Will be brief, her laptop is EOL with windows 10 being discontinued. I have an old laptop laying around that I could repurpose for her. If I reimage with Windows 11 she would be familiar and her son who lives nearby could give her assistance from time to time but I have to install by creating a custom image via Rufus as the hardware of my laptop is not supposed to run Win11. If one day Micro$oft decides to drop unsupported devices she will be back with an unusable computer.

I could install Mint and she will likely be ok but I will be in charge of IT support if something goes sideways. She only needs OnlyOffice and an app to read and edit pdfs.

The reason I am posting here is to ask: how often did you had to help a family member with Mint? On my computers I never had issues as it pretty much is set and forget but I am far from the standard user. Can you share something that happened with you?

If I manage to get her on Mint she will pretty much be able to use that laptop up until the moment the machine will stop working or if she decides to get a new one. With windows she will be able to use it up until the vendor will decide otherwise.

And, last one, assuming I set Mint for her and considering I want to have near 0 chances to be called for issues, shall I go for LMDE or the standard edition?

Going to work now but will respond once I get back home

  • MeldrikA
    2·
    3 days ago

    All my family members either use Mint or Elementary. I have never needed to go help them with anything.

    It also really depends on what they use the PC for. Most people just need a browser and maybe an office suite. That’s it.

    There’s so little they can fuck up on Linux, contra Windows.

    I can remember how Windows always ended up getting filled up with a bunch of shit installed and what not. Not on Linux. It is literally as clean as the day I installed it, except for the desktop that’s filled up with documents haha