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Refurbishing an old ThinkPad for a friend -- Debian, Fedora or something else? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).

First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?

Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.

If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My vote is Debian with the Cinnamon desktop. Enable Flatpak and your friend should be good to go.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ubuntu or Mint are among the most noob-friendly.

But probably the biggest impact will be whether you go with Gnome or KDE. KDE is more Windows-like so could be a softer landing.

I've read a lot of stories where installing Linux resulted in less support calls, not more. It depends on how ambitious the user is - if they're mostly just staying in their lane and browsing the web it should be rock solid.