[Update] Re: [OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[Yatheendra]

On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 17:33:42 UTC, lagfra wrote:
> On 05/25 12:10, Yatheendra via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 07:16:59 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
>> (Abscissa) wrote:
>> > Thanks for the input, all.
>> > 
>> > If you don't already know me by know, I'll warn you: There's 
>> > a lot of ranty-ness the further this gets. But I *do* have a 
>> > (tentative) plan...
>> > 
>> > [...]
>> 
>> Have you looked at
>>         https://elementary.io/
>> You have to pay for it, but it is a pretty good Linux option 
>> (for you too,
>> if I may guess at from your comments).
>
> You don't have to pay for it, it's sufficient to put 0$ under 
> the "Custom" menu and you can download it for free. Donations 
> are just encouraged, I guess.

I didn't know that (but I feel one should still pay for libre 
software maintainence).

> I've used EOS for this exact purpose a while ago (introducing a 
> friend to linux), but it seemed a bit confusing since its DE 
> relies heavily on "magic" screen angles and mouse scrolling to 
> move between windows and workspaces. Could be good with a 
> powerful laptop though, especially if the user in question 
> comes from the OSX environment.

I suggested Elementary because I am a fan of the Enlightenment 
desktop that it uses. I feel any non-techie can figure out most 
software if its aesthetics are up to scratch.

> IMHO the easiest and most complete DE for a beginner is 
> Cinnamon with Linux Mint, but if your laptop / PC is 
> constrained on resources I strongly advise setting up Devuan 
> with XFCE:

Is it a proper DE, with auto-mounting of USB sticks, controls for 
WiFi, etc. I thought only GNOME and KDE did that.

> https://devuan.org/
>
> It is apt-based, lightweight and doesn't use systemd, which 
> makes it a lot easier to reason about and straightforward if 
> you need to debug some system errors.

After moving to Gentoo Linux, I realized how crippled most 
pre-compiled software is on other Linux distributions. For 
example, IceWM looks so much better with proper font support 
compiled in, which most distributions don't compile it with.