koalaSunrise

I literally made an account the day before and transferred from GitHub, then wake up and see this. FFS just my luck.

I’m upgrading my father-in-laws 2011 imac (Intel, amd GPU) to an ssd, 16GB ram, and planning on putting an immutable linux OS on it for him since he primarily uses the browser anyways.

Any recommendations for non-techy seniors/gotchas for installing it on a mac?

I was thinking fedora silverblue since GNOME should feel more familiar than KDE for him.

I am disappoint.

Holy cow I’m definitely converting everything to POE now

Seconding fedora/derivatives. NobaraOS has alot of “gaming”/manufacturer laptop specific fixes OOTB which makes it a very smooth experience on laptops in my experience on both an Asus zenbook and a t480s in my experience.

I like the name… its fun.

I liked learning through osmosis watching linux videos in bed as I fall asleep. Stuff like this

Print out a linux basics cheatsheet for whatever distro you’re on.

Use and practice.

Oh and don’t forget timeshift snapshots.

With your usecase you should have a smooth transition. I’ll recommend you skip straight to NobaraOS since you are replacing your windows and gaming on it.

Based on fedora and made by GloriousEggroll, the maker of protonGE. It the best desktop linux experience (including gaming and laptop specific usecases as well) I’ve had after distrohopping for a few years.

For the love of god save yourself the headache of constantly trying to undo ubuntu’s stupid decisions and just don’t bother with that (unwilling to just die) common recommendation. IMO its like fighting with windows’ little sibling for control over your computer. Defeats the purpose of switching to linux and gives a v. bad first impression to new users.

P.S. don’t dual-boot this shit is constant, its almost like Microsoft does it on purpose 🧐 just commit and you’ll have an easier time.

Exactly; if there’s something on windows you “cant give up” then just spin up a VM and run it in there.

Unless you can’t pass through a GPU if you need one…

Spoken like someone who has never tried it. Thats quite literally exactly what vfio mentioned above me is for.

I agree obsidian style notes (and zettelkasten in general) are great for learning stuff (I use logseq for my PKM so quite similar); however, I have heard the suggestion for linux/SYS admin type stuff its better to not take notes, and learn how to find the info you need in the docs (RTF(riendly)M). This builds the skill to find the info you need going forward, even if its something you have not previously studied and taken notes on and even if the ideal method has changed since you first learned it.

Just something to consider