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It would be great if there was a downloadable Windows executable that simply does everything. Install it, click it, it downloads a CD image and either writes it to USB or just manages to boot the image somehow.
That’s pretty much what Balena Etcher does. It even has a dropdown of common distributions if you don’t want to download the ISO yourself.
There might be something better (I use this on macOS) that I’m not aware of though.
Fedora Mediawriter...fedora is one of the 'beginner distros' according to the pinned guide in this community. It downloads and installs. Also immediate secureboot.
Your friend needs to know what she is getting into. Particularly the part with having to use certain alternatives (assuming she's not going to be using wine). E.g. LibreOffice and the slight docx weirdness (due to Microsoft yes).
Seconded. There is a Mate spin as you said you want to stick with that:
https://fedoraproject.org/spins/mate/
Fedora Media Writer makes those
available if you select the button below Custom image
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-user-docs/preparing-boot-media/
Media Writer detects and deals with UEFI, no extra steps required I believe. Just be aware it detects the hardware on the machine its running on to build the right bootable so an image built on a machine without UEFI will not run on a UEFI one. Best to have your friend run Writer themselves if your hardware is different from theirs.
Your friend can install to a usb stick and run off that, preserving Windows in parallel until ready to switch completely if neccessary. If bios/boot is configured to boot from usb when present they can simply insert/remove the stick to switch between the two.
Fedora Media Writer or Balena Etcher and you are done.
As far as beginner distros go, Fedora, Pop!_OS, and Linux Mint are always a safe bet.
UEFI was made in 2006 so I don't think your friend needs to worry about that. Whatever distro you choose will take care of it for her.
I'm not sure about an app that downloads isos, but I think that Rufus is generally the recommended iso writer for Windows. After downloading the iso on your own it'll take care of everything else.
I believe MATE generally targets lower end hardware. Which isn't to say that your friend can't use it, but as a person who's used to modern operating systems, I think they'd probably be happier on KDE, Gnome, or Cosmic (or Cinnamon if you choose Mint)
Ah, thanks to you and the other poster about UEFI. I may have confused it with secure boot but if Debian supports that, then great.
Debian uses Gnome by default so I used it for a while and hated it even after getting used to it, so I switched to MATE. KDE looked ok to me though I never explored it much. I might suggest it to her. I'm unfamiliar with Cosmic or Cinnamon. I think I want to start her with MATE, since I use it myself so I'll be familiar with what she's using in case she hit snags. But if she wants to switch to something else afterwards, that's fine with me.
She no longer seems to be able to boot into Windows because of a Microsoft lockout. So I'm going to write a USB drive for her and snail mail it to her.
Someone else mentioned a VIOS setting so I may have to look into that too.
There is a GNU/Linux user group in her town which has a meeting next week, so I suggested that she go to it. Maybe someone there can help her with installation if she hasn't gotten it handled by then.
Right now her only computer is an iphone, so it would be cool if there was a way to write a USB drive from that. Her phone does have a USB-C port but for older iphones, there are also USB drives with a Lightning connector on one end, so you can still write them from the phone.
First thing I would do is get a bootable Linux USB and run it on the laptop. Make sure there are actually drivers for all the hardware before you go any farther.
If you make and sell Windows laptops, you’re grabbing parts that fit the spec for that - no guarantee that, say, the Bluetooth device is some weird thing they only ever wrote Windows drivers for.
I had this very problem with my last laptop and ended up with an unusable touchscreen (good riddance, but lesson learned).
But if your friend is already used to the Windows ecosystem, bear in mind that changing an OS is A Big Deal, and they might not be aware just got much they’re signing up for. I know there are Windows-adjacent projects that help to de-slop Windows while keeping the core experience there. If making a switch is going to bring too much pain, that might be a wiser option.
Some lenovos have a setting you have to set in VIOS to allow Linux
Like others have said, let them know what they are getting into, what programs they like to use, etcetera. If they're mostly web-browsing, they're probably fine and only need to be shown how to install updates, but if they need full on MS Office, Adobe products (don't try to sell me on "Abobe is obsolete because of our glorious agentic AI liberators" who are just as bad as Adobe), any other Windows-only software that doesn't run well through Wine, or just anything beyond a web browser in general, they have to be prepared to learn Linux.
Personally, I would recommend KDE over MATE. I'm an XFCE fan myself, but KDE has a lot more features and I think is overall a lot more intuitive and user-friendly to noobs from Windows; MATE's a bit more niche. I had my younger sibling using KDE and Debian 13 on an old laptop for a few months after their main laptop broke.
If you want a Windows program for creating USBs, use Rufus. Otherwise, dd works most of the time. I have occasionally turned to Etcher for particularly tricky ISOs, but I hear it has some privacy issues.
As others have said, I think the last computers without UEFI were from somewhere around 2009-2011; I had a laptop from 2012 with UEFI. For most purposes, you'll probably hardly notice the difference between BIOS and UEFI; only big differences are:
Yeah mostly browsing. She decided on a GNU/Linux switchover after considering taking her laptop back to the store and getting a chromebook instead.
I expect she'll want to run Libre Office at some point but it should basically be fine. The differences from Microslop are pretty subtle if I'm not mistaken. I confess to using LO myself sometimes (instead of TeX), since I'm lazy these days.
I will say, the differences from Microsoft in LibreOffice are often not subtle; very simple documents will probably be fine, but you run into a lot of formatting issues on complex existing documents. Unless they already use LibreOffice or they don't have a lot of pre-existing complex-formatted documents, don't put them on LibreOffice.
Other than that, the use case should be mostly fine then. Just be careful; as I tend to run into myself, it seems it's been so long since you've run Windows that you're going to underestimate the learning curve.
I just realized a few things to check, though. I don't think CPU or GPU support on Debian should be an issue (and if it is, backports kernel and Mesa would solve it), but check Wi-Fi modem and camera support before you install.
Ubuntu used to have wubi, but it was discontinued years ago.
Making a boot USB and running the Debian installer is relatively easy. You can do it in person or on a video call and walk her through it.
If that's really too complicated and they still want to dump Windows, don't discount Macs. They generally do what an OS is supposed to and get out of your way.