this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Linux Mint is what you need. Don't put them on rolling release distros, they all have troubles after a bad update (it happens to all of them eventually). You want a stable distro for newbies. So that would mean either Debian (which unfortunately doesn't have many GUI panels to do admin stuff apart from what the DE offers), or Mint (which does).
I wouldn't suggest Ubuntu or fedora because they use about 2 GB of RAM on a cold boot, which means that you need an 8 GB PC to do stuff comfortably. With Mint, if you remove a couple of unneeded services, it starts at 900 MB of RAM, which would run on a 4 GB laptop easily when you load lots of web browsing tabs. Your friends would probably try Linux first on their old laptops, instead of their current ones too, from fear that it would nuke their Windows, so the ram usage matters.
If a friend of yours have a too-old laptop/PC with 2 GB of RAM, then I'd suggest you install the Q4OS distro on it (with the Trinity Desktop), with Falkon or Chromium as browsers (they use less ram than firefox). It boots at 350 MB of RAM, and it comes with an easier-to-use interface than other lite Linux distros (e.g. puppy linux, antix, DamnSmallLinux etc).
Another thing to know about Mint is that it's one of the few distros that can install to, and boot from a USB stick. Basically, you create a live USB stick, you boot from it, and then you insert a second usb stick (64 GB or more), and then you EJECT it from the desktop when it auto-mounts. It will then allow you to install Mint on that second usb stick! So for friends that don't want to dual boot, or they're afraid their Windows will get nuked, you can get them to boot and try Mint that way (with their changes SAVED, unlike with the live usb that loses the changes after a boot). I've been running from USB on two machines, where I can't easily replace their slow hard drives, without problems (although the emmc inside goes bad after about a year if used a lot -- it's more of a semi-permanent solution, but great to introduce friends and family to Linux without nuking Windows).
One suggestion would be to install for them the Cinnamenu menu instead of the default Mint one. It's both cleaner, and a more modern take on the old Windows menu, no useless stuff or duplication of options to confuse newbies -- CLEAN interface: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/391/944/352/704/129/original/7e2ced150dbc8932.png
Also, wait for the Mint 22.1 to be released in a few days, and change the theme to the new "Cinnamon" (it's their new theme, but they haven't enabled it by default -- it looks great).
Also, because Mint is based on Ubuntu, 99% of the tutorials or fixes online for ubuntu, also apply to Mint.
Fantastic reply, thank you very much. I'll see if I can get them a USB Mint for a test drive. Thanks!
Also, I forgot to say, to save ram on ram-starved PCs, use a single color background (my favorite is #317E9F). Or if you're going to use an image, make sure its pixel size is exactly the screen res. If you use a 4k image (that Mint usually defaults on), on a small screen resolution, you're wasting anywhere from 50 to 100 MB of RAM (because you count it uncompressed in memory, not how much storage it takes). Little known tip!
If you have the funds for it, or your friends help you with the purchase,, get some usb sticks for $9 each (Mint requires 20 GB of space with a few apps in it, so a 32GB stick is enough, but it won't be enough for long if they play with Steam, so a 64+GB stick is preferable), and install Mint on one of them (I use this https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/917k6WqTLSL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg , because it's tiny, it's really annoying to use a large usb stick permanently). Make sure you create a /boot partition (512 MB, fat32, with the esp/boot flags on it), then a 4 GB swap partition, and then the / partition for the rest (unless Mint does that automatically for you, make sure there's a swap).
Then configure it to be as user friendly and as clean as possible (I configure Cinnamenu to be clean of useless things, like emojis menu items etc, there's a good cinnamon menu editor installed by default but they don't expose it on the menus). Go through all the prefs to get sane defaults for everything. Install using the command line some apps (they will use the flatpaks, but it's best to get the important apps from the repo): gimp, steam, a few time-wasting games as in my screenshot above, inkscape, kdenlive, shotcut, audacity, vlc, xsane, scribus, homebank, foliate, krita, htop/neofetch for your own enjoyment, and then from the web, download the .deb files for onlyoffice (it has better compatibility with MS formats than libreoffice), chromium or chrome (for those who can't live without it), Obsidian, latest Blender, and localsend (they can send files between phones, and other OSes that the app is installed too), and Xournal++ if any of your friends have a touchscreen laptop. That's enough to get anyone started.
Once you're 100% sure no more changes are required, dd/clone that one usb stick to all the other ones (so you don't have to do the installation multiple times). Then, give to friends.