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Marcus

Giving a spin in a virtual machine because my mom has expressed an interest in migrating to Linux when 10 enters end-of-life. It's actually pretty darn slick and user-friendly; comes with a lot of stuff made by the Mint devs themselves for Mint, and I think it might be the perfect thing to migrate my mom over to. Will probably stick with the based LMDE.

@gerowen

I'm gonna propose #Aurora
getaurora.dev

#universalblue projects are like a "Dad Linux". No time to tinker, just want a 🖥️ to work. But who's to say it can't also be a "Mom Linux".

It's Chromebook easy.

Except based on :fedora: instead.

I myself 🎮 on #Bazzite, but Aurora is like it's more non-gamer sibling. ❤️

Easy peasy rollbacks if anything ever goes wrong.

It's also very very hard to break Flatpak applications or the Atomic OS.

getaurora.devAuroraThe ultimate developer workstation

@Eeyore_Syndrome @gerowen agree with Aurora. I run Silverblue and Bazzite.

Or, just use Mint but make all packages installed through Flatpaks and you're half-way there.

@gerowen love this. She'll love mint. I've given away like 300 Linux mint machines to regular folks and they all love it

@gerowen My elderly father has been using Mint for years now because I installed it for him and showed how to get online. It's been trouble-free years mind you.

@gerowen Linux Mint is an awesome and fairly easy change from a windows environment. The "standard" issued versions are even easier than the debian based ones. If the machine has the umpf, you might like to look at the standard version with Cinnamon. I recently tried XFCE Linux Mint on a low end machine and it runs like a champ!

@gerowen why does everyone like Linux Mint? I genuinely don't understand what it gives you over a Ubuntu based install with Cinnamon or Mate, aside from a different color scheme.

@austincnunn They have their own priorities and choices that they make in the design. For one, they ship Flatpak (more apps, more open) instead of Snaps (proprietary backend, fewer apps). You also generally get the latest version of Cinnamon a little faster because Mint are the primary devs behind it. Their pre-installed first party apps are kinda nice too. For a lot of lay people I guess Mint seems more approachable than figuring out whether you want Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.

@gerowen I'm gonna be honest and say I've never understood the Flatpak vs Snap debate, either. Not from a technical standpoint - I get that - but from a "oooooo, use Flatpak because Snap is from Canocial, and they're bad!" standpoint... While also basing your distro on Ubuntu. Lol

I forgot the Mint devs were behind Cinnamon, so that makes sense.

@austincnunn I remember there was a little bit of drama when Mint first made this move with Ubuntu basically telling them if they didn't like it to just re-base on something else, which is one of the reasons they keep LMDE around as a fallback to make sure Mint can survive should Ubuntu ever not be a viable base any more.

@austincnunn @gerowen I like them both. I think for someone coming from Windows it may be easier to migrate to Linux Mint/Cinnamon than Ubuntu.

@austincnunn @gerowen I re read your post. I think a noob coming over to Linux may not dig too deep on the ubuntu site and find this: ubuntu.com/desktop/flavours I've been using Linux professionally since '96 (not as a desktop, but for servers) and didn't even look at the different Desktop Flavors for Ubuntu.

UbuntuUbuntu flavours | Ubuntu Ubuntu flavours are different installations of Ubuntu - each with a choice of packages and applications included by default. Here you are able to choose and download the officially recognised flavour that would best suit your particular industry and unique needs.

@gerowen lol Im working on getting my parents on Mint too. I just updated an old machine to the new Mint, its far more impressive visually and user friendly than I remember in previous versions.

@gerowen hi, how does this differ from ubuntu and it's spinns? i've herd rave reviews you see and am curious what the hype is about?

@mhussain It's Ubuntu based but they make some of their own design and security choices. For one, they are the lead developers of the Cinnamon desktop, so by default it ships with that and you will generally get newer versions of Cinnamon faster on Mint.

They also remove snaps in favor of flatpaks, though you can obviously reinstall snaps yourself if you prefer those, but by default it has flatpaks instead.

They also have a "Debian Edition" or "LMDE" that is based on Debian instead of Ubuntu.

@gerowen cheers for that info! that desktop enviroment is not accessible sadly