My wife’s computer just cannot work with Windows 11 anymore. It’s an older but still hardware rich gaming machine. I’m going back and forth between wiping the whole machine and installing Windows again to try to fix it. Or to wipe it and install a distro of Linux. I’ve been out of the inside track for Linux knowledge for 8 years. She doesn’t want to deal with anything command line all the time. And I don’t either. If I go Linux, what’s the best one that works with older machines and that’s easiest for someone nontechnical?

Either ubuntu, or its younger, less linux-ish looking brother - LinuxMint with Cinnamon.

Clickitty-click and clackatty-clack - both kinds of users are very well supported

games on any linux is a hit or miss. Mostly miss.

Since when do you need to always deal with command line in Linux?

Find wife with decent computer

@theKarlisK Oops. I should have noted that she only uses it for writing work. She does everything in the cloud with Google Docs/Gmail, etc. No actual gaming. Thanks for those tips, though!!

@stackodev in that case - Google os is now available too. It's blazing fast

Duel boot

@stackodev then any modern distribution will do if you just need a recent browser and some classic utilities. Even as a power user, you rarely need to use the command line if you don't need to dive into specific things. Even installing packages has become easy with GNOME software or KDE Discover

@MammaNeedHummus boot duel

why didnt u leave windows 10 on it? anyhow yea Linux all the way!!!

If you just browse the web literally any distro will do, I sometimes even tend to leave my Arch KDE setups at the mercy of nontechnical people for extended periods of time (not recommended) and webapps and peripherals just work.

Octopi is a godsend.

@joewilliams007 Windows 10 has some pesky updates that keep bricking the laptop. It’s an Alienware 17 R2 from 2013. Still has some life to it but Windows makes perfectly good hardware obsolete.

i'd say zorin os, as it is similar to windows, easy to understand, and as it is on the ubuntu base, pretty well documented

So many choices here. You can go with any of Elementary, Pop OS, Zorin or even Fedora if you really want, though fedora might have some CLI usage. Linux Mint is also solid though

@electrineer I look forward to your comments 😁♥️

Just use one of the Ubuntu flavors which comes preconfigured with a desktop she would like. Chances are that it just works with all the drivers correctly installed out of the box.

Linux isn't hard to install or use anymore since at least a decade if you don't go for an exotic niche distribution like Gentoo...

I use Gentoo btw.

Thanks for all the help!! So I finally got it working with Mint. Had some trouble with a bad SanDisk USB to get anything loaded. Seems to be the only USB I own now for some weird reason. Ubuntu just froze and wouldn’t install. Same with PopOS. Keyboard is totally borked with 9 keys not working so it was cheaper to order an wireless Logitech keyboard/trackpad combo off Amazon. Now this once-expensive Alienware 17 R2 gaming powerhouse is pulling duty as my movie pirate station hooked up to my 69” Vizio smart TV. I’ll be watching 80s classic movies on Soap2Day.ac and my kids will be using it for Jackbox games on Steam when their friends come over.