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

  • maxwells_daemon@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    My grandma got along with Mint for Facebook browsing and KPatience.

    If your mom is more into using real apps, plus the Windows UI, and you’re comfortable with some setup, I’d highly recommend Debian 13 with KDE Plasma and Flatpak, with the Flatpak-Discover integration. That’ll allow her to use lightweight, stable apps from apt, or more recent, but larger apps from Flathub, and install it all herself through Discover. Honestly, there should be a distro for that.

    I’d be using that myself if it weren’t for some very specific software I need from the AUR.

  • EponymousBosh@awful.systems
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    2 hours ago

    Seconding (or third-ing, or twelfth-ing) the recommendation for Linux Mint, but also gonna throw one in for MX Linux if the hardware is older.

  • Pleat1752@feddit.uk
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    4 hours ago

    I would put her on the latest Ubuntu LTS, make a single-user Ubuntu pro account so she keeps gettin gsecurity updates and don’t do major OS updates on that machine for the next decade. You and her can decide which DE, either Gnome (more mac-like) or Budgie, Mate, or KDE (more windows-like. Those are my win-like preferences in that order)

  • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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    14 hours ago

    Though I’m disappointed at how ugly Cinnamon and all it’s themes are, Linux Mint (with Cinnamon).

    But as someone else said, probably ought to dual-boot or have a Windows VM just to be safe.

  • WFH@lemmy.zip
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    20 hours ago

    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.

    https://projectbluefin.io/

    https://getaurora.dev/en

    • Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      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.

    • SunRed@discuss.tchncs.de
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      16 hours ago

      +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 ujust scripts is a breeze as well.

    • rotorwashed@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      +1 for Bluefin or Aurora. I daily this and I love how boring it is and haven’t broken after an update.

    • notarobot@lemmy.zip
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      19 hours ago

      I’ve never heard of these. Which is not a bad thing, but I wouldn’t recommend for beginers

      • WFH@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        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.

        • sylvieslayer@lemmy.worldOP
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          5 hours ago

          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!

  • anon5621@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    Depends from her hardware but generally Linux mint I install for everyone who is not familiar at all with linux.

  • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
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    22 hours ago

    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?

    • freeman@feddit.org
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      13 hours ago

      Most important question.

      Also try to transition her slowly from outlook -> Thunderbird and chrome -> firefox and so on. Then after a few weeks at least do the switch to linux mint. Then the shock of all the new things is smaller

      • sylvieslayer@lemmy.worldOP
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        5 hours ago

        I got 2 weeks for her break to change it, get it fine tuned and teach her enough to not fail instantly. Thankfully shes pretty good with computers but has never changed an OS like this.

  • monovergent 🛠️@lemmy.ml
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    18 hours ago

    Linux Mint, as many have suggested, but Fedora would also be a good choice if there’s any bleeding-edge hardware not supported otherwise.

  • benjay@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Mint is one of the best options for your mom. People switching from Windows to Linux are their main target if I remember correctly