Linux as W10 EOL replacement; how to set up for elderly systems

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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@Aug did the Windows installer stop behaving like a bull in a China shop?

@jellybutt On the boot issue:
How about giving each separate install its own EFI boot partition? Then manage the boot entries via UEFI. It may still have grub and this grub will probably still have auto-detection on by default. This is the lazy way to what people suggest as “use only EFI for booting”, i.e. firmware directly booting the kernel, iirc. You would then modify the entries (if needed) using efibootmgr.

On swap: I’m not sure this is supported. While you’re intuitively right, it’s only ephemeral data… yet not always, if you remember about hibernation. I guess the swap partition has some identifier too, so it couldn’t be actually shared this easily? What I remember is that there’s no command to resize a swap partition online, you need to swapoff and then swapon a partition/swap device.

Technically you probably could manually disable swap on shutdown and enable it on boot, to share one physical partition? Sounds like too much work for now.

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I would consider flipping your method around. Don’t try out yourself, decide which one is "easy to use"and spend lots time to lock it down and then deploy.

Start with a “field test”. With that I mean a few USB drives with the contenders. Liveboot into a OS and ask the person(s) who is going to use it to test it for say 30 minutes. Repeat for each contender. Have them do their normal tasks and see how they like it. Then make an informed choice for which distro to investigate further in term of your own requirements of lock down/support. It is just so hard to leave our own perspective behind when judging what is easy to use, testing with the user will give you a better answer

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I recently went through this with my little sister, who just went to college and could only use a computer about as well as my 85 year old grandma. I set her up with Mint Cinnamon and she hasn’t had any problems in ~6mo with auto updates going fine. Other people probably have better recommendations on setting up the distro though, I only had a couple of days to choose one for her and just took what was widely recommended as newbie friendly.

My big recommendation is to set up a mesh VPN (e.g. Tailscale or Zerotier) and set it to require no ongoing authorization. Create an account with sudo privileges for yourself and set up SSH access. This way it will always be securely accessible to you as long as it’s on and online without needing to worry about how/where they’re connected or port forwards, allowing you to trivially fix any issues that pop up remotely.

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Yes, this is a way easier way to deal with maintenance!
And although you can use a remote access utility like Teamviewer or the like, for a quick update it is a lot easier to just SSH into the machine and run it through the terminal.
And if you’re in the same network, you can easily use Remmina for instance to get a GUI if that’s more to your liking.

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Minor update.

In the meantime, I have talked to most of the people that are part of this ‘helpdesk’ base. This would be about 5-7 different persons and systems. They are very open to switching to a Linux based system, even after explaining the downsides as well. So far, I have already tested the OS change with one very ‘IT-challenged’ 85yo, whoms main use is internet browsing, file navigation, printing, email and light competitive entertainment with a dedicated practice program (card game).

  • I installed Mint Cinnamon 22.1(?) on a fresh SSD (with DRAM), as the old HDD was failing anyway (reponse times of 150-400ms was not uncommon). This is running OK on an old Samsung NP355V5C with AMD A8-4500M and 8GB of DRAM. Perhaps Mate would have been better, but it is miles ahead of the W10 system (70 sec. till usable desktop compared to 10 minutes with W10).

  • I have set up a ‘user’ type user for daily use, with an auto-login after 10 seconds to that user without password login. Anything requiring priveliges will require the password of the main user, of which I alone hold the password.

  • Auto-update is on, but so far I haven’t seen it working. Some updates seem to fail for some reason.

  • For remote assistance, I tried Teamviewer at first as this person was used to it. Flatpack installation didn’t work. Anydesk was second, but it most likely had conflicts with the firewall settings. Tried changing those, but nothing helped. Lastly, I installed Rustdesk. Installing was a breeze and it works flawlessly and, most importantly, looks very much like the Teamviewer GUI on ID and password.

  • I don’t like the keyring feature, as the user now has to enter the keyring password to connect to WiFi. Which, of course, was the first helpdesk call the next day (“help it says no connection, check firewall???”). Looking into options to disable this, but so far I haven’t found any easy non-integrated or non-interfering ways.

The printer and email setup was suprisingly simple and easy, much much quicker than its W10 setup counterpart back then.

One thing I am still struggling with is the scaling options. Font scaling is up by 1.3x for readability, but I can’t use integer option for UI buttons. I have been able to change certain things, such as font type and icon size, without issues, but some don’t translate well to programs. Scrollbar width etc. won’t translate to Thunderbird. I changed some values in the TB config file, but system-based changes don’t seem to translate well to all programs.

So far, we are in trial mode. If this doesn’t work out, there is always the option of buying a new laptop with W11. The cost of this experiment is 35 USD for the SSD. Prolonging the life of th hardware and avoiding unnecessary costs (both monetary and emotionally in the case of W11) of a new PC is something that I always attempt first.

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Keyring credential prompt is required because you have the account auto log in. Remove that and keyring won’t prompt. Keyring is a required part of the system for certain functions so removal would be a bad idea.

