Just to be clear, the person answering Flatpaks isn’t being flippant. Any tools, editors or games that Mom wants, she can safely install by searching and clicking ‘intall’, all without enough permissions to harm her computer.
Linux, for less technical parents, is genuinely really nice, now.
The big thing that changed side 2010 is that most distros are perfectly usable on most hardware.
I keep tossing Linux onto random stupid hardware I have lying around, and lately it just goes spectacularly well.
I should be ashamed of even asking if Linux will run on it, but Linux ends up running well on it.
Around 2010, I used to tell people that if they did their research and used Mint, for simple web stuff, they’re going to be fine.
Lately I end up telling people “I don’t know how to do that advanced thing you’re debating which Windows product to pay for, because, of the last three random Linux distros I tried, all thee provided it for free and pre-configured with sensible defaults”.
I’m sure there’s still plenty of interesting reasons to need a paid operating system. But for the simple practical stuff, I find Linux so much easier, even on my random poorly researched distros and hardware combinations.
I might well have just had an incredibly lucky streak, of course.
you can add sudo permissions for individual users for certain commands only; and i recommend you would do that; i.e. give her sudo permission for installing/uninstalling applications, but nothing else.
My dad never uses anything other than a browser and an email program. I guess the file manager? I’m pretty sure he never installed anything on Mint so far.
He still needs sudo to uodate tho.
/j then you don’t love your mother enough to learn coding and make a mom-proof distro.
/uj oh my god I have ptsd from the one time my parents tried to switch to apple products. It lasted less than a week. Please don’t let them decide to switch to Linux and ask me things.
I don’t want my mom to be able to turn her computer into a paperweight…
Don’t give her sudo permission then.
How she will install anything then
Just to be clear, the person answering Flatpaks isn’t being flippant. Any tools, editors or games that Mom wants, she can safely install by searching and clicking ‘intall’, all without enough permissions to harm her computer.
Linux, for less technical parents, is genuinely really nice, now.
Awesome
If you wanna put your qualitative hat on: how much better is today’s easiest distro than Mint was circa 2010?
The big thing that changed side 2010 is that most distros are perfectly usable on most hardware.
I keep tossing Linux onto random stupid hardware I have lying around, and lately it just goes spectacularly well.
I should be ashamed of even asking if Linux will run on it, but Linux ends up running well on it.
Around 2010, I used to tell people that if they did their research and used Mint, for simple web stuff, they’re going to be fine.
Lately I end up telling people “I don’t know how to do that advanced thing you’re debating which Windows product to pay for, because, of the last three random Linux distros I tried, all thee provided it for free and pre-configured with sensible defaults”.
I’m sure there’s still plenty of interesting reasons to need a paid operating system. But for the simple practical stuff, I find Linux so much easier, even on my random poorly researched distros and hardware combinations.
I might well have just had an incredibly lucky streak, of course.
Nice :D
Oh heck yeah - I think Mint is coming out on an ancient machine over here :) thanks!
you can add
sudopermissions for individual users for certain commands only; and i recommend you would do that; i.e. give hersudopermission for installing/uninstalling applications, but nothing else.uninstalls the kernel package
Flatpaks
My dad never uses anything other than a browser and an email program. I guess the file manager? I’m pretty sure he never installed anything on Mint so far.
He still needs sudo to uodate tho.
You can give her limited sudo rights; even limit her to install and upgrade operations.
My mom needs a computer for work, but she keeps bludgeoning people to death with it. What should I do?! Linux must have a solution for this!
Get her a Raspberry Pi! Lol.
While that is possible. You do have to go out of your way to do that in ways a typical user wouldn’t.
Aside from that like others have said. Just don’t give sudo perms and have them use Flatpak.
/j then you don’t love your mother enough to learn coding and make a mom-proof distro.
/uj oh my god I have ptsd from the one time my parents tried to switch to apple products. It lasted less than a week. Please don’t let them decide to switch to Linux and ask me things.
Use an easy to use immutable distro like Fedora silverblue