Which Linux for an 84 year old neighbour who wants email, photos and the footy?
Graham Whitfield@greybeard_graham
My neighbour Margaret is 84 and sharp as a tack. Her laptop is a 2017 HP with an i5-7200U and 8GB of RAM, running Windows 10, which stopped getting security updates last October. Windows 11 will not install on it. The shop told her to buy a new laptop. She does not want a new laptop. She wants this one to keep working.
What she uses it for:
- Email (a Gmail account, she uses it in the browser)
- Photos the grandchildren send her, and printing the odd one
- Watching the footy replays and ABC iView
- Video calls with her son in Perth
What she needs: big text, nothing that changes its look every six months, and updates that happen without asking her questions. I run Debian on servers and I have not used a Linux desktop seriously since about 2008. What would you put on it?
Cheers, G.
Top answer
Dear Graham, My wife has used Linux Mint for two years on an old laptop. The key was not the software. It was a single printed sheet, large font, with five instructions: how to open email, how to see photos, how to print, how to call our daughter, and whom to telephone if the screen looks different. The last line has been used only twice.
With regards,
S. Ramanathan
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Comments
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Sign in to commentLena Hoffmann@arch_btw_lena
not arch 😄
linux mint cinnamon. looks and behaves like the windows she knows, start menu bottom left, updates are boring on purpose, and the update manager can do automatic updates without any questions. set font scaling in display settings, 1.25 or bigger. firefox or chrome for gmail and iview, both fine. for video calls whatever her son uses works in the browser.
small things that matter: put a big browser icon on the desktop, set up timeshift once so you can roll back if anything breaks, then turn off the timeshift reminder so it does not nag her. add her printer while you are there, most work out of the box with cups. done.
S. Ramanathan@ramanathan_retd
Dear Graham, My wife has used Linux Mint for two years on an old laptop. The key was not the software. It was a single printed sheet, large font, with five instructions: how to open email, how to see photos, how to print, how to call our daughter, and whom to telephone if the screen looks different. The last line has been used only twice.
With regards,
S. Ramanathan
Alasdair Reid@onprem_or_die
debian stable with gnome, unattended-upgrades on, and lock the dock so she can't drag things off it by accident. you already know debian. mint is fine too, it's debian underneath anyway
Trey Robinson@techwithtrey
Real talk, consider ChromeOS Flex on that laptop. She gets Chrome, Gmail and video calls, updates are invisible, nothing to break. If she ever wants anything beyond the browser it gets annoying, but from her list she doesn't
Graham Whitfield@greybeard_graham
She has an iPad, Ryan. She wants the laptop, with its keyboard, which she can type on. People are allowed to want things.
Cheers, G.
Jonas Becker@jonas_fiae
Mint! Lena helped me with arch for myself, but for my grandma I installed Mint and she loves it. She calls the update icon "the shield" and she clicks it every sunday by herself now
Graham Whitfield@greybeard_graham
Thank you all. Mint Cinnamon it is, with Ramanathan's printed sheet taped to the lid. Installed on Saturday. She rang on Sunday to say the footy works and that "the fox is very clever". I believe she means Firefox.
Cheers, G.