Ideas for my Linux hating daughter (and computer hating wife)?

[MurphCID]

Her thing is that Cinnamon LOOKS old compared to Windows. She knows it can be modded, I use Cinnamox Heather with Simple Dock. I will do my best to show her the mods that can be done. I think it is just an excuse for not wanting to try an alternate OS.

Excuse or not, if she is that fixated about Windows nothing you can say or do will change her mind. You might as well try to change the way she votes or the way she dresses.

That is a point, but I have to try, she needs to learn something new. If not, then I will have another laptop (*sigh*) that I can play distro hopping on. But I think that she will appreciate it, especially with Chrome, Zoom, and LibreOffice.

[MurphCID]

Partly to prove that Linux is NOT an old person's OS. Cinnamon on Mint 20.3 (or 21 by the time I get around to this), would be my first choice, but she has made gagging noises at Linux Mint Cinnamon. I want her to also be able to work on the linux laptops when I am gone, so a nice used laptop would be a good thing for her. I don't know too much about MX since I was never able to get it to work right on any of the System 76 laptops. But I liked the XFCE implementation.

I'd go with Zorin OS Core (GNOME made to look like W10 but can do Mac OS too). She's more likely to appreciate the more modern UI of that and it's just as featured as Mint. Core is free to download and use. Like Mint, Zorin is Ubuntu based and still on focal fossa, however they use the HWE kernel by default.

There is a light version as well based on XFCE for older hardware but to look at it, you wouldn't really know it's XFCE apart from the odd dialogue box

Point, I will look into it. Thank you.

[antikythera]

Q4os has a perfect copy of windows xp and 7
That might be fun as joke

I believe he's already been in trouble over that with his Father

[Portreve]

Imagine if you will for a moment, MurphCID, that I wrote a long and comprehensive response post which delved into user interface design philosophy and relativistic tastes. Ok, you can stop imagining.

I think it is just an excuse for not wanting to try an alternate OS.

...because, let's be honest, it pretty much comes down to this, along with the gaming thing. I guess I'm relieved not to be a gamer.

[xenopeek]

She also complains that you cannot game on Linux, especially her favorites like Assassin's Creed: Origins and Odyssey. Also she has a bunch of the Lego games.

"you cannot game on Linux"... Valve would like to have a word Steam Deck is Linux and has thousands of games. But yes certain Windows titles won't run well on Linux. https://www.protondb.com/ keeps track of that. The Assassin's Creed games have problems; the Lego games mostly will run flawlessly on Linux.

But agreeing with Portreve, it doesn't sound like your daughter wants to use Linux. Your plan to have her switch to Linux so that when you get on in the years she can do tech support for you is the other way around from how we do it in my family. The older generation uses what the younger generation wants to use, so that the younger generation can offer tech support to the older generation.

[antikythera]

The irony is I have a number of games that run better on LMDE5 than Windows these days because they are looking for older versions of libraries that only wine can emulate. So much so that the instructions to get the games working on W10 or W11 specifically state to copy the wine3d files to the game directory. For me it's simpler to not bother as I run Linux anyway and just to use it. The framerate with LMDE5 for the games is also better than windows and I do not have to mess around with the config files or registry either to get native panel resolution (also part of the windows problems with the games)

Halo:Combat Evolved is a prime example. Yes it's as old as the hills but also it still plays well in 2022. Okay it's not as cinematic as the latest Halo franchise refresh but the basic elements are there.

[Jymm]

you might look into a window clone type of linux like Zorin. It is made to help transition people from Windows to Linux. It is how I started, I would recommend you go with the core, unless the laptop is older and then the lite.

"Zorin OS is designed to be easy, so you don't need to learn anything to get started. The Zorin Appearance app lets you change the desktop layout to feel like the environment you're familiar with, whether it's Windows, macOS, or Linux."

https://zorin.com/os/

[Pierre]

@PCDoctor
that looks suspiciously like my Lenovo 100s aka win-10
- with it's very custom theme -

you might look into a window clone type of linux like Zorin. It is made to help transition people from Windows to Linux. It is how I started, I would recommend you go with the core, unless the laptop is older and then the lite.

that an good suggestion .. it can also have an "windows theme" as well.
and, if she should, manage to kill it .. then it could then be replaced with an Linux theme.


NB: you could actually, get an Real Windows System .. win-11 .. of course,
and just await for it, to eventually .. crash.

[AndyMH]

While a lot of good ideas, it is easy to be a linux evangelist, I'm with xenopeek and portreve on this one, think you are pushing at a brick wall. My other half runs win7 on another T430, all she does is browse the web and email (hotmail), but I know it's a waste of time trying to persuade her to use mint. Yes, even with win7 being EOL and all that.

[MurphCID]

Q4os has a perfect copy of windows xp and 7
That might be fun as joke

I believe he's already been in trouble over that with his Father

He has not forgiven me, but he is at least using his "Windows XP" laptop with no complaints....

[MurphCID]

She also complains that you cannot game on Linux, especially her favorites like Assassin's Creed: Origins and Odyssey. Also she has a bunch of the Lego games.

"you cannot game on Linux"... Valve would like to have a word Steam Deck is Linux and has thousands of games. But yes certain Windows titles won't run well on Linux. https://www.protondb.com/ keeps track of that. The Assassin's Creed games have problems; the Lego games mostly will run flawlessly on Linux.

