I need a distro that is stable with a particular need to set up zero input automatic updates. If an update asks for a password or needs user interaction in basically any way it simply won’t get done. All he needs is a reliable platform for browsing the web. I am replacing an Ubuntu system that has apparently just stopped working (I have not had a chance to examine it yet) after years and years of not getting proper updates after he forgot his password.
Something like Bazzite is intriguing because of it’s locked down environment although he is very much not a gamer. Is there something locked down like Bazzite but with long term LTS release cycle?
Take a look at the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue. It would install updates automatically, and has the ability to always rollback to a working version. I haven’t used it long enough to have version upgrades tested. Perhaps it asks for user input. These upgrades happen twice a year.
If I was doing that these days with my current skills, I’d install some minimal version of Arch Linux and probably would remote into it once in a while to update, or invent some simple script to do the updates unattended. The lesser the packages the easier the whole task.
Also, don’t forget there’s Chrome OS which you can install on a regular PC. (It was called Chrome OS Flex last time I did that for a relative.) It’s the easiest I can remember right now. That’s for situations when all they need is actually just a browser. For those cases Chrome OS shines.
No, please forget Chrome OS. Also, I’d hesitate to call it “Linux” at this point
Haven’t used one myself for years (close to a decade). Installed it for a relative about 5 years ago, never maintained it ever since.
What’s wrong with it?
It worked pretty well on an ancient PC which was running some Windows 7 if not XP. Can’t remember really. The relative is about 80 years old, so all he needs is a browser. So, Chrome OS came naturally. The hardest part was, for some really stupid reason Google wants Google account password to be entered upon booting, and not some other password. PIN code didn’t work for us for some reason. The solution I took is we changed the password to his birthday (perhaps with some A letter, if it wants at least one letter to be present). The password included dots, which was trivial to enter with a Numpad. Like A1945.09.05. But personally, I just hate it. There are use cases when you can allow a computer to have no password. Here, Google forced us to use less secure password, out of convenience. I’d prefer to have my Google account having stronger password, and forcing no password of my computer at all. The potential security risk is someone breaking into the house, and surely they’ll be very dumb to steal that computer, to have … what? YouTube history of some old fart? But that’s a bit of a different story anyway.
Me, I’d rather go with some very minimal distro and maybe even kiosk-mode browser, if necessary.
Still, what’s wrong with ChromeOS? Did I miss something important? Beyond Google dropping ‘don’t be evil’ obviously.
A quick look through some of the privacy communities will give you an overall vibe on what Google is doing. But overall, they’re getting monopolistic.
They’re requiring all android developers register their identities with them or they’ll be blocked on all Google’d android versions (which almost all Android phones ship with). They’re also datamining everyone more and more each year, just like Facebook.
And they’re using their influence over Chromium to force adblock blockers into every Chromium browser. And the only non-Chromium browsers are Firefox and its derivatives
And by far the worst one, they bought out ReCaptcha and they just rolled out an update that requires verification with a device that has either iOS or stock android. It doesn’t support deGoogle’d android like GrapheneOS or LineageOS, and it doesn’t support desktop. So now any website you visit that uses the new version of ReCaptcha requires you to verify your identity with a phone, even if you’re accessing the website on desktop. This is so they can link all your systems to your identity
If you value your privacy, you should work to get your digital footprint off Google’s software as much as possible
I’ve put my dad on Bluefin (same project as Bazzite). It’s perfect. Major upgrades are the same as weekly updates. Transparent and uneventful. It’s been almost 2 years and zero major complaints. He even finally accepted to ditch his ancient MacBook Air since I installed the Affinity suite on his Linux laptop. It was his last holdover.
Fedora Atomic Distros are great. I only run into minor issues with major updates in combination with Ffmpeg Codecs layered to the install. But I guess that’s a rare usecase.
Honestly, I don’t understand whether there’s anyone who doesn’t need normal codecs. I hate this part of Fedora, as I always need to remember to install these codecs.
Nah. The moment they want to run a exe from a desktop shortcut (and not via rightclick on the entry in the second tab of a GUI tool) or you to run a setup script, things get messy.
I don’t know much about immutable distros, but I do know that wine installs everything in
~/.wine/drive_cand automatically places .desktop files in your desktop directory whenever you install a program that creates a desktop shortcut, all of which should work just fine on immutable distros.Except you have to run wine via distrobox or toolbox and there it behaves different. The toolbox one also has an issue with it being virtualized it seems. And forget about a runner script that prevents the integration of random .exe for security.