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Comment by Etheryte | Hacker News Reader

I can easily trust my older relatives to do fine on macOS, Linux would be either painful or more realistically a no go.

On the contrary, I let older relatives use Linux so I don't need to support macos and windows constantly breaking.

In 5 years I've had 2 family support calls: one to setup a new WiFi on a Chromebook and one for turning the Chromebook on and off.

I've tried to get multiple non-family members set up with Linux and have failed, with constant bugs from Linux, and confusion from the family members. Windows is far more reliable and easier for them to use.

This clearly invalidates your point, and supports "Linux would be either painful or more realistically a no go", because it's obviously not enough for some relatives to be able to easily use Linux - most of them need to be able to. The fact that you have more capable-than-normal relatives or more Linux-friendly-than-normal hardware is irrelevant to the fact that most people do not.

Depends on how old they are. My grandpa used to run on a linux pc we gave him.

All he needed was a web browser, an email client and a word processor. And that's it. So Lubuntu did the job perfectly.

Obviously more expectations may be harder to meet

One of my relatives is in her early 20's and has a large amount of difficulty using Linux (even for relatively simple needs like what you describe above), despite dozens of "support interactions" and assistance. Other relatives are in their 40's and failed to use it as well.

It's not enough for some people to be able to use Linux - if you want to recommend it for general use, it has to be usable for almost everyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39130904

I installed Mint on two older relatives computers and they're both fine with it. They also do only browse, youtube, maybe open a PDF or edit a Word (rather, let someone else edit on their machine). Zero complaints for this use case.

This is not the case for the majority of people or computers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39130904

Older relatives aren't the ones complaining about auto updates and having full control of their hardware/software. iOS, macOS, Windows and the rest are in fact built with them in mind. This conversation is naturally about more technically inclined users.

I wouldn't really say so, updates break and change things for them all the same as they do for you and me, and just like us, they're unhappy about it. You simply won't usually hear their voices loudly on platforms like HN and the like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com