Comment by iinnPP
14 hours ago
As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback.
Been 90 days with zero issues.
To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed.
Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who have troubles
I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything, which is great
Laptop battery life suffers greatly on Linux. When their Google Chrome bootloader is out of battery all day, it matters which OS they installed.
Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore.
And I agree: if it works, why replace it?
People who care deeply about unplugged battery life aren't on Windows to begin with.
Laptop battery is mostly an issue of inefficient CPUs nowadays. I don't know about other distros, but at least Fedora's default power saving settings give a battery life very much comparable to Windows. Which is obviously still nothing compared to macbooks or even snapdragon laptops.
This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux, and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.
1 reply →
My old man was using Ubuntu 20 years ago because all he needed was a browser and openoffice. Shoot, with a live cd you can even make computer use foolproof since it's impossible for them to permanently break it.
When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone.
Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in.
Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc.
I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.
Chromebooks are also pretty good if google sheets/docs would suffice for excel/word.
They usually work well with printers, but I've run into some situations where I was just plain unable to get it to work with my Brother laser printer after a certain ChromeOS update. They screwed up something with the CUPS drivers and it just never worked.
On MacOS at least I have a chance of being able to fix this stuff. ChromeOS is so locked down you can't even fix things.
I've not heard of Universal Blue before, so thank you both for mentioning it! Seems like a great step forward for Linux Desktop!
It's very good
I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I would even install it on my mom's laptop without any hesitation.