Welp… My mom is apparently done with windows (yay!) Anf wants me to move her laptop to Linux (oh nooo). I personally use Ubuntu studios but im not sure what to get for her. She is getting her masters in nursing online so it def needs to be able to accommodate that. Do y’all have any suggestions on where to start? TIA
I set up my ex-MIL with Mint and it worked fine. Also gave my 70-something father a Mint USB and he installed it on his own.
I’ve used other distros for that purpose in the past but since they no longer exist I’m not listing them.
She is getting her masters in nursing online so it def needs to be able to accommodate that
I’d check to see if any proprietary software is required, if there is a linux or at least WINE-friendly version available. Hopefully it’s all web-based so no proprietary stuff needed.
ZorinOS. Looks modern, works 96% of the time.
Checkout https://youtu.be/27O31t94w0Y
Use the exact same setup you have, then when she calls and asks you how to do something then you either already know or can check on your own machine!
I moved my mother to Mint a few months ago. I have not had a single tech support call. She uses it daily. About a week in I asked her how it was going. She liked that printing worked more reliably and wished the scroll bars in Facebook were a bit thicker. Her printer used to show as offline sometimes in Windows but that issue has gone away under Mint. I was going to look for a theme with thicker scroll bars but she told me not to bother.
Granted she was a Firefox and Thunderbird user already so that helped with the transition.
I put my mom on Linux Mint Cinnamon (Ubuntu based) looks a lot like windows with minimal bells and whistles. Mostly just works unless you have bleeding edge hardware. Most Ubuntu flavours should also work. I’m suggesting Ubuntu based distros due to the fact that most media codecs, fonts and drivers are installed or easy to install.
Seconding and thirding the use of an immutable OS. I specifically like Bazzite Gnome. People know it for gaming, but many don’t know it has a fantastic desktop mode, suitable for children, mums and grandmas.
Almost all the software a casual user needs is available from their Flatpak App Store, and it’s pretty as hell (looks very Apple-like and shiny). I have been using it for about a year and I am still impressed how fluid, polished and solid everything feels.
Get her the same one you have so you can see what she sees and help her. Or standard Ubuntu. For real. Don’t overthink it. She’s gonna be interested in your help.
Ubuntu. Simply because you use it as well. You will be the primary tech support. So something that you are familiar with is important.
If her router supports it I would set up a VPN and ssh on her computer so that you can help her. Maybe RDP or Sunshine/Moonlight as well.
Yeah I’m really surprised people are suggesting things other than that. The value of being able to exactly see what she does on her screen on your own and describe things you do on yours that you know you do will be very useful.
I’ve never really used Ubuntu, but I’m going to agree with others here. If its what you use, it would be better in the sense that it would be much easier for you to give her phone assistance when she needs it, rather than giving her something you’re not used to and possibly having to go over and troubleshoot for her.
If she wants something more in the line with Windows, you could try Kubuntu, but I think the rigging behind KDE is pretty complicated for a casual user. You may want to help her set up the way she wants her desktop to look at first if you go this route. The only other Windows-like desktop is Cinnamon, but Cinnamon-Wayland is still in alpha and once they officially drop it that could make more work for you later.
Admittedly, I have 0 experience with the Unity DE, so that’d be your call if you think you can familiarize it for her.
Depends from her hardware but generally Linux mint I install for everyone who is not familiar at all with linux.
She is getting her masters in nursing online so it def needs to be able to accommodate that
Is there any specialist software she needs, or is it browser based?
Most important question.
Also try to transition her slowly from outlook -> Thunderbird and chrome -> firefox and so on. Then after a few weeks at least do the switch to linux mint. Then the shock of all the new things is smaller
I got 2 weeks for her break to change it, get it fine tuned and teach her enough to not fail instantly. Thankfully shes pretty good with computers but has never changed an OS like this.
Are you able to make sure the course doesn’t have any weird specific browser things? I hope nobody uses IE stuff anymore and Edge is Chromium based now so maybe that’s not a concern like it used to be.
My mom was not interested in the surface cause she only need Mail, Browser, Whatsapp web and here Background image. So she used Ubuntu with the side bar as good as with Mint. Same goes for gmy Granny. I propose, Ask what possibilities are important for here - Do not ask about Application - and show here afther that where to do things.
For showing the new PC. Do it with some work she has to do. Learning curve is way better thatway.
uBlue Bluefin or Aurora. Tested and approved. I moved my dad on Bluefin one year ago, no issues, it just works for his use case (90% of the time in a browser, light photo editing in Krita, some text editing). No maintenance, no updates, no actual knowledge needed as a daily user, just a single reboot once a week to boot the freshest system image.
And more importantly, it keeps on working despite his talent for fucking up every single piece of software he lays his hands on.
+1 for uBlue. I did the same for my mother on her laptop and desktop PC for office work. Chose Aurora in this case. Setting system and flatpak updates to automatic means I hopefully never have to look after these systems again as the distro maintainers basically do the maintenance. Setting up Secure Boot with the shim/MOK method and TPM auto-unlocking for full disk encryption using the
ujustscripts is a breeze as well.+1 for Bluefin or Aurora. I daily this and I love how boring it is and haven’t broken after an update.
Did you have any problems with Aurora? I thought it would be perfect for my parent. But ran like a dog on their laptop and could work out why. Tried Mint instead and it just worked out of the box.
I’ve never heard of these. Which is not a bad thing, but I wouldn’t recommend for beginers
You’ve never heard of atomic/immutable distros? You’re part of the lucky 10,000 ;)
Bluefin, Aurora and their much more popular sister Bazzite are part of the universalBlue project: a delivery pipeline that lets anyone build their own, maintenance free atomic distro.
All uBlue projects are 100% based on Fedora Silverblue, itself an atomic distro based on Fedora. Which means that uBlue projects get automatic weekly upgrades just like Silverblue.
For people not familiar with Linux, and people who don’t want to spend any time maintaining their OS (HTPC, gaming rig etc), it’s amazing.
why not kionote / silverblue instead which are actually from fedora?
There are a lot of QoL improvements on uBlue projects that make them much more usable as daily drivers, like hardware accelerated codecs from rpmfusion, nvidia drivers for those who need them or actually useful preinstalled software. Plus some minor improvements on defaults.
This sounds perfect! She needs to be able to do PowerPoint, videos, online streaming for class and tons of research and papers to write. Thank you so much!
mint would be better for new users easily
I would choose Mint.
+1
I recommend LFS. It’s the most user friendly distro there Is.
In all seriousness, a Ubuntu derivative is gonna be the easiest, mostly because it’s what you use OP
If not Ubuntu, I’d at least stay in the Debian realm.
