adarza

yup. works very well. been using it whenever an image fails to boot properly on my multiboot usb…

an image viewer with the feature set and workflow of irfanview on windows.

you’re on the right track, i think, but not bazzite–that carries a lot of extra stuff that isn’t necessary here. just ordinary fedora silverblue. clean up the app grid or put dash-to-dock on it and put the few launchers they need down on that. gnome is actually a good desktop for basic users that just need to run one or a few applications. updates are somewhat frequent but should be almost entirely automatic.

i have a few users like your parents on endless os, which is similar to silverblue, just based on an in-house immutable debian instead of silverblue’s fedora base. i rarely ever hear from them, it ‘just works’. i also have it at home, it’s currently my only linux desktop there (i do most my ‘work’ at the office, home is just doom-scrolling and media for the most part these days). updates are less frequent but endless is switching to a gnome os base with the next major version. that will probably increase the frequency of updates a bit compared to their older debian base. that upgrade to v7 should be mostly invisible to the user, they’ve done a good job in the past with upgrades.

many were there first, long before microsoft bought the site. but now? yea. why tf are people still using it.

like we’re seeing with Android’s “Desktop mode”.

apple is already in on this game, as well.

every day i use windows less than the day before. i still ‘need’ it for some things, including work, but on a personal level it’s almost entirely linux lately… but it’s been a three decade journey.

afaik windows has no native capability to control brightness setting on external displays. an optional driver for the display may be available via windows update which might allow a third-party utility to control the setting directly.

from what i know about ‘gname’ is that they’re popular with scammers and other bad actors. i would steer clear of them, even if they are ‘free’.

i run several mass-market consumer model laptops with the lid closed. as long as the vents aren’t obstructed, not a problem here. mine are all lower-wattage soc with integrated gpu, though; the most demanding one that’s on 24/7 is still only ~ 15w cpu at 100% load, and it never runs at that; it rarely even throttles up from the 800mhz it idles at. i stand them on end so the vents are clear, and use some lego to enforce spacing between 'em.

i have a neighbor that keeps her old answering machine because her late-husband’s voice is on it. she has no home videos or anything else… just a few snapshots and that answering machine.

i don’t like tiling wm, and can’t stand seemingly random placement a linux d.e. usually gives (if not just centering everything every time).

i use the kwin script for ‘remember window positions’ to get behaviour similar to windows. gnome has something similar, too (‘smart auto move ng’). so now a window for a program will open right back up the same size and in the same spot next time you run it.

plasma mobile works on more than just handhelds, and you’ll find it in fedora and debian repos (among others, i’m sure).

you can add it, and switch at login. there’s a cinnamon spin of ubuntu, so packages are in the repos. you’ll also find meta packages assembled by both ubuntu and debian that will install what their respective ‘full desktop experience’ has (browser, libreoffice, utilities, and what-not).

i just switched back to debian for personal desktops after years of mint (and a few others). i’m using intel cards right now… drivers are a total non-issue… so that helps some, not having to deal with nvidia drivers. games are running great on stable kernel and drivers (heroic flatpak for launcher and wine).

you can have your ‘start button’ in the bottom left if you want, and still have the panel going up the left edge instead of along the bottom.

the panel on the side. it just makes sense–if you can get ‘used to’ it.

screens are wider than they are tall, but most content viewed by or worked on by most people goes vertical: web sites and text documents. hell, even most pictures and video people take these days, too, because they still don’t know enough to rotate their damn phones.

i almost went cinnamon when i set up my trixie here last month, but went plasma because of some kwin addons. i did install its nemo, though, for when i need a file manager that doesn’t choke on thumbnails (like dolphin does) when an extension doesn’t match what the file actually is (like a lot of images served by web sites and saved by a browser these days)

my boss just emails stuff to herself… or just lets it sit in drafts (imap) with the attachment.

i use localsend, wormhole, or similar usually, especially if one or both the devices aren’t “mine”… and if it’s stuff i’m ‘sending’ to a handheld from a pc, i might instead drop them somewhere on one of our dietpi boxes and just use http

the only guy i have doing dictation into a pc (and not into a special system like for medical records) regularly uses dragon on windows using a somewhat expensive microphone, a setup he’s had for probably 30 years. he has one of those old-timey radio host voices, that might help some… but i rarely ever see him having to edit what dragon spits out