I gave them one of my micro office PCs I was using as a server as our living room home theatre PC, because the previous one was Windows Vista which is absolutely not safe to be running connected to the internet anymore, and the new computer (hopefully) managed to get them to stop using the apps on the smart TV both due to my privacy concerns and because they are no longer being updated and don’t work that great anymore (thanks for no longer supporting your few years old thousand plus dollar TV Samsung, you planned obsolecense assholes!)
This is their first Linux computer in a family that has pretty much been exclusively been using Microsoft operating systems really since they got access to computers. So, pretty big deal that I finally convinced them to give Linux a try. It’s running Fedora with KDE Plasma. Here’s hoping everything goes well.
I set up my mom with a laptop using Ubuntu a while back, and it just works. Back when she used Windows, things broke all the time, she’d install random things cause sites tricked her into it, etc. With Linux all the problems are gone. All she does is basically use the browser and email. Once you set that up there’s really no other maintenance involved.
Linux is a great option for non technical users as long as there’s somebody to set it up for them initially.