"SO proof" distro
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Really seems like we are agreeing. I get that the limited package set is a feature. I also get that it is both too small and too enterprise to satisfy most people you would describe as a “SO” precisely because they are probably normal people.
You gave the excellent example of Spotify and suggested a Flatpak for that. Honestly, I am not sure where we are in disagreement. Especially since I started by “mostly agreeing” myself. We even agree on that.
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Its popular rnow because of all the handhelds I think
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Mint.
I have my mum (67) and my partner using it.
Libre office and Firefox cover 99.9% of all the things mum actually does.
My partner uses blender, krita and audacity also.
Auto updates... Almost no tech support.
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Any of the ostree variants of Fedora, be they Fedora Official or downstream ones like the Universal Blue family
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Aurora is not a rolling release. It's part of Universal Blue, based on Fedora Silverblue.
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I'd rather recommend Manjaro to those who want to start out simple, but then get into the details of Linux.
Unless all you do is browsing, Manjaro starts easy but then has a steep curve because it's still Arch, with the added issue of practically every Manjaro newbie ignoring warnings about AUR.
It will require you to work with the terminal, troubleshoot, and get to understand your system. This is not bad - that's how I got into Linux and never looked back after all - but this is not a bulletproof "SO distro".
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That is, if you have experience running immutable distros yourself and are able to serve as a tech support for them should they ever need it.
A lot is different under the hood, and general Linux knowledge doesn't always help.
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Now that's an extreme choice
Doing a lot of tech support, don't you?
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Or Kinoite, for a more familiar experience
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In fairness, there are attempts to make Nix user-friendly, such as SnowflakeOS, featuring a lot of improvements including a graphical app store etc, but those are alpha and not ready for an average user.
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If she wants a familiar experience and ease of switching, why not consider KDE or Cinnamon? Both are officially available within Debian.
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Depends on the use case. For example, I actually managed to bork Aurora to the unbootable state while trying to make a VPN work properly in a matter of two hours.
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For me, Mint borked the network after an update. I never got to figure what was wrong - the local network worked, the Internet connection was there and other devices worked through the same router, remote IPs were unreachable so it's not a DNS problem, etc.
But I might have had an edge case.
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Okay, let's call it a semi-rolling release. Having breaking changes every 6 months is still very often for a set-and-forget system.
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I've installed popOS to a couple of relatives, haven't had anty issues for a year so far. Can definately recommend!
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Linux mint makes sense. Auto updates and its hastle free for non techy person like me.
Even if I'm doing something crazy , chatgpt to the rescue.
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Semi-serious suggestion: Guix or NixOS. They're not break-safe per se, but if they do break something, you can use the OS' previous generations to go back to an operational state. Just... don't let them use the commands that delete older generations.
(Semi-serious because they're both not exactly mainstream and not eactly conventional in their setup.)
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Yep, NixOS as a base + some Flatpak store for installing apps. In fact, use impermanence to just drop all OS state apart from logs, network settings and flatpaks. That way, "turn it off and then on again" will almost always work to fix the OS.
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Fedora Silverblue.
Or really any immutable OS; they would have to go way out of their way to even edit system files, much less break the system. I just recommend Silverblue because gnome is really hard for an inexperienced user to break.
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Nope! Everything just works and it's rock solid. It's also been my daily driver for over 20 years.
I was doing a lot of tech support when my wife was on endeavouros and my daughter was on bazzite. Tbf, my problems with bazzite were probably down to me not understanding the immutable distro concept.
