Linux

Rustdesk! Its a GUI copy of Teamviewer but it works.

It has all the DynDNS stuff that miss in all the other options so they are unusable in countries where IP addresses change.

But no wayland, yet.

Already threw RustDesk on there and tested it.

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.

I wouldn't be overly harsh.

Some logos/images/designs are simply hardwired to the function that they can't remember where the apps are if the logo changes. I'm pretty sure I'll be the same if I use something for 30 years.

My wife changed her Windows work laptop last week. Her Desktop is synced to OneDrive so really she just needs to login. Despite that she was panicking that her PDF's were gone. They weren't, it's just that the new laptop has a newer version of Adobe Reader which uses an updated icon.

Some people are just tech illiterate and the slightest difference can be upsetting. My mum's the same with her phone. Using Google Maps to navigate is an achievement for her and I've been telling her to use it for years. The first time she did she reached her destination literally shaking. She was also amazed with herself that she had done it.

Same. And also because it kept getting slower for no reason. The only support requests at the beginning were "how do I install this" --> app store, and "it won't boot" --> that took longer because they had turned off the computer during a system update - by holding down the power button. The last one warranted a sticky note on the screen "NEVER turn off the computer during an update".

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.

My mom insisted that it look the same lol. I figured it was a small price to pay to get them off Windows. I still might change it secretly before I leave haha.

I wish I had a linux

Reasonable

And that's the thing. It's great for casual users who do simple computing tasks, and it's great for the programmers, hackers, and IT professionals. But there's no middle ground for power users who know a bit more than the average users but can't be bothered to learn shell scripting.

I mean I was with you in the first half, I also tell my family either to use it I'm used to or don't ask me for help. But I would not be so rude as to put gnome on it and force them to learn a completely different workflow.

Especially when 99.9% of what they do is in a web browser there's no reason to change anything on them. I just used KDE plasma as it's already extremely Windows 7 like in layout right out of the box couple more tweaks to make it a little more Windows 10 like and they don't have to relearn a bunch of shit.

They don't need to know how to install things, I have a tray applet helper for handling updates all they have to do is Click yes, doesn't matter if they understand the differences between Windows and that. They just need to be able to open the web browser, open libreoffice, and occasionally click print. There's no reason for me to force them into an entirely different workflow.

I'm glad that your mother figured it out and seems to be doing well, but to me it just feels like an unnecessary change

Just uninstall your proprietary parent and install Linux.

My parents would ask me for tech support anyway no matter the OS. I have them update software and update Firefox and Chromium and their Netflixing will keep working, been very low stress generally.

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.

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.

Probably doing that anyway

I don't know, maybe?

I play support now, and have for decades. Sometimes windows can be a bear.

Maybe, for basic usage like this, Linux can make sense if it's well thought out?

I have an older (80's) family friend who recently switched from a laptop to an iPad, and seems OK with it (surprisingly).

It went smoothly, even smoother than I was suspecting. I just made sure to backup all their data, and made sure they had all their passwords for accounts.