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Comment by samgranieri | Hacker News Reader

I’m at the point to tell people (friends, neighbors, fellow parents, family, ie, not HN readers) to prolong the life of their existing computers and install what I think is the easiest windows equivalent on their computers: kubuntu.

Gnome is nice and all, but the default ui, and remember defaults matter for a lot of people, is just too jarring.

The people I am talking about just wanna browse the web, go on Facebook and use their gmail. Look at funny YouTube videos. The default KDE ui has that windows start menu and looks roughly the same so they can hit the ground running.

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My family switched to Gnome 2 a couple of decades ago. My mother quite liked it and has consistently installed it on every new computer she bought. Her only confusion lately has been with the ubuntu snap packages and how they behave between multiple accounts on the machine.

These days she uses MATE which still offers that Gnome 2 layout. Awesome thing about Linux is that option to fork, so her desktop environment has remained consistent for over 20 years.

GNOME has changed drastically. It's nothing like Gnome 2.

I agree. I was putting a shout out for MATE as the option for those who want a predictable traditional UI since it is essentially the long-term maintenance of GNOME 2.

When GNOME 3 was first released, I gave it an honest try for several months but it just did not do what I wanted in a UI. MATE competes well with XFCE on memory usage, still has optional acceleration, and had a more consistent interface with more features (although XFCE has improved). And the fact that those in the family don't have to learn a new layout really helps.

Try Debian, versus ubuntu it’s like the windows 10 to windows 11

My mom's been installing Ubuntu on her own. I've not been involved in the process and have no remote access to the machine to even fix the snap situation.

At home, I run a mix of Devuan and Gentoo.

At work, primarily Devuan with some Ubuntu where COTS only officially supports Ubuntu or Redhat.

Cinnamon has a very classic Windows layout. I am getting very comfortable using MX Linux with KDE, especially that I have been able to move my NVME drive over several laptops now. Starting to get the itch to find a rolling distro to skip reinstalling the OS every two years.

Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then? My mum adjusted from Windows XP (when that was current) to Ubuntu 14-ish fairly easily, by simply remembering "switch it on and then click on the big swirly fox thing".

> Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then?

It matters a lot if you deviate from the ones that (are set to) behave in a similar way.

"Click the big orange blob" is pretty universal.

Although I guess one of the reasons I dislike KDE is because it's so random, unintuitive, and unfamiliar.

Ubuntu comes with a dock which is close enough to Windows.

The comment chain you're replying to is arguing that vanilla GNOME is too different, and they're right.

Great if you've used Windows, I guess.

I've been a full time developer since 1988, using linux since 1996, and kubuntu is the only linux distro I'd use ATM for a desktop.

There's paper cuts but it feels about right.

I tried kionite but there was too much friction.

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