When I was visiting my wife’s family for Thanksgiving, my father-in-law told me that his laptop was telling him that if he didn’t upgrade to Win11 he be vulnerable to all sorts of malware. They’re both retired and on a fixed income so he was panicking over buying a new machine. I put Mint on his existing laptop and walked him through its use. Fingers crossed that he’ll be able to handle it. I haven’t had any support calls from him yet but I’ll find out how it’s going when I see him in a few days.

Does anyone have any tips for supporting older family members on Linux if they have absolutely no experience with it?

  • Dymonika@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 days ago

    Unfortunately, I just read a whole bunch of comments in another post about how Canonical trends so anti-consumer (to Microsoft-like levels) that multiple people are advocating against Mint and even Ubuntu entirely, so now my pickle is rescuing the relatives I just rescued from Windows and OS X from Mint, which they’ve been getting settled in lol. Ugh.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        2·
        2 days ago

        Maybe a comparison could be like one of those “Debloated Windows” OSs with Classic Shell that actually works and isn’t super hacky. :D

        • Dymonika@lemmy.ml
          2·
          1 day ago

          Thanks, I didn’t know that. But then my question is: how dependent is the Mint team on Canonical’s updates to Ubuntu? Is it like Waterfox vs. Firefox?

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            2·
            7 hours ago

            I’m definitely not an expert, but yeah that’s kinda the case.

            Basically Mint will update core packages and security updates and such, but when Canonical gets another “bright idea” for Ubuntu like opt-out telemetry, or amazon results in search, or proprietary packaging formats (Snaps)…

            …Mint will basically just leave that stuff out, and it never reaches the users.

            • Dymonika@lemmy.ml
              1·
              1 hour ago

              Okay, great, thanks. I just hope that Canonical doesn’t do something like forcibly interweave a proprietary blob with a critical updated.

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
      3·
      2 days ago

      I think Ubuntu has a long way to go to “Microsoft levels”, but yeah, some of their actions are why people are less keen to recommend them to new users (and why I don’t myself). As the other person said, Mint is separate to that - it’s a bit like “Ubuntu with the crap removed”.