I gave my dad one of my spare laptops four years ago; it had never had Windows on it (being from the halcyon days when Dell sold laptops with linux pre-installed), so I put Mint on it for him.

Early this year he called and said one of the keys stopped working so he'd bought a newer, used laptop and could I help him put Linux on it, because that's what he was used to. Over the phone, I helped him download and burn a new Mint image from his ancient desktop, and verbally walked him through switching the bios to boot from the USB, and through the Mint install menus.

Since then, he's called me once for technical support for getting his printer connected.

Dad's in his 80's and was a cop with an associate's degree; he's never claimed to be a brainiac. That is what convinced me Linux is ready for anyone, but that the choice of distribution is important. I think dad never upgrades or installs new software, but that's OK. I have to update and reboot every week because I'm stupidly loyal to Arch.

I'm sorry that your mom had a bad experience; that's super frustrating.