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So it's happened; mom's venerable Dell has bit the dust and I'm being called on to find her a new laptop. Everything I've seen here and elsewhere says Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare and we're trusting Microsoft's forced automatic updates to not break the computer. Dell is still offering computers with Win 7 and 8.1, but Microsoft is pushing the OS upgrade hard and heavy. I'd love for her to let me set her up with Linux but she's devoted to Google Picasa (Google not porting their apps is another rant) and I'm not sure how often she's going to be calling me with some Windows only program she needs. And then there's Apple, which makes my fingers itch to type, but it's looking better and better. So, what is the collective wisdom of the Soylentils*?
- Is windows 10 really not that bad and just roll with it.
- Is Linux finally ready for Grandma?
- Stick with 8.1 and turn off all the updates?
- Shell out the cash for a Macbook?
*Irony duly noted.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rich on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:18PM
Occasionally I get asked too, what machine to choose. And even for myself, I think it's a quite dire situation. I figure mainstream "peak desktop" was hit in about 2010 with Windows 7, Snow Leopard and Lucid Lynx. Since then everything went downhill, because the vendors figured out that the fact that they're "mostly done" would not help with ongoing revenue. So they try to lock you into their "clouds" (hoping to eventually force you into a subscription) and suck off every available information about you (for whatever future profits). It doesn't help that smartphones with their dumbed-down operation are enough for the computing needs of the vast majority, so the vendors care more for reaching all of that audience with the look & feel of their applications.
My suggestion for a classic desktop experience these days is to get Mint 17.x with MATE. Even with its quirks and bugs it's still the least worst of 'em all. As hardware I recommend refurb Thinkpad T-series not newer than the T420/520. I've been keeping an eye on Elementary OS (which looks extremely tidy) and might be the better choice for a "grandma" environment (once they get the Intel chipset graphics glitches out).
As far as the special requirement of Picasa goes, IIRC the original Picasa was ported to Linux using Wine. So in its core, it should be pretty Wine-friendly. If that's all, the hassle of getting it going there might be worth it. The Elementary people have picked up Shotwell as "Pantheon Photos", so maybe a little migration could be considered once the base Elementary becomes glitch free, YMMV.
The alternative to sorting out the above niggles is some rather brutal honesty, saying "The vendors, Microsoft, Apple, Ubuntu screwed it up. In order to make more money they made their desktops a mess, and it's now beyond my capabilities to sort these out to a state where I could live with a good conscience. Get anything from a fancy advertisement, but don't complain to me when stuff screws up, or you're accidentally sucked into a billing scheme. I will listen to your complaints at my regular hourly rate, because I am refusing to fix the mess for free that vendors made to get more money, including what you just gave them to make the mess worse. I'll do my best, but I might not be able to fix stuff, even after taking payment for my time, because these piles of shit are so big they cannot be reliably sorted out by someone who's not a full time pro for just that and not more."