I went through the whole "install Linux on Grandma's old desktop" thing a while ago, totally convinced it was a valid alternative, but there were too many bumps in the road. Linux isn't there yet to allow average users to upgrade major distribution versions. There's been architecture differences (32-bit packages disappearing or no longer being supported), broken packages because it was third-party and not upgraded for the latest release or unsupported, Xorg vs Wayland nonsense, etc. Trying to explain why Zoom doesn't work because it's not requesting a Wayland portal and they need to switch to Xorg but then HiDPI breaks is the type of user experience we're dealing with. That was not fun to debug over a phone during COVID.
Chromebooks are fine, but you need to trust Google. Macs are mostly okay if you're willing to eat the expense, because there's a limited amount of nonsense in the OS and a wide network of Apple Stores for support.
Hm. Personally my mother has been a happy Ubuntu user for over a decade, even going through the installer and upgrades herself.
The only customisation has been to switch to MATE desktop every time, which she finds more familiar. That might also imply sticking with Xorg? Overall though her experience has been good. But perhaps your grandmother uses a wider variety of apps. For her, it's mostly about videos (she does use the ISO automount feature in MATE and CD ripping), some document editing, a web browser, and video conferencing.
The last support call was about plugging in a projector. Turns out the projector was not turned on, and once it was on, it autodetected just fine. I then mentioned mirrored mode and monitor positioning, and that was about it.
Ubuntu is offering 5 years of LTS maintenance on 22.04, and if in 5 years she needs help with the upgrade, I don't feel that's a huge imposition, but she may well manage it on her own just fine.
> Linux isn't there yet to allow average users to upgrade major distribution versions.
I hate to say it, but ... don’t? Go the full managed-workstation route, put an LTS on there, and hope you’ll have a chance to do a version upgrade sometime in the coming years. I usually dislike the idea of using an LTS on a personal machine, but here, when the person using the computer isn’t the one maintaining it, it feels appropriate.
I agree it should be better, but it doesn’t feel like a grandma problem, it feels like a smart-and-willing-but-not-savvy problem. (Not that grandmas can’t be in the latter category, it just doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re describing.)
> Linux isn't there yet to allow average users to upgrade major distribution versions.
Which distro was this? The major-version-upgrade flow is very different for different distros.
IMO it would be difficult to make upgrading between major versions much easier than Fedora Silverblue — literally 3 clicks. (If you want to try it out, now is a convenient time to install Silverblue 38, because 39 is due out next week.)
Chromebooks are fine, but you need to trust Google. Macs are mostly okay if you're willing to eat the expense, because there's a limited amount of nonsense in the OS and a wide network of Apple Stores for support.