"SO proof" distro
-
I vote the same, but I'd suggest a uBlue spin of the Fedora Atomic desktops. They have better defaults (all batteries included, as they say) and are easier to use overall IMHO. Bluefin and Bazzite are both great options, and both offer KDE and Gnome variants.
-
Bro I'm the lead developer and I'm just now seeing this, just accept you called the viral marketing wrong.
We've grown to the point that when I market something, I tell people not to listen to me because I'm biased.
-
I switched from ubuntu to debian when 12 was released and it's been fine. Only thing i was worried about was running WoW via lutris but had no issues.
So when my SO windows pc died we bought some newish parts and i installed debian on it as well. Also installed chrome since that's her browser of choice. She's still getting used to gnome, but all she needs is browser, WoW, and libreoffice, which is close enough that it hasnt been an issue. She doesn't even know how to update the system.
-
I thought this was a request for Stack Overflow proof.
Then figured that was 'proof from pasting random crap from SO".
Then figured it's the same thing.
Amy distro will be suitable, create yourself as the first user when installing (which will probably be added to the wheel/sudoers group or whatever) then create a new 'standard' user.
Most distribution defaults should be adequate.
For added safety, choose one that is immutable like, for example, Fedora atomic.
-
Consider 0patch before you give up on windows
Unless there's a very specific application need, I think the most sensible thing would be to ditch Windows. Better for security, better for the world to reduce the dominance of Microsoft and increase the usage of Linux.
-
Or just ssh. Personally I'd set up a remote desktop in addition to that
-
If you already have a public facing server for them to connect to then sure.
-
Fedora is a bit too eager to deliver new updates IMO, especially KDE. As much as I love KDE, their .0 releases have had serious bugs several times in a row now. It's always better to wait for .1 patch with Plasma. It may be hard for the user to break Kinoite, but it won't save them from bugs.
Fedora's mission have always been to push new stuff when it's "mostly ready" at the cost of inconveniencing of some users, so I wouldn't recommend it for non-tech-savvy people.
I know people say that it's 100% stable for them (as they do for Arch, Tumbleweed, Debian Sid, etc) but that's survirorship bias. As any bleeding edge distro, Fedora has its periods of stability that are broken by tumultuous transitions to the new and shiny tech (like it was with Pipewire, Wayland default, major DE upgrades, etc). During these times some people's setup will break and you don't know ahead of time if it will be yours.
-
Aren't there ways to patch the whatever-it-is that is "required" by W11 that older PCs don't have so that you can bypass the check and have W11 on older machines? I feel like that's a better solution than paying for Microsoft's garbage, if one was bent on not moving to Linux
-
Gotta be slightly careful with those spins though because there is near-zero documentation.
-
Pick one of the
stablechannels from Universal Blue. You get the Fedora atomic goodness, but "ready" rather than "mostly ready". -
People are complaining 22 packages are getting stale... But these people should be using fedors anyway lol
-
While I enjoy using Aurora, there were a bunch of issues popping up over the last few months (e.g. display freezes). I guess that's the danger of a rolling release cycle, but I'm not sure it's 100% as foolproof as it needs to be right now.
-
Does it use the same flawed approach as Manjaro by indiscriminately delaying all updates (including critical security fixes)?
-
22? Oddly specific list?
-
I’m gonna be the boring guy.
RedHat Enterprise Linux. (Or Rocky)
Most boring distro ever. Install it, turn on all the auto updates and be happy. Install something to take backups. Ignore any new major-releases, that laptop will die before the OS hits EOL.
Benefits:
- Boring. It’s their tool, not your plaything.
- Actually works
- Will be reasonably secure over time with minimal effort and manual intervention.
- If any commercial Linux software is required, it will most likely only be supported on RHEL or Ubuntu.
- Provides web browser and word-processing. And we don’t need anything else.
Drawbacks:
- Boring (for you)
- Not ideal for gaming
If you install anything else than RHEL-derivatives or possibly Ubuntu on a machine that someone else will use, you are both in for a world of pain. It has to ”just work” without intervention by you, and it needs to keep working that way for the next 5 years.
Source: Professionally deploying and supporting multiuser desktop Linux to a few thousand users other than myself.
-
They have significant documentation, and anything not covered here is just part of Fedora atomic:
-
That is a different spin than the original comment, which is why I made that commen.
https://docs.getaurora.dev/ https://docs.projectbluefin.io/ aurora has one small page of documentation total. Bluefin has even less. I consider this near-zero documentation. So how would OP's non-techy girlfriend (or someone who has only heard of aurora and bluefin from this thread) know to go to bazzite, a completely different project to most people, to debug their completely different OS? Because googling "ublue aurora flatpak won't install" literally gives this page: https://docs.getaurora.dev/guides/software/ which is literally almost useless.
Bazzite's documentation has gotten way better since I installed it (they had almost nothing on rpmostree commands when I did), but I don't believe everything in the documentation for bazzite applies the same to aurora and bluefin, especially with differences in pre-installed non-layered gaming defaults vs working with flatpaks will be not even close to the same.
Also fedora knoite has little documentation https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/. It has enough to get you started and installed, but that is about it. It has one single line of code about
rpmostreefor example, not even anything about installing an RPM not in fedora's limited repos. -
Nixos with whatever defaults you don’t want her touching, then she can use nix profiles to install extra software if she wants
-
I recently set up Fedora Kinoite on my dad's laptop for him and he seems very happy with it. Kinoite is the atomic/immutable version with KDE Plasma by default. Once I'd set up a couple of things everything else he needs can be installed with flatpak (just make sure to set Flathub as the default and disable the Fedora flatpaks repo that ships broken packages all the time)
