[itishappy]

Installing Windows involves filling in about 6 inputs then waiting an hour. This results in a device that will happily chug along without user involvement for a decade. (Yes, it will have ads and automatically restart for updates, but frankly most users don't care. I do, and disabling ads and automatic updates took me 30m of digging, and it's been 6 years since I've seen a Windows dialog. I suppose I turned off the "featured articles on lock screen" flag when it was added a few years ago too.) My mother still uses her 10+ year old Surface without issue. She's a non-technical user who's daily drivers are Apple devices.

What value would Linux provide my mother?

[soupbowl]

Windows major updates reset things alot and enable thigs that were disabled. How can you have gone 6 years without seeing a popup when they have added things in the last 6 years during major updates that are enabled by default and show dialogue and notifications. Also you are obviously on windoes 10 and not seen the new nonsense in 11.

My parents prefer Linux because it doesn't pressure them with pop ups and enabling new features, it just leaves them alone. If your mom uses a Microsoft account and is happy with windows then Linux would be a nuisance to her as windows popups were for my parents.

[itishappy]

I'm on Windows 11 and I keep it up-to-date which may be how I've avoided the automatic updates, but I'm as confused as you how I've avoided the popups and ads! I also have notifications entirely disabled.

[AzzyHN]

If Windows chugged along happily without user involvement for a decade, it'd be used for servers. Stuff breaks on Windows all the time

[itishappy]

Haha, fair... Shit crashes. My work laptop has bluescreened twice in four years, and I take my gaming pc down about once a month with a game or render. But they're both still running today! Biggest fix has been a restart (maybe a few) and we're back up and running.

Ok, "chug along happily without user involvement" probably isn't the right way to phrase this...