Switched my Parents to Linux

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.

Sanyanov,

Recommending Linux is good; forcing it down someone’s throat is not.

If parents are just comfy using Windows, it’ll get them super frustrated when they’ll face new issues coming from Linux use, as you just can’t turn Linux into Windows and they never asked for it.

Now, if they complain about all the shit Windows throws at them, you can offer an alternative.

Lettuceeatlettuce,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

I see what you’re saying, but it has gone down fine so far. My dad is completely computer-illiterate, every phone/computer he uses seems like it was found in an alien spacecraft to him, so changing from Windows to Linux doesn’t make any difference to him. He just needs to be able to click the Chrome icon and then click the YouTube favorite button or the Hotmail favorite button.

My mom worked way back in the day for a corpo that used DOS systems, so she actually has remained slightly computer savvy. She was worried about the change until I showed her that the Spotify app worked perfectly, she could read her emails, open Word documents, and print stuff.

I also explained that the computer would run faster and would be safer for them to use because the malware that effects Windows doesn’t effect Linux, and that made sense to her.

If she had insisted I keep them on Windows, I would have. But she was just concerned that nothing would work the same and she would have to become some techie to figure it out. Once I addressed those concerns, she was alright with switching.

9488fcea02a9,

I gave my mom a macbook with debian KDE and a mac OS theme… I dont think she’s noticed yet…

cmnybo,

I did that about 10 years ago because I got tired of removing malware for them. They haven’t had any malware since then.

d3Xt3r,

Same here. Not just my parents, but also some of my aunts and uncles. None of them are particularly tech savvy and none of them have had any major issues.

People who claim that Linux is difficult to use, or not suitable for newbies, have no idea what they’re talking about.

onlinepersona,

Linux just needs to come preinstalled.

People, stop buying windows stuff and then installing linux! Buy Linux: linuxpreloaded.com

heygooberman,
@heygooberman@lemmy.today avatar

An excellent choice to use Linux Mint! If my parents allowed me to switch their computers to Linux, I would’ve chosen Linux Mint as well for them. But, I probably wouldn’t give them the Windows 10 look.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

It’s so funny that having a different theme makes the computer hard to use for some parents. :)

Those people drive cars on the road!

vsis,
@vsis@feddit.cl avatar

UI/UX 101, my friend.

If people are used to see specific symbols for years is hard for them to use different ones.

There’s a reason why floppy disk is still the icon for “save”.

Those people drive cars on the road!

Imagine if they change all road signs designs suddenly before you go for a ride.

foster_hangdaan,

I did the same thing with my Dad. He’s been using Linux Mint for a bit over 2 years now.

Linux Mint is more than enough for his usage: Email, internet browsing and word processing.

demonsword,
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

set up some remote desktop in case you need to support them when your vacation ends

Lettuceeatlettuce,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

Already threw RustDesk on there and tested it.

KillSwitch10,

Not worth it. You will end up playing the h support when something goes wrong.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Oh yeah. tadeubento.com/…/linux-desktop-a-collective-delus…

baseless_discourse,

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?

luthis,

In 99% of cases I have seen, people pick their OS because it came preinstalled

django,

Make me use windows and I will write a similar blog post about me hating every second of it. But I don’t have to, so I won’t.

The part about dragging and dropping files like its the 90s, instead of just pushing to your git repo was funny.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Cmon, this isn’t a compatible and good enough alternative:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/70647f0d-f413-48dd-9d5c-6ba56e09d7eb.jpeg

It is something that will just give you issues down the line when people expect documents to look consistent.

d3Xt3r,

Firstly, there’s no guarantee that a document would look exactly the same even within different versions of MS Office itself. Also, try opening any complex document in MS Office on macOS for instance, and you’ll most likely notice issues or differences compared to the Windows version. In my old sysadmin job, where I used a Mac, we had a standard “change control” template that we had to fill out when doing infrastructure changes, and the radio buttons used in the form didn’t work on the macOS version of Office. So issues like this are pretty common. These sort of issues are why people either normally ignore them OR in the case that layout/formatting is critical (eg: for publishing/printing), then they’d use PDF or TeX or similar formats, where the formatting is preserved.

Secondly, as @cygnus mentioned, use OnlyOffice if MSO compatibility is important. Below is a screenshot I captured of a recreated Lorem Ipsum docx on my Linux machine, with MS Office Online (running on Edge) on the left and OnlyOffice on the right.

https://lemmy.nz/pictrs/image/a705d0b5-45c1-4fe7-ac34-a7e2b88fda48.png

As you can see, they’re virtually identical - and any difference in the sizing etc would come down to the fact that I’m running the web version of MSO, so the zoom/scaling may not exactly match that of OO. But other than that, if you check the spacing and everything else, it’s pretty accurate.

Finally, in saying that, even OO has it’s limitations and isn’t a 100% replacement for MSO - as it can’t run macros, or may not be able to display certain types of embedded objects in Excel and so on. But then, even the web and Mac versions of MS Office has these sort of limitations. But the average home user wouldn’t normally use macros or advanced features in Office, so for the most part, OO, or even LO should be fine for most users.

Also, just as a reminder, in this thread we’re discussing about how Linux can work fine for most home users, the kind of users who have simple requirements, and aren’t dependent on specific proprietary programs like Photoshop etc. Obviously Linux will not be suitable for every single need or use case out there, but neither is Windows or MacOS - if you have special needs or requirements, then use the tool that’s best for the job. But nitpicking minor differences like this isn’t helping anyone, we’d be sitting here arguing all day about how “X OS sucks because it can’t do Y”, which is a pointless exercise.

Edit: I was curious to see how bad LibreOffice actually was so I just tested it out:

https://lemmy.nz/pictrs/image/cda9e99c-df3b-43f1-bb95-5a469927befe.png

… and that was surprisingly not bad at all! Just one word out of place. But this goes to show how opensource software is ever evolving and constantly improving - so a particular criticisms you may have had in the past may no longer be applicable, unless you test it out yourself against the latest versions.

ardent_abysm,
@ardent_abysm@lemm.ee avatar

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.

Lettuceeatlettuce,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

lemmyvore,

Typically all of us who switched our relatives to Linux were doing support anyway — but it’s much easier than Windows.

Windows needs constant handholding like a needy pet (and not the cute kind). With Linux I spend extended periods of time without having to do anything. I get like one major issue a year, and it’s usually hardware related. The only questions I get occasionally are “do you know an app that does thing”.

Sterben,
@Sterben@lemmy.ml avatar

Good job on that! Linux is way better for average uses like you described. 😊

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