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.
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!