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
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.
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 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.
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!
Depends from her hardware but generally Linux mint I install for everyone who is not familiar at all with linux.
ZorinOS. Looks modern, works 96% of the time.
Checkout https://youtu.be/27O31t94w0Y
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
mint would be better for new users easily
I would choose Mint.
+1
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.
Another vote for Mint.
Linux Mint.
