Around a year ago my grandparents asked me to update their computers to Windows 10. One from 7 and one from 8.1. I couldn’t update from 7 to 10 so I just reinstalled directly to 10. The license was lost but grandfather didn’t mind that “activate windows”. And for office I installed libreoffice (or onlyoffice, I dont remember). On 7 he was using Chrome so I installed him Brave, which is similar enough and has an adblocker. He never complained about anything… until now.
Both grantfather and grandmother on the same day they got some notification (probably fullscreen, otherwise they wouldn’t even told me) about end of 10 and that they should upgrade. So I told them Windows 10 support is ending in about a year. I gave them 3 options:
- Buy a new computer for windows 11
- Use windows 10 without updates - more likely to be hacked.
- Try linux. As soon as I said “Linux” my grandfatger said: “Linux, thats something… lightweight… right?”. I’m a gentoo user and I forced my brother and sister to install linux but I never mentiond a word to my grandparents. I have no idea where he heard that. But I’m happy he did!
So the main question: What distro? I’m thinking of Fedora with Gnome. Something stable, modern, secure, and simple. Gnome is different, I know, but I also think Gnome is the simplest. Should I go with Silverblue or normal version? I will also definitely install rustdesk and make backups of windows. And I will first try liveusb so they can decide if they like gnome.
Edit: I’m currently trying to liveboot linux. I rebooted the computer and windows started updating…
Edit: I livebooted Fedora and Mint DE, they said they like Mint more so I installed Mint. Grandfather’s scanner and printer were detected out of the box with preinstalled apps, ptinter sadlly doesn’t work but that was also with windows - probably hardware failed. Now I’m Installing Brave for grandfather and uBlock Origin for firefox for grandmother. Everything good so far!
Mint, it just works.
You can set up automatic updates too, so they won’t end up with out of date software and possible security holes. The only downside is Firefox. If an update runs while your grandparents are using Firefox, it will stop working and show them a page that says it needs to be restarted.
It’s not a major issue in itself, but if you have any sort of memory issues, like I do and lots of older people do, it can derail your train of thought and cause you problems.
Can’t you setup Firefox to remember the last session and reopen the same pages upon relaunch without any user interaction?
Yes, that’s what it does by default. The problem happens when you open a new tab to search for something, for example, and the update screen and restart distract you and you forget what you were going to search for. It’s like the feeling you get when you walk into a room and can’t remember why.
My parents were happily using Mint for about 5 years, until my brother took over the it support role, and was uncomfortable trying to troubleshoot issues in Linux.
Many friends of mine had great success setting their grandparents up with Linux mint
My father switched to linux (Mint, I think) in his 70s. I was in another state so he did it solo. He had a few questions but otherwise it was smooth sailing.
Mint is an unironically beautiful experience. They’ve made it perfect, I had my uncle install mint for his personal work too and he used a lot of MS Office suite, but mint just kept him right at home. Didn’t have to buy another overpriced consumer laptop.
This might be a good opportunity to try one of universal blue’s distros
They are kinda a “just set and forget” atomic distros, improving on Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite with usability improvements
I used to be in the “I prefer Linux but don’t have the time and energy to fight it when it doesn’t work” camp and would distro hop and occasionally go back to windows since the early aughts. I’ve been with Bluefin for a while now and it just works and I love the set it and forget it aspect. Also installed Bazzite on my Steam Deck.
This was going to be my suggestion. Use Bluefin (not the “dx” developer flavor) gts stream.
It updates automatically in the background. All you have to do is restart it for updates to become active. So as long as it’s restarted once a month or so, you’re golden.
When mom tried Linux Mint she said: there is no wait time at shutdown, I am use to wait on Windows Update.
“A stop job is running for … (56s / 2min)”
For Windows user who don’t want to bother learning a new OS? Mint, no question. The latest releases are easy to install and configure, Cinnamon will feel familiar, and it works flawlessly on most hardware.
Yeah. I think you can’t go wrong with either Debian or Fedora with Gnome. I would pick whichever I’m most comfortable with. The grandparents will probably never notice.
I love to give Gnome crap for being a large install, but I’ve lost count of the number of machines that I’ve put Gnome on and had it just work. And I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve searched for a fancy command line way to fix an annoyance in Gnome, and discovered there’s just a simple toggle in settings for what I want.
I am a Fedora fan, but I do think that they may have issues with needing to upgrade every year. I am currently holding off on a Fedora 40-41 upgrade on my school laptop until finals are done, just in case something breaks.
I’ve been on Fedora since about 32ish? And I’ve had a couple of times where the upgrade didn’t go smooth.
For grandparents, I’d probably lean towards Debian with Gnome.
That’s a great point. A nice Debian LTS release could be just the thing.
For Windows users, Linux Mint is the best option.
I’ve installed Kinoite on a few Linux newbie computers and they have worked near flawlessly. I would think Silverblue would be the same
Had basically the same exact scenario with my parents earlier this year.
Installed Linux Mint with the default Cinnamon desktop, installed a “Windows” theme. Put icons on the desktop exactly where there old ones were, and never looked back.
It’s been great for them, does everything they need and took minimal effort from me to set up.
I use Fedora with GNOME for my parents and other family members. Some have used Windows prior, some have not used computers at all really, only iPads. They all get along very well on GNOME!
I have started using Silverblue the last year, which simplify things even further. Combined with the excellent remote controll functionality, it has been a really pleasant experience both for me and them.
Fedora silverblue works great for family, it has the least issues and they (family) can’t fuck it up
I guess I’m gonna say Linux Mint here too, even better LMDE.
My grandparents (now 90+) didn’t care much when I would change their distro, they are currently on Tumbleweed (just bcs thats what I decided to run on everyones computer I’m asked to maintain).
I would keep their general experience about the same for their use case (same desktop/desktop dock shortcuts, same browser ofc).
But yeah, Fedora (def Silverblue) or wherever you are familiar with.
(Lol, I never actually tried Mint myself, but that too - like a modern Ubuntu alternative)I have 3 elderly people for whom I installed Linux Mint, they have been using it for 5 years now. Without any problems.
I have been using Universal Blue’s Bluefin variant and it has been rock solid. It is atomic desktop and all updates, both Flatpak and Image update, are handled automatically.
Fedora Silverblue has only one issue: They use their own flatpak repo, which only includes packages that satisfy Fedora’s free software guidelines.
In practice this means that the Firefox it comes with doesn’t have the necessary codecs to streampornvideo on all streaming sites smoothly.
When you add the flathub repo, you now have a selector for all packages available in both where you have to choose if you want the Fedora or the Flathub version. This would be confusing for your grandparents. Also, when I tried it, it was buggier than I’m used to. Sometimes the software center locked up, or failed to install things on the first try, or update.
Even the entire system locked up sometimes, which really shouldn’t happen on an atomic distro at all.
