I’m visiting my parents for the holidays and convinced them to let me switch them to Linux.

They use their computer for the typical basic stuff; email, YouTube, Word, Facebook, and occasionally printing/scanning.

I promised my mom that everything would look the same and work the same. I used Linux Mint and customized the theme to look like Windows 10. I even replaced the Mint “Start” button with the Windows logo.

So far they like it and everything runs great. Plus it’s snappier now that Windows isn’t hogging all the system resources.

    • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.mlOP
      17·
      1 year ago

      As if I’m not already doing that. Why do you think I was home working on my parent’s computer in the first place?

      Plus with how shitty Windows is getting, I’ll likely be doing less tech support going forward.

    • ardent_abysm@lemm.ee
      15·
      1 year ago

      I set up Mint on my parent’s PC a couple of years ago, and the amount of support I have had to provide has dropped to basically zero.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      71·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know, maybe?

      I play support now, and have for decades. Sometimes windows can be a bear.

      Maybe, for basic usage like this, Linux can make sense if it’s well thought out?

      I have an older (80’s) family friend who recently switched from a laptop to an iPad, and seems OK with it (surprisingly).

      • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
        51·
        1 year ago

        This article seems misguided, people pick their OS because of what they need. I can list many things with subpar experience on Windows: emacs suck; latex is slow; libreoffice and thunderbird crashes like nobody’s bushiness; opam is straightup unsupported (which means ocaml, dune, coq is a pain); there is absolutely nothing in the app store, means that people will need to resort to commandline tools to install and update app.

        All of this obviously will not decrown Windows from a OS with mass appeal. Since the software most people need runs well on windows.

        Another example, in my crowd it is quite rude to send a docx file between people assuming people want to use or have access to Microsoft office, so everything is in PDF. Yet in many other crowd docx is the default. We were never bounded by the need of a specific office software, while others do not enjoy the same luxury.

        There is needs by different groups of people, and that means they choose the OS that is most comfortable for them. Linux is not going to have 70% desktop adoption rate overnight, and no one is saying that. In fact both the quote in the article and this post explicitly dismissed “linux is ready for everyone” delusion. They are just comfortable in Linux, and what is wrong with that?

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          1 year ago

          Well the article lists at least 8 groups of people with real and common professions that can’t run on Linux because it wont cut it.

          Linux is not going to have 70% desktop adoption rate overnight, and no one is saying that. In fact both the quote in the article and this post explicitly dismissed “linux is ready for everyone” delusion. They are just comfortable in Linux, and what is wrong with that?

          Yeah, Linux isn’t for everyone yet people here on Lemmy defend it like a religion.