But agreeing with Portreve, it doesn't sound like your daughter wants to use Linux. Your plan to have her switch to Linux so that when you get on in the years she can do tech support for you is the other way around from how we do it in my family. The older generation uses what the younger generation wants to use, so that the younger generation can offer tech support to the older generation.

Steam deck is NOT something I plan on giving her... Thinking about it, she was mostly complaining about the "big, clunky, 15.6"" laptops, she likes the smaller 13.3 and 14 inch laptops that are light. She does not want to be forced to give up windows, which I am not going to do at all. I just want her to try it and see what she thinks, and maybe learn a few things before she starts learning with her Uncle on setting up a home network and then possibly running a NAS (with all the movies for home streaming). Her Uncle uses Linux (Ubuntu).

I also am training her to provide tech support to her mother who is one of the most intentionally tech illiterate people I have ever known, even worse than some of the old guys at work who long for the days of the typewriter.... I do not want her to SWITCH unless SHE wants to switch, I just want her to learn to use it so that in a worse case scenario she is able to do basic tasks in Linux.

She also has a need to back up her iPhone to a computer, which regrettably is NOT a Linux thing. So that is why she will most likely remain a windows user for the near future until that feature comes to Mint down the road. She also has a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 that she loves. Maybe Linux support will arrive at some point to allow better integration with Android. She has Krita on her desktop along with LibreOffice.

I am leaning very much towards Mint Cinnamon edition since it can be modded so much. My youngest has drunk the Kool-Aid and is now an Apple Mac fangirl, she loves the Mac, but it stays out of her way and lets her write papers, surf the net, do her email, and connects to her iPhone. Her gaming system is an AMD 3600 desktop I had built for the two girls several years ago, and it has a 27" ASUS monitor. She games on that system.

[MurphCID]

While a lot of good ideas, it is easy to be a linux evangelist, I'm with xenopeek and portreve on this one, think you are pushing at a brick wall. My other half runs win7 on another T430, all she does is browse the web and email (hotmail), but I know it's a waste of time trying to persuade her to use mint. Yes, even with win7 being EOL and all that.

I agree it might be a lost cause, but I really want her to try and since the Lenovo is a smaller laptop she might have less of an issue. All she does on her laptop is surf the internet, read emails, and sometimes type out something to print.

[Jymm]

her mother who is one of the most intentionally tech illiterate people I have ever known,

Yet you made her your daughters mother! LOL

[RollyShed]

Am I lucky here or something? My partner, Windows one day, Linux the next and simply carried on using the computer doing what had previously been done on it in much the same manner.
Can business spreadsheets be done on LibreOffice the same way as yesterday? Emails, the same way? Web browsing, the same way?
Yes to all of those so what's different?
Oh, it won't crash at the end of the month as it had every previous month due to MS.

[MurphCID]

her mother who is one of the most intentionally tech illiterate people I have ever known,

Yet you made her your daughters mother! LOL

True. Very, very true.

[MurphCID]

Well we had a long talk this morning when she got up to put the dogs out and I woke up as I normally do, too early. She told me NOT to waste my money, there was NO WAY, EVER! that she was going to use LInux or a Linux laptop so don't even bother. We discussed it for about thirty minutes while drinking our morning caffinated beverages of choice. She was adamant, she got my stubborn, but since her head injury, she is even more stubborn than my wife and I combined. So I have regrettably decided that it is a lost cause, and I should find other things to spend my money on. Oh well, I tried, I really tried.

[Hoser Rob]

Personally if you're talking about someone who just likes the way Win7 works, I think KDE is the closest. My daily driver runs MX 21 KDE so I'm obviously voting for that. BTW I don't like KDE because it's more like WIn 7.

[MurphCID]

x360 rung a bell so I searched the forums for "x360" and find a pile of topics about audio and suspend not working on that HP series. I'd double check these will run as you want them to with Linux.

But otherwise those laptops are powerful enough to run whatever OS you want, with whatever DE/WM. Considering these are HiDPI laptops—FullHD resolution in a 13-14" has tiny pixels, making letters about half the size as on a normal monitor—I'd pick a DE that has the best HiDPI support. I think that limits your choices. Arch Linux wiki has a page about HiDPI support: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPI# ... vironments. Gnome Shell, KDE and Xfce have good support and details there for what all you need to configure. For Cinnamon it says "Has good support out of the box." Enlightenment is also a very nice looking WM that has HiDPI support. Screenshots don't do it justice https://www.enlightenment.org/ because it has lots of animation and effects.

Also I have tried fractional scaling in Mint 20 and it just does not seem to work at all. Fractional scaling would be great on the HP Dev One laptop. That is my main wish for Mint 21. Cinnamon just does not seem to work on any of my laptops with fractional scaling. I can either do normal or HiDPI, what I really want is to be able to do 125%. If Windows can do it, why cannot Linux?

[MurphCID]

Personally if you're talking about someone who just likes the way Win7 works, I think KDE is the closest. My daily driver runs MX 21 KDE so I'm obviously voting for that. BTW I don't like KDE because it's more like WIn 7.

I am impressed with KDE these days. I still prefer Cinnamon, but KDE is really exceptional. If I was going to run Fedora or Mageia, I would run KDE.

[antikythera]

KDE is pretty nice to use but also prone to more bugs than Cinnamon unfortunately, especially when it comes to updating KDE from one point release to another (or a major release). The user configs often get messed up by that process, so the need to keep backups of those is far greater than with any other DE.