this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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You could install Mint on your mother's computer and don't tell her, and she'd probably still think she was using Windows until it came time to install new software. Linux For Normies has come a long way, especially recently. It could be ready for mass adoption very soon, if not already.
I agree. My mom has been running Mint for 9 years with no problems. My tech illiterate friend who has an nvidia gpu on the other hand needs a lot of handholding. He would never be able to make a transition on his own.
Yup. Linux + Nvidia is the problem here. I convinced my friend to move to Linux, explaining that all his favorite Steam games work on my Linux machine with no issues, just download and click play, tested it myself. Turns out, I don't have an nvidia gpu, he does, and a lot of the games straight up don't work, and the ones that do need at least one config change, if not more.
I have yet to have any issues on Steam myself when gaming with my Radeon card.
Maybe I'm somehow lucky but in the year plus that I've had mint on my gaming machine with an RTX 3050 I've had no issues. Maybe cause I rarely play demanding games? But modded Cyberpunk has been fine as well
I feel like Linux works for hardcore users and extremely casual users, but it doesn't work that great for medium savvy users.
Like sure if I'm barely using the computer for anything other than a web browser then it'll work fine.
And if I'm willing to do a whole lot of research I can also make it work for power user setups (at an even better outcome than Windows).
But if I'm just a gamer who's smart enough to do some modding and run a couple of game servers and maybe some other utilities, but I'm not incredibly tech savvy otherwise? Not a great fit.
I guess Iβd fall into the medium savvy category by your definition. Iβm running Linux and for the most part itβs been relatively smooth but there have been lots of things Iβve needed to look up. Iβd like to be more tech savvy and thatβs part of the reason Iβm running Linux and use lemmy, but I do agree the middle ground is the hardest for Linux.
Im the medium user with 6 hard drives, a ton of peripherals, audio equipment, 4 other desktops. I choose linux to make life even harder because otherwise im a lazy pos.
You don't want your mother to be able to install software.
I do like Mint, but now I'm thinking Bazzite might be better for a beginner or average user because all those configurations and default apps/packages meant to make gaming easier also trickles down to having things "just work" for a casual average PC user. π€
I'm writing this on Bazzite right now, it's awesome, works great, and it's true that the preinstalled apps and scripts are really useful for someone coming over from Windows... but not just for them! I've been a Linux user for maybe a couple of decades now and I find them very useful.
I was gonna say this too.
Bazzite is functional, has helpful utilities pre built in, and is pretty idiot proof for the average user, as compared to many other linux distros.
99% of it 'just works'.
Use Bazaar, install flatpak, other useful stuff is pre-installed, use them, if you wanna do something fancier, documentation exists and is pretty good.
Beyond that, for the truly tech illiterate, you just need to make the icons and DE look the same as what they're used to, and then grandma will probably be able to figure it out... I think you can fairly easily do this with a good number of linux distros, and there are some that are just designed around this concept.
My mom used OpenSUSE maybe 10 years ago on a netbook-ish notebook and never had problems until the hardware failed
I did exactly that, because our Surface Laptop Go (!) became very slow with Windows 11. She thought there was an update and uses it without any problems, some parts are even more intuitive to her now.
Pop! OS is even slicker.