I chose Debian 12 as a solid and stable base. Which of these shipped DEs is the best for this particular laptop series and Windows 10 like user experience?
GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18
Don’t know the exact laptop model and year, but here are some specs: IdeaPad, only HDD, DVD drive, shipped with Win 8 or 10 (I think), unbearably slow on Win 10 currently
Use case: office, web, movies (not streaming), things for non-tech-savvy users
Personally, I’m using Arch btw with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, so I would prefer this over other DEs, but Debian still ships version 5. Has anyone experience with performance on an old Lenovo laptop with any of the listed environments?
Whatever you choose, make sure you’re familiar with it since you’ll be the one that has to fix everything that’s wrong. 🙂
I suggest not giving their user sudo rights and having your own user with sudo rights for installing apps, doing upgrades and so on.
It will be very useful to have SSH installed if you need to assist them remotely.
If you want to help remotely I also recommend Tailscale, it creates a “mesh VPN” private network where your PC and their laptop can see each other over an encrypted connection that can also break out of ISP NAT (no port forwards needed). Since it’s encrypted it’s ok to use simple unencrypted VNC to view their desktop to help when needed.
I can give some pointers if you have a home server and want them to be able to use web apps on it over Tailscale. One very useful example is Syncthing, which can sync files between a folder on the laptop and your server, where you can back it up further incrementally with Borg Backup or whatever you use. You can sync their entire home directory if you want or you can just have a ~/Sync dir where they put only what they want.
Last but not least, if you can swap the HDD consider putting in a SSD instead, the difference will be night and day.
I suggest not giving their user sudo rights and having your own user with sudo rights for installing apps, doing upgrades and so on.
Yes but upgrades should be automatic and not require any privilege escalation. There is nothing privileged about keeping your system up to date. Same for flatpaks.
With a --user repo (in the flathub install command) you can let them install and uninstall their apps without any privileges, only to their user. Otherwise with a system repo they need to be in the flatpak group.
It will be very useful to have SSH installed if you need to assist them remotely.
That didnt age well ;D
and yes complex stuff like Tailscale is needed as the only good VNC apps for Wayland dont have builtin servers for connecting without an IP (like RealVNC, TeamViewer or RustDesk have).
Using NoIP could be an easy solution too though.
Syncthing has versioning, I wouldnt even put servers in the game. Just backup their home to one of your machines (if that is okay for them).
Replace the HDD with SSD. It will run faster. You can configure any DE to look similar to windows, maybe Gnome to the lesser extend. One think to keep in mind when choosing the distro, you have to support it. Good luck.
This. It will perform better than when it was new. Pop in some extra RAM while you’re at it as it’s probably dirt cheap.
As far as DE, Gnome and Cinnamon are closest to Windows IMO. Nothing wrong with KDE, but it’s not as simplified.
GNOME is basically nothing like Windows, in fact KDE Plasma is much closer. Cinnamon isn’t in OP’s list of DEs, though it should be available as a pre-installed option for Debian based on what I see in their live ISO list. At that point, it would probably be better to go with Linux Mint though, given the target user. I assume OP would have their reasons for choosing Debian over Mint if they wanted to use Cinnamon, though.
Linux Mint Debian Edition. Very windows-like + automatic updates = ideal for people who don’t really want to have to learn anything new (assuming your parents are like mine in that respect).
Linux mint doesnt update automatically, does it? It warns about them, but you need to press “okay”.
For casual users I typically recommend using Cinnamon Desktop, it’s the most Windows-esque UI and will be the easiest for them to pick up and use.
I roll with Cinnamon on Ubuntu and it’s been extremely painless, very simple to get stuff do and shit just works.
I was going to recommend the same: what I love about Cinnamon is the fact that has less theming and customization features (compared to other DEs).
While this might seem bad for experienced users, it is perfect for new people: I don’t want my dad to call me on a saturday morning because he accidentally erased the menu button or things like that
Gnome won’t break. If you don’t want them calling you up in the middle of a work day saying, “why did the bar at the bottom of the screen disappear!?” or “Berny, my screen turned black!”, install Gnome
