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.
I’d recommend Linux Mint honestly. It’s popular enough that they can find solutions to common problems, has a Windows-like interface, and it mostly “just works” on common hardware. Printer drivers, networking, and audio all worked out of the box for me. Cinnamon is lightweight but powerful, and the Mint theme looks really good on it. The default package repos have everything you’re likely to need, and the software manager tool is easy to use.
I am here to also echo Mint being great. I installed it on a pretty old laptop and it’s very snappy.
The migration process was not difficult at all.
Yeah, you know Chrome? It’s this button now, this is the internet.
Your emails? Yeah they’re this button now. Just remember that, okay?
Most people use computers as a means to an end and they are not really particular about what’s happening behind the scenes so long as it functions for their needs.
Mint does not automatically install updates so people will ignore them. It for me also had a broken updater.
I don’t know of many distros that enable automatic updates out of the box, you usually have to enable it after installing.
You can do that in Mint too: https://linuxhint.com/configure-updates-automatically-linux-mint/
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.
He did manage to have xfce-panels disappear once though.
Tbf even I’ve done this.
Rustdesk is so good for us family admins
I installed Linux Mint on my Mom’s and Grandma’s PCs as it’s one I use for most of mine. They took to it like a duck to water.
My Mom has a little bit of growing into it as she plays a lot of videogames (literally more than I do lol) but it’s been smooth sailing.
My Grandma primarily does stuff in her browser so for her it was more of a new skin for her PC.
My Mom is running a system with a R5 1600 and a RX 580 and my Grandma is running a Intel Broadwell CPU (I can’t remember which kind with integrated graphics.
To get my Grandma into Linux required some prep before hand teaching her about doing all of her office stuff in her browser because she was rude or die on Microsoft Office. Now she’s ride or die for Google’s office suite (not perfect but primarily painless for me).
For my Mom it was pretty simple after she started getting pop-ups to upgrade to Windows 11 and then being told her system doesn’t support it. Also her finding out that Windows 10 was going EoL in 2025 really helped.
I have the same PC as your mom… I’m really fit for an upgrade.
If it works it works
It does everything she needs so she keeps on using it
Plus she got her rig from me as a gift a number of years ago
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.
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.
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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.
