[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

On 5/6/19 11:02 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> 
> It seems to be that their current approach is their response to the problem
> that tons of people don't bother to update Windows (or actively avoid it),
> and they're sick of all of the fallout that comes from that - including
> Windows getting a bad rep for security issues than already have been fixed.

I'll definitely agree with this. However...

> they don't seem
> to have managed to go about things in a way that forces people to keep their
> systems up-to-date without causing problems. And I don't know how solvable
> that problem is. 

It's entirely solvable. And conceptually speaking, not too difficult, 
either. Things like Nix, 0install, Arch, and probably most Linux distros 
at this point, all prove that quite conclusively (their only flaws in 
this regard are merely implementation and UI flaws, nothing theoretical 
or otherwise fundamental).

All it really boils down to is:
1. Download/extract data to a new location.
2. Update the links, preferably atomically.
3. Have at the new data.
4. Don't go out of your way to add in things that people obviously don't 
want, like resetting their preference to disable cortana, knowingly add 
new vectors of directly invading their privacy, force-installing Win10 
on Win7 users, random UI rearranging, and other such 
suit-and-arse-driven folleys that only serve to give people *more* 
reason to kill updates with napalm and hellfire.

The mere fact that MS has spent so many years failing at these basics so 
incredibly badly (I imagine legacy has a lot to do with #1-3, though not 
#4) is the ONLY reason anyone even suspects that there might be 
something fundamentally difficult about it (which, again, there just 
isn't, as other systems and package managers clearly demonstrate...at 
least, to the minority of users familiar with non-Windows desktops/laptops).