If you're even the least bit interested you really should try it. I swapped my 79 year old mother-in-law over to Pop and she hasn't had an issue yet going on 4 years.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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There's still a persistent myth that Linux is complicated and only for people who know a lot about computers. But it's only like that if you want it to be. It can be very simple and user friendly.
Windows on the other hand is more complicated now than it has ever been.
Pop is only for pop! You need to fork it for a Mom!_OS
I did that well over 10 years ago for my mother in law and she loved it. She did basic browsing and a few games here and there, windows always fucked up and had to be reinstalled every few months.
I installed Linux, Kubuntu I believe, and it was the end of it. Never heard a peep again.
I plan to do that. But my grandpa goes into ragemode when something doesn't work as it used to, and my grandma fully relies on buttons being where they always are and where, as she's nearly blind. It's gonna take a lot of theming to support that.
Very true, though with windows automatically updating to new versions and forcing upgrades, IMO the time to do it is when they would otherwise be forced to make a full version change anyway, as the differences between 10 and 11, are probably more than a windows 10 themed linux.
Sounds like a job for KDE Plasma.
And a lot of time customizing
Or just use Mint's cinnamon desktop which is already pretty close to the Windows layout
Windows - the best ad for linux
shenanigans
That's a really weak word for the tracking, logging, capturing my screen, spying, high-jacking my data to Onedrive, resetting my basic settings (default browser, file association choices).
"Shenanigans". Sure.
Not to mention outright sabotage when you're not in their ecosystem.
Use Linux? Your browser default user agent says you're on Linux? Word 365 will now randomly stop saving which just quietly deleted some of the text you wrote previously
I can write up a whole list of more sabotage, but just read this as a much, much bigger example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
Microsoft execs should have been jailed but in the US it's all fine as long as you're rich.
I hadn't heard about that. I stopped using all MS products when I switched to Linux so I haven't had that problem. It doesn't surprise me though.
I wish the author had the courage to title the article "Frustrated Windows users are switching to Linux because of Microsoft’s Windows 11 tracking, logging, screen capturing, spying, high-jacking user data to Onedrive, resetting basic user settings".
If only the English language had more options than either:
- shenanigans
- tracking, logging, screen capturing, spying, high-jacking user data to Onedrive, resetting basic user settings
Related:
- Mustafa Suleyman*, Microsoft AI CEO, mindblown at people not being excited with his corpo-slop
- Pavan Davuluri, Windows chief, trying to address criticism without doing jack shit to fix what's being criticised
- Microsoft still trying to push Edge down the users' throats
"I don't understand, why did users turn stupid out of blue? Those things used to know basic obedience! Now they can't even follow simple orders like «be excited»! Let's fire the User Taming Department and replace it with AI!" /hj
*aka "Suleyman the Chaoswrecker". Not to be confused with "Suleiman the Lawgiver", the Ottoman sultan from five centuries ago.
The purpose of windows on a new machine is so you can access the Internet to download Linux.
Ha that’s the joke with internet explorer!
I did it (mostly). You can too!
So fun story, I recently set up Mint to dual boot with windows 10, then shortly later decided it was working just fine and reformatted my whole windows drive. Which included the boot partition that pointed to Mint.
The problem was that I updated my MOBO bios after using a USB to install Mint, and now my USB installer (needed to run Boot Repair) opened to a command line instead of the installer. While trying to find the settings to fix that I restored factory defaults in my BIOS which triggered Secure Boot, which wouldn’t let me turn it off without disconnecting all of my hard drives first (and that is a whole thing with my m.2’s).
Anyway it turns out my USB had gone bad so I made a new one and fixed it, but man I never thought I could break my computer so many different ways at once. Don’t delete your boot loader, guys.
So, fun fact;
If you plug a USB drive into a Microsoft computer (or in whatever that has Windows OS running at the time), here's a thing that _can_ happen:
Microsoft checks the content of the USB drive, and in the process attempts to RUN the files. Thus changing the checksum of files.
When attempting to install Linux from one of these files, it _can_ fail the checksum.
This happened to me with Fedora specifically, and I randomly had issues with other distros that I suspect was caused by the same.
Yeah, that's my biggest hesitation with recommending Linux to absolutely everyone. It's super easy to install most of the time. But most people are not equipped to work around issues that may come up, and then the computer is as good as bricked until they find help.
Yeah, the IT barrier to entry is definitely there. Though I would say most reasonably savvy people can handle making an account on the forums and getting some enthusiastic expert support.
Its about time they move to Linux.