[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[Uknown]

On Monday, 6 May 2019 at 17:01:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) 
wrote:
> 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?

Yes, they more or less are. I'm currently helping most of my 
friends with maintining Ubuntu on their laptops. All of them have 
a wide variety of hardware, some with dual GPU setups (intel + 
Nvidia or intel + radeon). Both work just fine, even across 
upgrades, but your mileage will vary. See the upgrade process : 
https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/installing-upgrading.html

> - 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?

Lubuntu works fine for me. Kubuntu is facing some issues with 
shortage of manpower, so its better to install KDE on top of 
Ubuntu instead.

> 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.

All new laptops come with UEFI. You just need to check up on safe 
boot parameters. These things are reasonably well documented. 
Some distros support safe boot, others don't. You'll have to see 
which ones do and adjust the settings accordingly, but this is a 
one time thing.

> 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.

CD recordings are handled fine by K3B and a lot of other FOSS 
software, so you wan't have an issue there, regardless of which 
distro you select.

Just make sure the laptop you buy doesn't have a discrete GPU. 
Those cost extra and likely won't be used, but will definitely 
give you some nightmarish updates. Intel integrated graphics has 
really good driver support so you won't have any issues with it. 
Another thing is, a lot of cheaper laptops of late are coming 
with dirt cheap touchpads which are unusable. If possible try 
checking out the touchpads on the laptop before you buy.