I actually kinda did that. Sent a preconfigured thinkcentre to my mum that boots into the jellyfin media player, connects to my server via tailscale. Just had to plug it into power, lan, hdmi. Immutable, atomic system that looks for updates on boot, applies them on next reboot, and does a rollback and ping me if the update fails.

I have ssh access, and my brother lives nearby in case everything fails, that makes things easier.

I don’t think it’s necessarily worth it for anyone currently on Linux, but if they provide support and a warranty, it might be helpful for some folks who aren’t that computer savvy, but still sick of Windows.

I guess you could install cockpit (via Terminal, sorry, but it’s pretty straightforward and there are good guides). After that, you could use the cockpit web interface to deploy docker/podman containers. It’s a bit clunky sometimes, but it does the job purely in UI.

You can also manage updates, backups, etc via cockpit if you install the required modules.

As base, I’d use any stable Linux distro that’s reccomended for server use.

Edit: Comment was in wrong place, refiled as op level comment.

I use atomic distros on my server and a media centre, but don’t see any reason to do it on my main systems. Stability is fine, and atomic distros make said tinkering more difficult.

I’m sure it’s a common enough occurrence in a community with lots of computer nerds.

I do recognise that there are a lot of usecases in which Linux isn’t currently the sensible choice for most users, but I also feel the ready/not ready thing is quite as clear cut. While I’m obviously rather biased, I do genuinely think that there is a subset of casual users that would do better with Linux than with Windows.

I could talk about how Windows has been a lot more problematic for me than Linux, but that has been mainly down to driver issues with a specific network adapter, and we both know that isn’t the reason I prefer Linux anyway.

I’ve put Fedora on my mum’s pc after it became clear that Win10 will EoL soon, and that Win11 would refuse to run on it. Have had significantly fewer support requests since then.

Her work is mostly done via Citrix, which has an official Fedora Client. Everything else happens in the Browser, or sometimes in OnlyOffice, which so far has worked as a drop-in replacement for MS Office.

As always, it really depends on the use case.

Finally someone who actually uses a Vostro. Always found that name unreasonably funny.

I set up my current desktop while reading Gaiman’s The Sandman, so it’s called Morpheus. Because I felt I needed to keep with the theme, my laptop is hades, my phone persephone, my server apollo, my router helios, the media centre PC is orpheus, the pi that boots and updates it outside of usage hours is eurydice, and the pi that runs home assistant is zeus (because it’s responsible for light(n)ing.

Oh, and the work profile on my phone is sisyphos.

There’s also qobuz. They have a streaming service, but you can also straight up buy a lot of albums and download them drm free.

https://www.qobuz.com/shop

You activated my trap card! My sickness was but a simple ruse to lure you into complacency! Your attack was weak, unfocused! I jump up, standing on my bed, your face is now easy prey for my unnaturally sharp knees. The structural rigidity of your nose is now forfeit!

Oh, yeah, that also annoyed me. I actually meant the settings menu, though. I have set up KDE for friends/family a few times, and depending on screen size and scaling, even in conditions that shouldn’t be edge cases, there where sometimes scrollbars in both directions.

I also just, kinda don’t like the vibe, I guess? That’s extremely subjective, I know, just something I noticed every time I worked with KDE.

Well, use the time to try it, I guess.

Yeah, it usually takes a week for the official versions of the extensions I use to work again after a gnome version update. It’s easily worked around, usually, but that hard break every update sucks.

I just dislike the way KDE structures it’s menus more, and while I suspect that I could tweak KDE to be something I like using, I also suspect that that would be much more annoying to fix for the next mayor Update.

I sometimes think about swapping over to i3, but I haven’t yet had the leisure to give it a try.

I absolutely love (slightly tweaked) gnome. Fight me if you want, I’m sick in bed and have time.

Holy-C used to be called C+, I think.

Somehow, I feel called out.

Never got down with FreeCAD. BricsCAD has a native Linux version and works well for me, but it’s expensive. Recently, I’ve moved over to OpenSCAD. Works very well for me, but it might be hit or miss, depending on what UX you like, and what functions you need.

Seconded. Have been running it on both my main desktop and laptop for five years with no issues.

I’d argue that the problem with non-physical releases is mainly conservation, and software pirates seem to have that covered for PC releases.

Now if you wanna buy a game, DRM free is of course preferable. I buy as much as I can from gog, because I don’t want to blindly trust any corporation, regardless of their past record. After all, valve is set up in a way that gives them all the leverage.