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Distro and/or config for elderly person

Hello, i have task to install a system for elderly person without much technical knowlegde (never used pc, no windows or mac).

They need text processing, calculator and maybe spreadsheet.

Want to disable anything else (setting panel, file browser, web browser, launcher, dock, terminal, login select, etc.) that not needed, all important thing only from desktop. Should not be able to go anywhere where not know what to do. But not permanent, might need to fix machine if ever break.

Is there distro or config i can work off? Or need to start from scratch? What program you recommend?

Thank you for any answer or recommendation

Quazatron ,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

My mom (85) has been using Xubuntu for some 10 years now. She uses Facebook and Gmail and plays card and puzzle games. She had no prior contact with computers, and learned it mostly by herself.

Just give thema stable solid distro. It will make their and your life easier.

TerkErJerbs ,

I set up Bunsenlabs on both of my elderly parents computers and then basically automated login stuff to the sites they use, pinned those tabs. Blocked all ads and trackers. Set Firefox to auto open on boot. Basically made them a Linux version of a chrome book where everything they need is in the browser and already active, no mudding around.

8 months later zero complaints from either of them.

bloodfart ,

Have you considered providing them with a typewriter, ledger and calculator instead?

Telorand ,

Maybe Aurora. It automatically updates, you can install everything via flatpak, and it’s pretty intuitive. Set up the admin account for you to do any maintenance, then set up a non-admin account for them to use.

It’s Atomic, though, so if you’re unfamiliar with ostree-based distros, it could be an admin headache for you when a problem arises.

Vittelius ,

I would probably go with bluefin. KDE is great, I myself use aurora on one of my devices, but it can also be kinda fiddley with all of it’s options.

The user has never even used a PC and therefore won’t profit from the familiarity that KDE’s default desktop layout provides. Gnome on the other hand offers a more simplified experience with few options and big icons. All of that might be an asset here. You can use menulibre to hide menu entries from the menu and use the official documentation to remove command line access: help.gnome.org/…/lockdown-single-app-mode.html.en

Plus it’s still atomic which I actually think is helpful here. For once all the important system stuff is read only. Secondly if one manages to scream something up you can just rebase.

Telorand ,

That’s very true. I think Bluefin might be a better choice. Good catch!

boredsquirrel ,
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

Bluefin is GNOME on Fedora. It always changes and breaks stuff, Extensions maybe for the last time (was the change of how they should be written already?)

CentOS Bootc will be SO great. It will be the atomic rock stable workhorse that never ever breaks.

Also CentOS Stream 10 will get Plasma 6 afaik

Sbauer ,

Careful with gnome, it works for people that are unfamiliar with gnome, if you use extensions. Then gnome updates, the extensions break and you have to come over do maintenance, maybe use a different extensions which will look slightly different, throwing them off.

And yes I’m talking from experience. It’s bad because there is no easy fix for a broken extension, you essentially have to wait till the author fixes it. It was dock to dash in my example.

For old people you need point and click and the thing they have to click on should be permanently visible. They often do not understand the logical separations with virtual desktops and things showing up on screen only sometimes can be confusing. It’s easier if they have an area that’s always the same.

boredsquirrel ,
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

And in KDE you can tweak it how you like.

Save the Wifi passwords unencrypted to the system, then you can use autologin without needing KWallet

markstos ,

ChromeOS Flex

chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/

sturlabragason ,

As much as I dislike Google I feel you really made a decent suggestion here.

Sbauer , (edited )

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.

markstos ,

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.

markstos ,

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.

boredsquirrel , (edited )
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

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.

aspitzer ,

chromeos is the correct answer. It maintains itself. Also, using gdocs, gaheets, etc., you dont have to deal with backups, “lost files”, etc.

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