So, I have a technoligically retarded grandma, who's used windows on her crappy netbook for ages, only to check her outlook (due to formerly being hotmail and everybody used hotmail back in the day) and browse the web. She's the kind of person who needs a notebook to remember how to copy and paste (and even then won't), and she's averted to any kind of change that makes her computer behave differently enough than windows 7. Her netbook (I use the exact same model with linux, and it runs fast enough) already was bloated and slow, and to make matters worse, she agreed to the windows 10 update, which made it slower and her more frustrated. I will be resetting her netbook soon, and moving all of her files over. However, I'm considering either using a modified windows 7 (like w7 lite, but I'm not sure how much patience I'll have with that), or putting some kind of linux on her machine, like ChromiumOS/a w7-like (not themed, just behaved) DE.
Now, to find her new OS, I need to comply with a few rules, to minify how much she has to re-learn and better her experience with her crapbook: * Chrome, this is a must (she already had trouble learning it due to having it recommended to her instead of IE by friends) * A taskbar like w7, with grouping support. Bonus points for pictograms only. * A file manager, preferably simple, without a lot of buttons. Just her downloads should be best. * A program to sort her pictures by date, and other metadata, in an easy way. The olde press a button to import pics way (win7 didn't have this and she can't find her way through her pics with the file manager). * It has to be fast. Her netbook has to go for a few more years at least, as does mine. I don't want her going to the repair shop again to buy an antivirus and a new win7 license.
I'd also prefer it to be as free as possible, but that's a side-thing.
So, I'd like to ask Holla Forums: What OS does your grandma/technologically retarded familiar use? Any recommendations/things I should look for? Do you happen to know useful programs for sorting pictures for retards, or a DE/other useful applications you give to your retarded familiars?
Sure, if there's a good DE and applications she can use to make her life and mine easier. I could optimize for atom, so that's nice and would maybe make her netbook a bit faster.
Owen Barnes
fuck all that shit, she needs TempleOS.
Logan White
Zorin is pretty good for looking like Windows 7 iirc. There's also that stupid hippo one Malakulu or whatever that has an aero DE. I haven't tried that one. If she's okay with a Windows XP look, use Q4OS with XPQ4 to make it look like pic related.
Carter Barnes
ChaletOS is a very sexy (for an ex-Windows user) and easy-to-use Linux-based OS with tons of customizations. And it has video tutorials. It's what I use personally and it should really trouble her at all.
With that being said I should be honest about a few things, the taskbar doesn't group multiple windows belonging to the same program. Also, I'm happy to view and organize my images with IrfanView, your grandma may not be to fond of that program but, there are like dozens of suitable programs that she can use instead. Also, this may not apply to you and your grandma but, I needed PCManFM to copy files off of my NTFS-formatted (maybe the cause of the problem) external USB hard drive but, had zero issue with the default file manger, which is very minimal in interface, otherwise.
likely, likely dozens of suitable programs that she can use instead.
Carson Roberts
When in doubt:
William Garcia
I think Lubuntu or Debian@LXDE would be better. After all, this needs to run on a netbook.
Easton Ward
lmao
Benjamin James
Thanks for the recommendation. It's got pretty much everything I want, but it's just XFCE. I could set up any distro to look like that. Though, if I pick anything, that'll probably be what I'd pick, if not ChromiumOS. With minor tweaking I believe I can make it work for her.
The problem with that is the different workflow that it requires. Please keep in mind this is a "Opening the right-click context menu [to copy and paste] is too advanced for me" kind of grandma. Menus are in different places, among other things.
Though, to be completely honest, I'm not too sure what'd be best for her. I want her to have to learn the least possible, but she'll probably already get far with simply chrome and a powerpoint viewer on any distro. I guess I want her to be able to do more, like managing files and pictures more easily, and be able to send them to her friends via email. This is why I'm strongly considering ChromiumOS. Despite the botnet, it sounds like everything is literally retard-proof. I've never used it though, so I'll have to give it a try first.
Jason Bennett
My father is technology retarded and I put mint on his laptop after he got frustrated with windows. So far everything is going well.
Sebastian Thomas
Heads up on that, Chromium OS is now called Cub Linux because of trademark issues. So if you have trouble finding it that's why. I really would recommend Q4OS though. Trinity is so intuitive.
Owen Kelly
What about ElementaryOS? Or even Android? I've looked at Apricity as a freer ChromeOS but it seems pretty resource heavy.
Worry less about the distro and more about getting things set up. You could probably use any distro and just have a big shortcut to Firefox on the desktop.
Blake Russell
Shit-tier suggestion, that's too unintuitive for her
Gnome-shell/Pantheon is too resource-intensive. I've tried running it on my netbook.
I guess, though I'm not really looking for a distro, but more for an interface and that'll be familiar for her and won't make her have to relearn much.
Owen Howard
ChromiumOS
Matthew Butler
Literally anything with Trinity then.
Asher Scott
There are other more windowsy distros but I've found Mint Cinnamon to be agreeable to older normies. Was kind of surprised that it went so smoothly for them. These were people that finally hit the last straw when they "X"ed out of the Windows 10 upgrade window and it installed anyways
Jose Turner
Also my own experiences with Mint Cinnamon 17.3 were so flawless that I'm going to switch to it from my autism distro once I have the time and do some research on newer kernels (it comes with a 3.x kernel)
Aaron James
on moving it to a newer kernel I mean
Jaxon Mitchell
I put manjaro on my grandmas computer ( its what i use daily too ) I upped the hell out of the DPI and she can use it fine, all she does is use firefox ( with self destructing cookies, https everywhere, ublock,) she likes it more than her IMAC she use to use that she could not understand at all.
XFCE btw
Adam Bennett
How about you stop being an autistic faggot and leave things as they were for your aging grandmother? There is literally no reason to fuck things up for your elder because you have an autistic need to change things for no reason.
Justin Perez
You're the only autist in this thread user
you've clearly never seen half hour load times for Internet explorer or had to deal with dial up
clearly he is putting fourth the effort for his gram gram
Nicholas Sanchez
That's what I've been trying to avoid for a long time. Thing is, she's actually having trouble using her computer, often being way too slow to be convenient, and has trouble managing her pictures. There *is* a reason to change things. I wouldn't touch it if there wasn't.
