Hello there. Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a Linux distro for grandparents? They are over 70 years old, with an old HP desktop and laptop running Windows 10. All they need is a Web browser, so no need for special software or wine to run Windows programs. Would preferably like something that is low maintenance so I don't have to be constant tech support for them (apart from the initial install and setup). Thanks for any suggestions.
NixOS is an immutable file system if they are disaster prone. You will have to load everything for them ahead of time, browser, email client, Only/Libre Office, etc.
I had to switch a friend's mom to this because after switching her to Linux Mint previously, she somehow deleted the UI entirely.
Those are not immutable, especially on the file system. I'm glad the fedora team switched the term to "atomic", because "immutable" set all the wrong expectations.
So you're saying that most directories in /usr and (also) some other directories in / are not read-only during runtime (under regular system maintenance/management) on Fedora Atomic?
Sure. Not all directories are protected and the ones that are, are just protected from immediate write access. A malicious app or a user who copies the wrong snippets can create overlays and apply them immediately without a reboot.
Having atomic distros is awesome but it has nothing to do with immutability and it someone needed that for example for PCs that are in random control at least some of the time, then they need a different solution on top, that gives actual immutability.
I never needed it. I know from my school days that windows supports that use case. You get a full system and can do with it as you please but on reboot you get a completely fresh file system. The only thing that persisted were the user profiles that roamed through active directory. Seemingly there was no way of tampering with the file system, that would persist a reboot. And as school kids we tried hard 😅
I would be surprised if Linux didn't have utilities for that, that were better designed and safer - but again, not my expertise.
I'm not sure why it's harder than Arch. It basically has it's own app store and you select the stuff from their website to install through the terminal.
Could you expand in your reasoning?
They have a GUI package manager? That's news to me. When I tried it out last year, package management was handled by nix-env or configuration.nix.
Anyway, I found it much harder than Arch because it requires learning a completely new paradigm of system management. There is a very high upfront investment in learning multiple new concepts in order to change even the most basic aspects of your system - What are flakes? What are channels? What is home-manager?
Also, the documentation and online support is far more sparse. If you encounter an issue, it's much more likely that you can find the solution for Arch through the wiki or a forum than it is with NixOS. There also tends to be no single way to resolve a problem, and so a lot of the information you find online may appear contradictory and confusing.
I never said it had a GUI store, but if your installing things for grand parents it's pretty easy through the root account, that the grand parents dont have access to. Go to https://search.nixos.org/packages search for one like Firefox and copy the command.
And I never said installing packages is harder than Arch. I said setting up, configuring, and troubleshooting the system is harder than Arch.
In any case, the original point was that NixOS is a weird choice for an atomic/immutable system for grandparents when compared to something like Silverblue.