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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Is this a decent OS to move users off Win too that I won't have to do a lot of remote maintenance on? I have a few varied OS's installed on machines around and Cinnamon I have found to look/feel a lot like Windows 7 which would benefit the learning curve for family/friends looking or needing to find an OS to install on a machine that isn't newer.

Curious if anyone has used this, and if so if it is a good fit for those 60+ aged family members and such. They have all used Windows for work at least a decent amount, so keeping things similar is always good. A decent App Store would be nice though. I hated the default store in Pop_OS.

If I could say do updates and reboot every once in awhile and you should be fine it'd be great. Remoting in with RustDesk and sudo Apt Update/Upgrade being all that is needed also would be great, but you know how that goes. Someone will break something, and I just want something intuitive enough that they won't do it often.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Ubuntu LTS base is not suited for desktop use. Being lightweight also just seems completely unnecessary as a 'Windows 10 replacement' OS. Just use Fedora or Arch.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 28 minutes ago

Lightweight to me just means I can use it in any situation regardless of what shitty or wonderful device they happen to need it on. And it can match all devices they end up needing it on. Say a media player with stremio, or a laptop, desktop etc. I understand what you mean though. Arch from everything I have heard isn't for beginners so as someone who has used 5 or so different Linux distros, maybe more... Have avoided it because the stigma that people have put around it. Is Fedora Debian based? I am unsure I've used it. I suppose I am looking for something with LTS that can be used across a multitude of hardware so I can create a "standardized" image per say, and then just adjust to meet the needs of specific hardware while always allowing them to have basically the same interface so they dont have to learn how to navigate situations differently across devices.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

I don't see anything that makes it more suitable than Mint or any other distro.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If it's true that it uses only 250 MB of RAM as it claims, then it had advantages on old computers over Mint which uses 950 MB (htop). My mom's computer only has 2 GB of RAM for example (an old, converted-to-linux Chromebook), so we need a distro that really doesn't use much ram. Thankfully she only uses 1 tab at a time on the browser (she doesn't know how to open more), so that makes it just enough with something heavy like YT or FB, so she doesn't hit the swap and slow things down.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In that case you might try TinyCoreLinux @64MB

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, that thing is unusable. It has no niceties to help a user do basic things. The best OS I've found that has enough GUI tools to do stuff, is Q4OS. Uses 350 MB of RAM, but it has enough stuff to get you going. I looked more into FunOS btw, and it requires quite some terminal work to even get tap-to-click to work. It's missing some GUI tools for basic things. It doesn't even save screen resolution changes without editing X11 files. If they get these things implemented, then sure. Same goes for all the other lite OSes, like AntiX, DSL, etc. Lightweight, yes. But not really usable by an ordinary user. They are missing GUI tools, of if they have them (like in the case of antix and puppy), they are a complete and utter MESS. I've used all of them, and they have left me very, very underwhelmed. Until then, Q4OS is the best of the lightweight distros. It's well put together.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago

Lubuntu and Xubuntu have entered the chat....

[-] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Not nearly as low in memory usage. Xubuntu requires 1.1 GB of RAM on a clean boot for example. Lubuntu close to 700 I think.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

Ah the older version could run a lot less. Like 256 and 512. I haven't used it since 4GB - 8GB was the standard.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

For 60+ I might recommend ChromeOS Flex, Mint, or Ubuntu.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Can't say that I have but for your use case I would like to mention elementaryOS, I tried it a few years back and I found it quite nice and intuitive

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I haven't used Synaptic before for an app store I dont think, any recommendations there?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, mint uses synaptic. Works well in my experience.

this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
24 points (92.9% liked)

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