Auto update may fail if there are apt issues or packages that need reconfigured. I haven’t experienced any issues with it personally. You won’t see it working if it does work, you just won’t have that many packages to update when you check.

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I am in a similar situation with my Brother In Law. Instead of Picking a distro for them. I am going to have him install and run a few distros, (Mint, Fedora, Debian, etc etc), I will setup virtual machines, get him to test what works for him. then go from there.

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@Adubs
Yeah, I read that auto-login was the reason for this. I’ll discuss with the user after a few weeks what their preference is on this. I like the auto-login feature for this particular user, as it will never pause on the login screen and avoids any confusion or misclicks / blocking by choosing the wrong account and not being able to log in.

It mainly failed (repeatedly) on a big package of 500MB, don’t remember the name. I’ll check again after a while.

This particular user may, however, in a not to distant future, perhaps not be capable of dealing with any IT / digital systems and/or services. I am noticing quite severe cracks in the logical thinking and pattern recollection, as what were previously easy routine, faultless actions and steps are now becoming an issue. To such a degree that low-level suggestions such as an iPad etc. may not work as well. No idea how they’re supposed to perform the now mostly digital obligations (especially government or financial matters), but we’ll see when we get to that point.

I just wanted to mention that for others in this situation: keep in mind that while their minds may be open to change, in practise it may not be as flexible to the required adjustments in system and thought process, as well as interaction patterns.

@R-Savage
That is a good idea, if the hardware supports it and the user understands how it works. I have done the same for my father, to let him experiment with W11 (and let him experience how even more sh1t it is compared to W10).
In my case, I’m nearly always dealing with 300-600 USD 2012-2017 era laptops, so not the most capable for VMs. Not an issue if you can bring a capable loaner, of course. And I can say for sure that none will understand VMs in my case.

I forgot to mention that I brought a few laptops along a few months ago and showed a few options to people of this group of seniors. I showed them: Ubuntu, FlexOS, and Mint and OpenSUSE (fairly similar). I also explained both up- and downsides, for both the user and me as ‘support staff’. Luckily, nearly all prefer a W10 lookalike, of which most allow me the most amount of control as admin (so not FlexOS).
Despite the visual simplicity of Ubuntu, most prefer to keep their system GUI experience separate for clarity; iOS and Android layout and interactions is for phone and tablets daily stuffs, W10-alike layouts and interactions is for computer important stuffs (their reasoning).

I explained all users that Windows 10 will continue to operate after October and that, with their use, they likly won’t run any risks for at least a few weeks or moths. I installed the usual basic browser extensions for minor protection and set their mailprograms to not auto-download contents. Social engineering scams I can’t do anything about.

I have at least four more systems to go next months:

  • One daily use laptop (internet browsing, file navigation, printing, email, light word processing)
  • One Surface laptop/tablet (?) used in a business setting, which I am likely to just upgrade to W11
  • One daily use laptop with more file management and maybe minor foto editing needs
  • One daily use PC (DIY build, fairly capable)
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Long term Mint user here.

I’m not sure you’d need to do anything special. Mint is nice and user friendly out of the box.

There are built in Accessibility features in the Cinnamon desktop, including “High Contrast”, “Large Text” “Screen Reader” and “Desktop Zoom” as well as all of the keyboard assistive technologies and mouse assistive technologies you’d expect in Windows.

I’d probably assess the abilities of your elderly users, test out the assistive technologies you think are appropriate to enable for them, and then test them out so you know how to use them if there are any questions.

Maybe even scale up the UI a little if visual impairment is an anticipated challenge.

Other than that, it is likely just a matter of training. Most elderly people are likely rarely going to do much more than use the web browser. Show them where to click to get the web browser (as the icon may be different than they are used to).

And if you are not going to actively support the machines, enable automatic updates in the Update Manager ( Edit → Preferences → Automation tab) so the packages don’t get too out of date.

And that’s about it.

Mint - especially with the Cinnamon desktop - is very friendly straight out of the box. I’m not sure you’d need to do more than that.

Oh, and yeah, only give them an account without administrative (sudo) privileges, so they don’t mess shit up. Keep that privilege for yourself, and configure it so you can ssh in remotely to deal with any issues.

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I’m not sure to what capacity you have the skillset but if you can create a split tunnel for ssh access, that would probably be in your best interest for maintenance in these situations.

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Unfortunately, I don’t think I possess the knowledge, no. I could maybe read up on it, and apparently I already have seeing my YouTube history, and I think I will likely manage to set something up. But I think I am likely to open more doors that may pose a security risk (for me or the user) without proper knowledge of what I’m doing and shouldn’t be doing.

Sure, I would love to have one service or way that has a low barrier to entry and is a no-compromise option security-wise, but I think I’m asking for something that likely doesn’t exist. Also, their PC still needs to be on, of which most aren’t unless asked to.

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I apologize, but which OS supposedly is optimized for user experience? I don’t think you mean Windows, do you? Because while XP, 7 and perhaps 10 somewhat was, 11 certainly is not. It’s spyware AND it breaks die to updates at times.