this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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Linux
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ChromeOS Flex
https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/
As much as I dislike Google I feel you really made a decent suggestion here.
I get visits multiple times a month because a Eula or something shows up on phones or tablets asking them to accept whatever. You know, the stuff nobody reads and just clicks accept on. Old people sometimes have trouble discerning where messages come from, anything from a pop up to a disclaimer for an update is "my phone asking me something".
Chrome OS is still corporate BS. They will manage to confuse people with legalese. I have elder neighbours come to me confused that were literal pages into that BS. I always tell them they can just accept everything google/microsoft/apple asks of them, but that’s the problem, they can’t tell where it’s coming from. To them it’s just a legal contract showing up when they wanted to read their mails, it’s scary and they rather want me to check everything is ok.
Aurora is better for them. No legalese pop ups, fully automatic updates(no "click to accept", "when do you want to schedule the update" or even an info that an update happened). I just tell them to make sure they turn off their PC at night and they will boot into the update next morning, never being the wiser. It just works.
Regarding ChromeOS being corporate, it is nearly all open source. You have to login with a Google Account, but once in, you don’t have to use any Google products.
You can use Firefox, Fastmail, whatever you like.
I tried older relatives on Ubuntu and ChomeOS and for the less technical ones, ChromeOS was best.
For ones with confidence and a growth mindset to learn new things, Ubuntu was fine.
If in doubt, I would recommend ChromeOS.
chromeos is the correct answer. It maintains itself. Also, using gdocs, gaheets, etc., you dont have to deal with backups, "lost files", etc.
Get them a nice Chromebook then. Chrome os flex isn't quite the same
No way. Then better use FydeOS.
Note that while ChromeOS is really really nice, beautiful and intuitive, it has like no support for running apps normally. You get Android apps and Debian in a container.
The performance sucks, you should setup unattended-upgrades.
But yeah, after that it could be great. If they never touch the terminal they cant break anything.
And while you can run Android and debian browsers (I tried Android Mull and Brave, and Debian Firefox and Brave both from their official repos), Chrome is always there and mostly the default I think.
Depending on use case it doesn't sound like that'd be an issue. I used one of the like 3rd generation Chromebooks for school, I had to rdp for visual studio and Photoshop but it was perfect for everything else
The support for running apps in the Linux container feels fairly normal. I had a family member using LibreOffice and other apps that way for years and it worked fine. We bought a more powerful Chromebook and performance was fine. One family member is using ChromeOS on the Framework laptop. Performance there is great.
FydeOS is a de-Googled ChromeOS based in China.
https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/fydeos-vs-chromeos-flex-which-is-right-for-you/
Unattended upgrades is for updates in the Linux container. Sometimes it’s used primarily for security updates. The whole thing is so locked down and containerized, I don’t think security updates in the container are as important.
It’s true that Chrome always installed, but you can put whatever icons in your launcher.
I’m not sure about changing the default browser.
Yes, I know. She has a Framework Chromebook? Or do you actually run ChromeOS Flex on a Framework?
Both options are... interesting XD
Yes I would enable complete auto upgrades for the container. Maybe that could be hacked a bit by placing desktop entries somewhere.
Linux apps are running in a virtual machine that runs a Container. But they have access to storage, so it is relevant.
But I agree that ChromeOS is really well made. But a Tracking Hell full of Google too.
FydeOS is the only one you can use with a local account. Not even Android sucks that much.
You've gotta ask does an old person care more about Google spying on them or being able to use a computer as easily as possible