My brother is 12 and just like other people of his age he can’t use a computer properly because he is only familiar with mobile devices and dumbed-down computers
I recently dual-booted Fedora KDE and Windows 10 on his laptop. Showed him Discovery and told him, “This is the app store. Everything you’ll ever need is here, and if you can’t find something just tell me and I’ll add it there”. I also set up bottles telling him “Your non-steam games are here”. He installed Steam and other apps himself
I guess he is a better Linux user than Linus Sebastian since he installed Steam without breaking his OS…
The tech support questions and stuff like “Can you install this for me?” or “Is this a virus?” dropped to zero. He only asks me things like “What was the name of PowerPoint for Linux” once in a while
After a week I have hardly ever seen my brother use Windows. He says Fedora is “like iOS” and he absolutely loved it
I use Arch and he keeps telling me “Why are you doing that nerdy terminal stuff just use Fedora”. He also keeps explaining to me why Fedora better than my “nerd OS”
Is she happier with it than Windows? Does she struggle less? My mom already used Libra office, so at least that much wouldn’t be an adjustment. My fear is that she’ll lock up the first time she has to use the terminal or install something that isn’t in the software center.
PS, Gnome is simple, but it’s also awesome! I’ve been using Linux off and on for 20 years now and I prefer Gnome.
She could careless about the OS, just as long as it is peppy like her phone and simple. So yes much happier than her Windows experience. some distros do a nice job at presenting a software store that is easy, like ZorinOS or ElementaryOS. if she isn’t getting IT help from anybody and you think terminal install may become an issue, there is OpenSUSE with oneclick install of downloaded RPMs (if you are outside of repos). But SUSE is a bit of its own learning curve.
Thanks for the advice. Learning curves won’t work for her. It needs to be like a phone, like you said. I have a lot of experience with Pop and I think she’d be fine with that as long as she doesn’t need to use the terminal. The first time it asks her to sudo her head will explode.
Yep, understood. For my wife’s I put the apps she needed on the dock and nothing else. And then for the browser I set the default page to always show her main websites as tiles. Backups are automatic to a raspberry pi running samba. So far there has been no issues unless the wifi extender goes goofy and she has to reconnect.