I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).
First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?
Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.
If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!
I wouldn't go with Debian unless he plans to use that ThinkPad as a server. Distribution version upgrades are not easy for beginners, and with Debian you are stuck with ancient software versions unless they know how to get access to newer software repositories. And at that point it would be better to just run a rolling release. It's setting them up for a bad experience.
Fedora is fine, Zorin and Pop! OS aren't bad for beginners either.
I strongly agree with Debian version upgrades not being "technophobe" friendly
Thanks for the heads up. My main concern with Zorin and Pop (out of ignorance, more than anything) is that they're built with more modern devices, and will make the ThinkPad experience extremely slow? You think this should be a concern or it'll be fine?
Depends on how old it is. T420 should be able to handle at least Zorin (especially the lite variant). I'm not sure about Pop's system requirements, I've only ran it in a virtual machine.
Debian 12 is very stable & a good choice especially for older hw which most arch based distros never test on, thus rolling releases are far more prone to breakage . Plus Debian has plenty of online resources & updating it is as simple as 2 lines sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt full-upgrade