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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Any GNU/Linux rolling release distro as vanilla as possible, and easy for non tech individuals used to ms-windows? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm looking for something my sister can use, but I don't want her to face trouble when needing to change major releases, like debian or ubuntu do. So I'm thinking a rolling release distro could be of great help for this.

Being as vanilla as possible is a nice to have.

Ideally, she shouldn't be dealing with config files though. So even though Arch or some derivatives like Manjaro would fit, they require users to investigate for the proper configurations and such, and as mentioned, she's a non tech person. If there would be something Arch based, but having safe configs by default, and pretty much requiring to keep updating the SW often, that sounds fine, but I'm not aware of any. Having a graphical SW updater/upgrader should be required as well...

It shouldn't matter much, but I believe KDE would be the best DE option for her, offering what she might need to feel like windows.

I was thinking of KDE Neon, but I'm not sure how ubuntu major releases are handled, neither how it is for a non tech person to go and add SW, not officially covered by KDE repos, neither if its "plasma discover", or its upgrade on the air tool works for other things, rather than just KDE stuff upgrades... Maybe kubuntu might as well be an option, but major upgrades might be as user involved as the ubuntu ones...

If you're wondering, I'm using Artix, and I 've used for quite some time before, Arch, Debian (unstable) and SourceMage. I'm honestly not familiar with something that might help my sister move from windows. She once told me someone helped her try ubuntu, but she didn't feel comfortable with it... Any suggestions are welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago

openSUSE Tumbleweed does a lot of the things you mention here.

It's got automatic OS snapshots, so if an update should break something, that can be rolled back relatively easily.
And it has YaST, which is a graphical configuration tool for all kinds of system settings.
And they're the distro that puts the most effort into KDE with tons of automated testing and such.

I will say that those OS snapshots don't cure everything. I've had my dad on Tumbleweed for the past year and it has largely been perfectly fine, except that his printer drivers broke twice. And if he doesn't notice right away, maybe doesn't tell me right away, then it's almost impossible to find the correct snapshot to roll back to.
Also, you do want to update at some point, so you do have to solve it properly at some point, if it doesn't get fixed by an update.

And YaST and those snapshots are not built with the dumbest possible user in mind. So, she may not be able to roll back such a snapshot on her own. Or she could manage to shoot herself in the foot by tweaking kernel parameters in YaST (although my experience is that non-technical users are quick to back away from things they don't understand.

You could also consider openSUSE Leap (their non-rolling release). They're really fucking resilient with such larger upgrades (the package manager is nearly unbreakable and again, those snapshots are a nice fallback). I regularly do dumb shit, like side-grading between Leap and Tumbleweed, and it only broke my system once so far, which was after it told me that it can't do it and I told it to go ahead anyways.