Say a friend is looking for a new system, and said person is not particularly savvy with technology, what system would you point them toward?

      • alekwithak@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 day ago

        I didn’t realize OP’s question was ‘What desktop operating system would you recommend to Scott’s dad?’ I guess I need new glasses.

    • Victor@lemmy.world
      51·
      1 day ago

      I don’t get the appeal of immutability. System files are read-only for users for a reason already. Don’t modify them as root unless you know what you’re doing and you’ll be fine.

      What am I missing?

      (Also gaming for a 78 year old, meh.)

      • mech@feddit.org
        3·
        1 day ago

        Making them immutable for everyone protects users who enter their password in prompts without thinking.

          • mech@feddit.org
            2·
            1 day ago

            The updater downloads an updated copy of your root system and saves it next to the one you’re running.
            When you reboot the next time, the bootloader boots from that new system image.
            Userspace applications are installed as flatpaks and sit in a writeable directory.

            • Victor@lemmy.world
              3·
              1 day ago

              And “the updater” is what? A program running as [not root]? How does it have write access if nothing does?

              • mech@feddit.org
                2·
                1 day ago

                It’s the package manager. And it doesn’t have write access to your installed root either.
                It doesn’t change anything on your installed file system at all, it installs a new system next to it.

                • Victor@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  1 day ago

                  So it installs a whole new filesystem? Interesting. That feels like it sets limitations on how well you can take advantage of the full space of your hard drive.

                  And this action can only be performed by the package manager running under some magical God user that sits above root? Or some other mechanism?

                  • mech@feddit.org
                    2·
                    1 day ago

                    It utilizes the copy-on-write functionality of the BTRFS file system.
                    So it doesn’t need double the disk space, it only actually writes the differences between your installed system and the new one.
                    And it runs normally with sudo, not some special god user.
                    You could do it manually, too.

      • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I’m not an immutable guy, but from what I heard it’s more of a way to address programs and dependency hell, less the user modifying system code. Correct me if I am wrong

    • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Bazzite?

      Really, you would recommend a young, gaming focused distribution for a non-tech person?

      I’d want something stable and trusted rather than something new and hip

      • hikaru755@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 hours ago

        Yes.

        • In my Linux experience so far, Bazzite is the first time things have actually just worked out of the box and I haven’t had to fix a single weird issue
        • It’s immutable with atomic updates, so much lower likelihood of the base system getting messed up, and it’s super easy to roll back to previous versions if something still manages to go wrong
        • Updates happen fully automatically in the background, you don’t even notice it
        • You don’t ever need to touch the terminal in normal usage. Everything is set up so that you can find any software a normie would need through the built-in app store. Flatpaks are great
        • If you object to the gaming focus, there’s a variant that’s just for regular desktop use and doesn’t have the gaming stuff preinstalled, but otherwise comes with all the same benefits

        The one thing I’ll give you is that it’s a young distro and hasn’t proven itself to be reliable and still available in the long term, but honestly, given all the other benefits, I’ll take that chance

      • alekwithak@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        Yes. I’ve been switching non-tech people to Linux for 17 years. Ubuntu used to be the go to, but it has a steep learning curve for the average user, sucks, and has gotten consistently worse. Everyone eats their shit over Mint, and Cinnamon is nice, but I’d still field a lot of complaints. Pop! OS is awesome, but still only 90% of the way there (and also people hate the name).
        Bazzite is feature complete, requires zero tinkering on their end or mine, and ‘just works’ the way people expect a modern desktop OS to. I’ve converted just under a dozen people and several of my personal machines and haven’t had an issue yet. So yes, I would recommend a young, gaming focused distribution to a non-tech person. Isn’t Steam OS also young and gaming focused? And yet it’s arguable that most non-tech people start their Linux journey there. bazzite is just an improvement on Steam OS. So yeah, I like it. I don’t understand all the ire in this thread for my answer to the question. Everyone has their opinion, I have field research.