I’m visiting my parents for the holidays and convinced them to let me switch them to Linux.
They use their computer for the typical basic stuff; email, YouTube, Word, Facebook, and occasionally printing/scanning.
I promised my mom that everything would look the same and work the same. I used Linux Mint and customized the theme to look like Windows 10. I even replaced the Mint “Start” button with the Windows logo.
So far they like it and everything runs great. Plus it’s snappier now that Windows isn’t hogging all the system resources.
@OP, can you advise what themes etc you used to make it look like windows 7?
I’m about to switch one of my parents over, I think that would make the transition easier.
I can’t remember the exact name for the themes I used, but if your go into the Linux Mint theming section and search “Windows” you will get several results.
I don’t know if there is a Windows 7 theme specifically, you would have to look for that yourself. I also did little things like allign and resize their desktop icons the same way their Windows desktop looked. I changed the default folder colors to a tan-ish color to look similar to the Windows folder colors. My mom could tell it looked different, but it was close enough.
Making their app icons look the same and be in the same rough location as their Windows machine is probably the most important. My Mom loves the Spotify desktop app, so I made sure to install it from the software center and pin the icon into the taskbar right where she was used to seeing it.
Make sure their browser home page is set the same too, and any bookmarks they have.
Also, guide them through the new install. Have them click through all the typical tasks they do. I had my mom sit with me and showed her how Spotify opened up and looked exactly the same as it did on her Windows install. We played some music and I showed her how to adjust the little volume knob in the Mint toolbar. I had her print some documents, browse the web, look at pictures and videos she had saved on her drive, stuff like that.
That will make them feel much more comfortable with the change. There is a balance between trying to get everything to look identical, and helping your parents become comfortable with something new.
Recommending Linux is good; forcing it down someone’s throat is not.
If parents are just comfy using Windows, it’ll get them super frustrated when they’ll face new issues coming from Linux use, as you just can’t turn Linux into Windows and they never asked for it.
Now, if they complain about all the shit Windows throws at them, you can offer an alternative.
I see what you’re saying, but it has gone down fine so far. My dad is completely computer-illiterate, every phone/computer he uses seems like it was found in an alien spacecraft to him, so changing from Windows to Linux doesn’t make any difference to him. He just needs to be able to click the Chrome icon and then click the YouTube favorite button or the Hotmail favorite button.
My mom worked way back in the day for a corpo that used DOS systems, so she actually has remained slightly computer savvy. She was worried about the change until I showed her that the Spotify app worked perfectly, she could read her emails, open Word documents, and print stuff.
I also explained that the computer would run faster and would be safer for them to use because the malware that effects Windows doesn’t effect Linux, and that made sense to her.
If she had insisted I keep them on Windows, I would have. But she was just concerned that nothing would work the same and she would have to become some techie to figure it out. Once I addressed those concerns, she was alright with switching.
Get ready to address hard to debug issues in the future op.
I’m about to do this for my mother as well. I just switched back myself and found Mint has come a very long way. The last time I ran it as my main OS 10 years ago it was pretty demanding from the user, but mint now is probably more user friendly than Windows.
You’re a good offspring.
