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People who have installed Linux on their parents computer, how did it go? Which distro do you recommend? Any tips? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Blaze@lemmy.zip to c/linux@programming.dev

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There are always stories of people installing Linux on their parents computer to provide them a more secure and stable operating system, seems interesting to share experiences.

Edit: I'm assuming that parents are okay with the changes, or do not care. Obviously do not force anyone to switch OS if they don't want to.

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[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 5 months ago

I installed Linux Mint on my Mom's and Grandma's PCs as it's one I use for most of mine. They took to it like a duck to water.

My Mom has a little bit of growing into it as she plays a lot of videogames (literally more than I do lol) but it's been smooth sailing.

My Grandma primarily does stuff in her browser so for her it was more of a new skin for her PC.

My Mom is running a system with a R5 1600 and a RX 580 and my Grandma is running a Intel Broadwell CPU (I can't remember which kind with integrated graphics.

To get my Grandma into Linux required some prep before hand teaching her about doing all of her office stuff in her browser because she was rude or die on Microsoft Office. Now she's ride or die for Google's office suite (not perfect but primarily painless for me).

For my Mom it was pretty simple after she started getting pop-ups to upgrade to Windows 11 and then being told her system doesn't support it. Also her finding out that Windows 10 was going EoL in 2025 really helped.