had to show them how to print, and scan things, transfer files from their phone (honestly doing it by email was less complicated). The computer had an icon in the tray that told them to update every once in a while (and the sudo password is 1234, they wouldn't know how to even mess things up using the GUI only).

The slightly annoying issued that cropped up now and then was keeping the browser up to date to ensure that video sites didn't nag my parents for the computer being out of date. Chromium eventually stopped seeming to work at some point.

Fast forward to today, only my mom uses it because my dad got a separate, faster laptop, cuz idk, they got tired of sharing. The laptop's still humming along and quite responsive. Since Bionic Beaver has been end of support for a year now, I have to go back over and upgrade it to 1 or 2 LTS versions up. I hope this doesn't introduce new lag or break my mom's workflows which are 90% just web browsing.

boredsquirrel ,

You know there are firefox profiles right?

  • cp /usr/share/applications/whatever.firefox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
  • replace firefox with firefox -p in the app launcher
  • if you want it, use a master password in every user account
Rentlar ,

Yes I know, I have played with the options. I just wanted to set something up and get two different icons for them with nothing shared and installing two browsers seemed like the easiest way at the time.

boredsquirrel ,

I dont know how to have 2 icons.

I mean you are forcing one to use Chromium XD which is a pain and pretty creepy (contacts Google all the time).

unknowing8343 ,

Debian is never a bad choice. Put some flatpaks there, backport some goodies, and install some kind of AnyDesk system. Put some KDE Plasma and they'll think Windows finally runs well again.

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