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?
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.
I think you’re alright, Mint’s whole thing is being defuckulated Ubuntu.
Maybe a comparison could be like one of those “Debloated Windows” OSs with Classic Shell that actually works and isn’t super hacky. :D
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”.