I have an aging computer that is used by my wife. She uses it for web browsing and doing our taxes. Maybe on the odd day she starts Microsoft Word to create a document. With the Windows 10 update cliff now come and gone, we were left with a decision of either buy something new or move to something else like Linux to meet these basic needs. Being a Linux guy, take a guess where we went?
While I do love my wife, I could have simply installed X distrobution and walked away hoping that she would just figure it out. This was not how I went about this, rather I thought I should dog food several different beginner focussed distrobutions and work together through the selection process. We recently went to a mountain town so I could attend a conference and she could have some time away from her job. One of the things she wanted to do was build a photo book to chronicle a trip we took overseas earlier in the year. To do that she wanted to use a laptop to both select and then possibly manipulate some photos to place in Shutterfly.
Seeing an opportunity, I offered that she could use my Linux laptop. She agreed and created an account for her and signed her into her Mozilla account in the browser so she could access all the sites that she frequents in a given day. The computer had OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with a KDE desktop. I logged her in, setup Firefox, and showed her that the browser was pinned to the taskbar. When it came time for her to use it, she logged in and started the browser and I trundled off to my conference sessions.
I come back from a day of the conference to find that she had completed the creation of the photo book and was doing things like checking her email, using search, and generally not noticing what the OS was. Fast forward to another day that she wanted to use my laptop, which I had switched to Debian 13 Gnome (look, I get around...), after I had set her up with an account and Firefox just happily did whatever else she wanted to do with a computer that day. So we've proved that she can navigate a purpose built desktop that I setup with a click this icon type approach.
The question is now where so she can do more than simply use a web browser? I showed her Libreoffice, which appears will suffice. I showed her Scribus, as she does a newsletter for not for profit and it looks like something she can work with. There is a web only version of TurboTax, so taxes can be done from Linux too. I think the only thing that was left is what to install on her computer? Here's the options that considered:
- Ubuntu 24.04
- Kubuntu 24.04
- Debian 13
- Fedora 43 (Gnome and KDE)
- Linuxmint 22.2 (and LMDE 7)
I'm familiar with all of these distros, but I still decided to install and use each one to dog food the use of it with a thought to how this would work for my dear wife.
Over a period of time that was probably about 3 months or so, I settled on LMDE 7 or Linuxmint with a Debian base as the winner for her. Here's why:
- Because of Debian base, updates are released for stability and security and not features so much. I think we fail to recognize the pain that non-techies feel each time they reboot a computer. The cry of all my tabs are gone, or what did I even have open in X or Y program? As part of a more conservative base, the update cadence is slower. She'll be able to handle this lower amount updates and reboots.
- She can figure out the software management tool on Linuxmint. While some have strong feelings on this tool in Linuxmint, she can figure this out.
- Cinnamon works just enough like Windows 10 for it to be more comfortable. Sure I could get KDE to do the same thing, and for the most part out of the box it does. Cinnamon does this out of the box and then when she right clicks on things they seem to be understandable to her. The KDE ones where fine too, she just got the Cinnamon ones so I went with it.
So there's another box saved from the recycler. Another Linux user, and more importantly - computing can still be done with minimal effort. Happy Days!