[kriro]

My dad (>60, not exactly tech saavy) has been using Lubuntu for 2 years now (actually I don't even remember when we installed it might be 4 years :P). For many parents who only surf the web and do some non power user office (he uses Libre Office now) and check their mail it's the perfect solution.

For his use case it's more user friendly than the Windows install because of the lack of constant update requests and antivirus stuff etc. etc. It's also faster on the same machine and the computer doesn't clog down every n month. I still remember that he asked me about 6 month in why the computer doesn't get slower :P

I'm fairly confident that a switch from Windows to macOS would have been a lot harder for him btw. Same for a switch to Windows 10 without making it look like the old Windows actually (not as confident in that statement as I don't know enough about Win10).

[gambiting]

My problem with Linux is that more often than not, Linux failure mode is dumping the user to console, where even a power user might struggle to diagnose the problem. I've had failed kernel upgrades on Ubuntu where one moment you click "update all" in the package manager, and the next you are staring at terminal login screen. I haven't had a windows computer do that to me in years.

[nightcracker]

I've never had that happen on Ubuntu. Installing Ubuntu used to be quite technical unless you were lucky and everything worked out of the box, but even that is way less so today. Regardless, once Ubuntu is installed I never had issues.

[webmaven]

I haven't had that happen to me in Ubuntu for, IIRC, about a decade. OTOH I have had the equivalent happen in Windows as recently as early 2015.

[rtpg]

yeah, people who know basically nothing aren't much of an issue, because they have no habits

The harder people to move over are ones who have ingrained certain things like "I need WinRAR to open this kind of file", and not being able to independently research for alternatives. People with mid-level computer experience, but not much experience in new environments suffer a lot on these transitions.

[reitanqild]

I gave said the same:

Linux is for grandmothers, old electricians ... and seasoned sysadmins and programmers like me.

[BozeWolf]

This! Well... not this! Every time the (linux) desktop discussion comes up, at least a few geeks have this "linux+my mother" argument which should prove linux desktop is totally usable for everyone. Just wait until they discover "alternative program X" for "windows program X" is not the same as the program they saw at the computer of the neughbours mom. Or libre office fucks up the layout again.

Come on guys, why always the linux + mother argument. Do not do it. It is silly.

Besides that: most of the time you probably have to give support on apps they use instead of os related issues.

[mosselman]

So it is ok to generalize based on 0 cases that Linux will be too hard for older less tech-savvy people, but it is not ok to generalize based on 1-many successful cases that for some people it might work?

I agree that Linux might not be great for our parents. As for my own mother, I moved her to a Mac mini years ago and that has reduced my support time solely to explaining how specific websites work. She can do lots of things on her own now, like debugging the wifi (shitty telco router), she creates her own booklets for the classes she teaches, etc.

With windows she'd be stuck on non-task related issues 80% of the time, which made it impossible for her to learn how to use the computer at all.

[heartbreak]

Perhaps because my mother's use of a computer literally never ventures out of the web browser? A Chromebook would be great for her, but she does not have one. Instead she has a desktop that has been "linux + my mother" for 6 years.

[webmaven]

I generally nudge those folks toward the G Suite apps instead of a locally-installed office suite like LibreOffice.