[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[aberba]

On Sunday, 5 May 2019 at 23:32:46 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) 
wrote:
> We've got a lot of very reasonable, level-headed Linux folk on 
> this board:
>
> I'm helping my mom look for a laptop to replace her ~10 year 
> old one, and given all the mess Windows Update has been making 
> of things since about Win7 onwards, I'm temped to just stick 
> her on Linux (especially if I can't find anything still using 
> Win7). Heck, 90% of what she does is just web browser anyway, 
> with the other 10% being pretty much Linux compatible stuff 
> (Hmm...although come to think of it, only possible exception 
> might be her iPhone...I'll have to look into that, I'm not an 
> iOS guy...).
>
> Any suggestions on a potentially granny-friendly distro? (If 
> such exists.) Personally, I use Manjaro, but I definitely don't 
> want to set her up with that: While I think rolling-release 
> would be a good fit (avoid the mess of periodic OS 
> re-installs), the Arch/Manjaro updates all to often wind up 
> failing and require manual intervention to fix. I've been able 
> to handle that for myself, but she wouldn't be able to and I 
> don't want to be the on-call extended-family IT dept...
>
> Ideally, some rolling-release that can auto-update (preferably 
> in the background) and won't force-reboot, force-interrupt you, 
> or pull the Windows prank of delaying startup/shutdown for 
> several minutes (or more...) for "Installing updates...you may 
> as well go watch an entire series on Netflix 'cause you ain't 
> packing up your laptop *or* getting any emails sent anytime 
> soon...". Supporting rollbacks as well would be fantastic, but 
> I realize that's pretty rare in Linuxland (outside of 
> NixOS/Guix, but I'd say NixOS/Guix would *definitely* be a bad 
> fit for other reasons...)
>
> Would Mint fit the bill here? It's been quite awhile since I've 
> paid any attention to Mint, so I'm kinda out-of-the-loop on 
> that one. But I know it's always intended to be non-expert 
> friendly.
>
> I'm not too terribly concerned about the initial installation 
> and setup, since I can just take care of that. I just don't 
> want to be getting regular tech support phone calls 
> afterwords...


IMO, there are three great/safe/reliable Linux distros to choose 
from:

1. elementary OS (https://elementary.io): super polished, clean 
and easy to use. Its what I use since I care about design and 
user experience...and has an ecosystem of app in its AppCenter. 
Have been using is for 3 years and still liking it. It's sold at 
a pay-what-you-want price so you can enter 0 to download for free.
>> The fast, open, and privacy-respecting replacement for Windows 
>> and macOS

2. Ubuntu: stable, reliable, easy to get support for just about 
anything.

3. Fedora: pretty stable these days, on-click upgrade between 
releases, newest stuff, not quite popular among regular users but 
is the purest in terms of new software stack.