[sjogress]

Personally replaced Windows 10 with Linux Mint on my very computer illiterate mother in law's laptop a few months back. Haven't heard any complaints so far.

Linux is ready for prime time for anyone not bound to Windows/MacOS software.

Personally, I'm still on MacOS for work, but all my personal devices run some form of Linux. It's been liberating to say the least.

[AmazingTurtle]

I set up windows 11 on a laptop for my dad so he can read emails and browse the web. Came back 3 months later when he told me he couldn't see the PDF files anymore. Turns out he installed THREE different PDF viewers that he randomly found on google, they installed tons of bloatware/spyware, replaced browser toolbars and searches etc. to a point where I decided to just restore from a recovery point. Told him not to download weird stuff (again) and ask me when he needs help.

At that point I questioned myself: I really should have installed linux for him.

[jermaustin1]

> replaced browser toolbars

This is still a thing? Browsers still have toolbars???

My go to for family is giving them no install rights, and adding a remote desktop app for me to connect to them when they need something to install.

I don't get called very often anymore, and when I do, it's for their work computer or something, to which I say, talk to your IT department, I can't fix that.

[dpe82]

ChromeOS is a really great option for "just want to read emails and browse the web".

[pjerem]

Oh yeah, at least with ChromeOS, Chrome isn’t installing itself like a spyware alongside any other software installer.

[mc32]

Browsers today view and can do limited editing for PDFs. No need for a dedicated reader. One does need a dedicated authoring tool if you need to create PDFs from scratch. Most OSes support print to PDF as well if you only need conversion.

[fullstop]

My daughter did this for her boyfriend's grandma, except she used Kinoite. The immutable aspect of it makes it very difficult to break.

She was over there recently and the downloads folder was littered with malware .exe files, so the grandma is trying her hardest to break it.

[abdullahkhalids]

UBlock origin will fix most of that problem.

[kgermino]

But it creates other issues, especially for a non-techsavvy user

[array_key_first]

I've never seen a website break because of ublock, at least not in the default config. If it's that much of a problem you can just remote in on grandmas computer and disable it for whatever website.

I think that beats remoting in when granny inevitably gets scammed by an ad.

There really is no excuse in my mind for not running an ad blocker. It's as vital to personal computing security as firewalls and anti malware.

[abdullahkhalids]

Blocking ads helps grandma not accidentally leak private information that could have disastrous consequences, for example, getting scammed out of their money.

Not blocking ads helps grandma visit a few more websites that don't work well with adblock.

[virgil_disgr4ce]

> Linux is ready for prime time for anyone not bound to Windows/MacOS software.

I suspect in order for this to be true we'd need a PR campaign that can shift culture on the scale of civil rights.

I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or deride Linux or anything—I agree that technologically it's probably ready. Overall UX I'm slightly skeptical. But the far bigger problem is culture.

There's already been a shift away from "PCs" among younger people. The majority of my kids friends have never touched a "regular computer." I've heard an unsettling number of reports of new hires who have never heard of a spreadsheet.

I'm bringing this up because if kids aren't using PCs as much in the first place and quite literally don't know what an operating system is (and please challenge this assumption; I'm going off of anecdata) it's going to be even harder to try to create cultural awareness and acceptance of linux.

But even disregarding that there would need to be a massive, massive coordinated campaign to create a real culture shift. I'm talking superbowl ads.

Again, not trying to be pessimistic, I'm trying to say that "ready for prime time" at this point has little to do with engineering or even design and far more to do with PR. Once I started launching my own products I quickly discovered (as everyone does) that making the thing is like 5% of the job and the remaining 95% is marketing.

[treis]

The frustrating thing is that developers are some of the most reluctant to change. I'm sick of fighting docker on my Mac among the many other problems. But if we can't break away nobody else is going to either.

[deaddodo]

I mean yeah, Chrome and Firefox both run on Linux. And that covers 99% of what most "normies" need.

It's funny when people say Linux is difficult for their grandparents or siblings, when that's the place it covers best. And it keeps them from calling you about random adware/spyware/viruses they accidentally installed.

It's prosumers and professionals that have more issues with Linux, because they tend to rely on proprietary software that's problematic to install/use.

[tracker1]

Before she passed, I had one of my Grandmothers on Ubuntu for about a decade... I had to set it up for her, and I ran updates every few months for her, but she really didn't have an issue... Her Windows 9x era games even ran under Wine when they wouldn't load on Windows (7 I think), correctly.

Email, browser and a few games... she was pretty happy with it.

[dfxm12]

I was so close to getting my parents to switch to Ubuntu in the late 2000s. It stuck until my dad needed some piece of software on the home PC for work that only worked with Windows. Today, they have iPhones and they think it will be more convenient to have a Mac to "sync things". Oh well...

[microtonal]

Today, they have iPhones and they think it will be more convenient to have a Mac to "sync things". Oh well...

And for a very long time they would have been right. But it seems that all the commercial desktop OSes are in the maximize money extraction-phase now.