[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

Thanks for all the responses. (Actually, it's not *my* granny, it's my 
mom, but she *is* a grandparent, as find I rather enjoy reminding her ;) 
Yea, I'm an ass...)

evilrat's comments about Mint's GUI are a bit worrying.

Ubuntu LTS certainly seems to be the common recommendation. But I have 
some (perhaps unfounded?) concerns:

- The LTSes are still, what, 3 or so years IIRC? I'm figuring her next 
machine will probably last her about another decade, so that's well 
beyond that. So what's the LTS-to-LTS upgrade process like? Is it 
basically an OS re-install like upgrading Windows traditionally is? Or 
is it as simple/transparent/painless as 'Uknown' describes Ubuntu's 
regular day-to-day update process to be?

- It's been a looong time since I last used Ubuntu, but I remember it 
being clearly designed to be very Mac-like (ie, OSX). She's not 
experienced with Mac, she's more WinXP-through-Win7. I remember 
alternative desktops like KDE/Xfce (along with Kubuntu/Xubuntu) being 
pretty much second-class citizens. Has this improved?

I'm not too terribly worried about the whole Linux-on-a-laptop thing. 
That's what my main machine is and in my experience Linux works pretty 
well on laptops these days. My main concern in this area is just making 
sure the BIOS (or...whatever the new thing is called now...) is 
unlockable so Linux can even be installed in the first place.

Chromebook's an interesting idea, but probably a no-go. She's gonna need 
more storage than that, plus something to backup her iPhone to, probably 
a bigger screen than those usually have, and definitely built-in CDR. 
She does enough audio recording (yes, actual audio recording, not music 
piracy) that external CDR would be too much of a hassle.

Netflix is no issue, she has one of those TVs with Roku built-in, so 
that's how she always does Netflix. (But ugh, I *thought* a RokuTV would 
be a great pick for her, but honestly, I'm seriously APPALLED at just 
how piss-poor the menu's responsiveness is (not to mention the boot 
time). It's absolutely absurd. Menus on my Apple II were more 
responsive, no joke. *Serious* blatant incompetence involved in these 
modern TVs these days. If I had it to do over, I'd go with a non-smart 
TV (if I could find one) and then just connect a Roku device. At least 
then, the Roku could be replaced without replacing the TV or worse, 
making her deal with two separate layers of Roku.)