[theandrewbailey]

tldr: Linux.

I had more or less the same issue (except things still booted) with my parents about 5 or 6 years ago. In a move I thought was insane, I put them on Xubuntu. I moved them to Mint for a while, but they are back to Xubuntu. It's my preferred distro, and the Ubuntu base (for good support) and XFCE (Windows familiarity) made me comfortable it was Mom and Dad proof. Aside from showing them where things are, there have been zero problems. Turns out that Linux is just as good for email, web browsing, Youtube, and solitare.

I haven't used Lightroom, but how does (say) RawTherapee compare?

[uabstraction]

Darktable is where it's at. I also haven't used Lightroom for more than 5 minutes, but Darktable covers all my RAW developing needs. If you're not shooting for money, it should suffice. (If you ARE shooting professionally, it might(?) fall short, but I only shoot for myself.)

[lucaspiller]

This is what I did. Originally my parents were on Xubuntu, then I gave them an old Mac a few years ago, and now they are back on Linux Mint. My dad had no issues switching from iPhoto to Shotwell.

[DanielleMolloy]

I had a set up of my old computer with xubuntu for my mum for 1.5 years and had to learn that Linux is just not stable enough in the long run if installed for a novice user or as a "parent PC". Don't be naive here; even automatic updates will too often either break something or confuse users unfamiliar with computers. And you will need to be around to fix it or they won't be able to use that computer anymore.

I ended up buying her a second-hand MacMini for 110€ more than 2 years ago. Old enough that it still was a PowerPC version. It still works very well, never needed to fix something, it is fast enough for her use cases (e-mail, digital camera, some internet surfing), and she loves it. If things get messed up on OS X they do that in a "user friendly" way, and she (before being mostly annoyed by computers) has started to become quite proud if she can fix such minor issues by herself, or with only little guidance. I'd say she acquired some general computer literacy through using OS X, but not through using either Linux or Windows. She now likes Steve Jobs.

[dsr_]

My father has now been through two laptops and a NUC running Debian, with me supporting him remotely. 12 years now? He's much happier than my mother is with her Windows hardware.

[noufalibrahim]

Same here. I bought a computer for my folks in around 2009 and installed Ubuntu on it. Some youtube and other tube sites, gnome-games, look at some photos off a camera/phone. That's almost all of what they need it for. The computers been running just fine for almost a decade now.

[Piskvorrr]

This. I have an order of magnitude more issues with Windows (8.1, GWX, Anniversary Edition, oy vey!) than with Lubuntu (I support the same number of both box types for family). To wit, I'm typing this while restoring a WinX box to a point pre-Anniversary: Windows has become more of a bother than it's worth, sometime around Win8.

[psibi]

Same here. My dad has been using Ubuntu for more than 5 years now.

[pmlnr]

Same here.

Give them a Mint with MATE or XFCE; closer to Windows XP than anything else out there. Ublock + Chrome, make sure unattended upgrades are running and they are good to go.

You may want to add a dyndns entry and an ssh running with key-only auth, just in case you need to fix anything remotely for them.

[jlarocco]

RawTherapee and the other Linux RAW software can't hold a candle to Lightroom. I don't even like Lightroom, but the Linux RAW editors are just not very good.

My advice to the OP is to tell them to buy a Mac, get Apple Care and let Apple Genius Bar deal with it.

[type0]

> RawTherapee and the other Linux RAW software can't hold a candle to Lightroom.

This is just plain false. I used AfterShot Pro and I think it's better than Lightroom. The only reason that I switched back to Darktable is because I don't want to locked in the proprietary software.