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Why Linux is Best for Most People
(medium.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Technology
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You can pry KDE from my cold, dead hands. But there's no way I'd put it on my dad's laptop and then fly back out of state.
Linux for the elderly is called ChromeOS. Links to individual sites on the launcher with their web icons. Email, Amazon, banking, Google. Settings can't be accidentally changed.
So yes, it's widely available, but it's not a distro.
My only problem with ChromeOS was installing it on unsupported hardware. Id like to be able to get an old laptop and install it, but it hasnt been possible since I last checked?
My situation was my dad's existing Windows laptop was borked, and on a visit for his birthday with other family, I was tasked with fixing the situation. I'd never considered a Chromebook, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense, given that he's past doing anything beyond Web browsing and writing emails. Local storage was irrelevant, and in 2021, any CPU was sufficient.
We splurged and got him a $300 model with a nice, big 1080p screen that I still had to scale to 150%, and he was very happy not to have all these things on his desktop and just a few big buttons that did what he wanted.
It's not a solution for repurposing an existing machine, unfortunately. But the savings in time and agony (I had to unsnarl a few things with his accounts on all sites after local "help" did about what you'd expect from someone taking advantage of a guy in assisted living) since have more than made up for the initial expense.
What's it like for remote support? Can you remote desktop into it if you need to? Or do you just not need to do that?
My goto for my grandma is an android tablet. She has terrible eyesight, so a light tablet can be "zoomed" as much as she needs, and i can remote in with some difficulty via teamviewer.
Yep, you can remote in from Chrome on any other machine. Just get on the phone so they can provide the connection code, and you're good to go. Unfortunately, this does not cover "I forgot my login password" ...