My head tells me Linux Mint, but my heart says listen to your head. Why is this hard? 😂
Fedora. That’s what I run on my laptop and it’s great.
Linux Mint Debian Edición if the laptop is not brand new.
I would definitely choose Linux Mint 100% :p
I started off with it and its learning curve wasn’t too steep. It uses Calamares for installation, features a built-in app store, and is very familiar to those coming from Windows.
I’d say mint is great for non tech people (90% of the time it’s the DE and GUI apps that are important rather than the distro, but mint has good ones by default). For former windows power users I’d recommend CachyOS or Fedora. Either way, you can boot from USB for any of these as a live demo; I have images for all 3 + memtest on my ventoy USB.
I’d put LMDE on it, the familiarity of Mint with the stability of Debian and no fucking snaps.
Fedora Atomic.
Updates are stable.
They can’t fuck it up.
Respectfully huge disagree. Standard Fedora would be better (and is my personal recommendation) since a bunch of administrative command syntax would be different with Atomic. The internet’s going to show troubleshooting advice for the former 9 times out of 10.
I put Mint on my brother’s laptop when his hard drive died, he’s not a techie sort of person at all and has had no complaints.
My mom won’t update Mint despite me showing her how, so I switched it to CachyOS since I’d be the one updating it anyway. At least it’s not nearly as annoying for me to work on.
Guess it’s too late now, but mint has an option for automatic updates.
I work in an environment with a lot of people that are not very technically skilled. We run Ubuntu (GNOME) in their Laptops.
If I install Linux for family members etc. I install Ubuntu.
My reasoning is:
Ubuntu/.deb based systems are very wifely supported. If you google “how do u do X on Linux” most likely an answer tailored to Ubuntu may come up. Which is however mostly important if the Users will be doing some stuff themselves.Also, I believe Desktops make a huge difference because that’s how people interact with their Computer. And in my opinion it’s not super important what desktop you start people on, its important it stays cohesive. My parents PC’s run MATE for that stability* (and for the “classic” usage scheme they learned back in the XP days) but even GNOME has a pretty stable usage paradigm these days …
Tl;dr: My reccomendation always is Ubuntu with a Desktop that resembles what they are used to.
* though with the MATE project seeming less active these days I’ve been looking for an alternative with low switching friction
If you want to do the least amount of tech support: Fedora Kinoite.
My head tells me Linux Mint
my heart says listen to your head
My head tells me Linux Mint
Head says Linux Mint
Heart says listen to the head
Tiling WM Arch
Hannah Montana Linux, obviously.
This is the only answer, regardless of the question.
There is a good reason Mint is recommended as the no nonsense beginner distro. For someone more technical and willing to learn I might recommend Fedora.
One you get past those two distros you are pretty much in the realm where someone should be technical enough to choose their own distro and know what that means.
I’m on maybe an old version of Mint at work and it is kind of miserable.
Icons don’t work right, the panel is weird, the software center is not very easy to use.
I’m hoping that new versions are better.
A Fedora variant of some sort since they are up-to-date in terms of features and have a low learning curve
Bazzite for young people, Mint for old people would be my first thought
OK I’m nearly 40 but you don’t gotta remind me I’m old 🤣
