Hello, i have task to install a system for elderly person without much technical knowlegde (never used pc, no windows or mac).
They need text processing, calculator and maybe spreadsheet.
Want to disable anything else (setting panel, file browser, web browser, launcher, dock, terminal, login select, etc.) that not needed, all important thing only from desktop. Should not be able to go anywhere where not know what to do. But not permanent, might need to fix machine if ever break.
Is there distro or config i can work off? Or need to start from scratch? What program you recommend?
Thank you for any answer or recommendation
Have you considered providing them with a typewriter, ledger and calculator instead?
My mom (85) has been using Xubuntu for some 10 years now. She uses Facebook and Gmail and plays card and puzzle games. She had no prior contact with computers, and learned it mostly by herself.
Just give thema stable solid distro. It will make their and your life easier.
I set up Bunsenlabs on both of my elderly parents computers and then basically automated login stuff to the sites they use, pinned those tabs. Blocked all ads and trackers. Set Firefox to auto open on boot. Basically made them a Linux version of a chrome book where everything they need is in the browser and already active, no mudding around.
8 months later zero complaints from either of them.
Maybe Aurora. It automatically updates, you can install everything via flatpak, and it’s pretty intuitive. Set up the admin account for you to do any maintenance, then set up a non-admin account for them to use.
It’s Atomic, though, so if you’re unfamiliar with ostree-based distros, it could be an admin headache for you when a problem arises.
I would probably go with bluefin. KDE is great, I myself use aurora on one of my devices, but it can also be kinda fiddley with all of it’s options.
The user has never even used a PC and therefore won’t profit from the familiarity that KDE’s default desktop layout provides. Gnome on the other hand offers a more simplified experience with few options and big icons. All of that might be an asset here. You can use menulibre to hide menu entries from the menu and use the official documentation to remove command line access: https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/lockdown-single-app-mode.html.en
Plus it’s still atomic which I actually think is helpful here. For once all the important system stuff is read only. Secondly if one manages to screw something up you can just rebase.
Bluefin is GNOME on Fedora. It always changes and breaks stuff, Extensions maybe for the last time (was the change of how they should be written already?)
CentOS Bootc will be SO great. It will be the atomic rock stable workhorse that never ever breaks.
Also CentOS Stream 10 will get Plasma 6 afaik
Careful with gnome, it works for people that are unfamiliar with gnome, if you use extensions. Then gnome updates, the extensions break and you have to come over do maintenance, maybe use a different extensions which will look slightly different, throwing them off.
And yes I’m talking from experience. It’s bad because there is no easy fix for a broken extension, you essentially have to wait till the author fixes it. It was dock to dash in my example.
For old people you need point and click and the thing they have to click on should be permanently visible. They often do not understand the logical separations with virtual desktops and things showing up on screen only sometimes can be confusing. It’s easier if they have an area that’s always the same.
Isn’t a file browser needed for browsing the saved documents and spreadsheets?
Not to mention that office suites (such as WPS, OpenOffice and LibreOffice) will inevitably pop up a file browser when the “Open” or “Save” buttons/menu items are clicked.
