My wife’s laptop has been having issues and this morning I tried to upgrade it to Windows 11 but was met with the message that it doesn’t meet the requirements. My wife wanted to buy a new laptop but, with money being tight at the moment and the expense already of Christmas, I convinced her to at least try Linux on this old one first. (something she put up a lot of resistance to).
I’ve installed Fedora 43 Workstation. I know KDE is a little more like Windows but, on my laptop I didn’t care for KDE and, as I will end up helping her with support, I felt better off with something more familar to me. Plus KDE is more “techy” and highly customisable. Gnome is far easier to use which I think my wife will appreciate in time.
I know as soon as she starts using it that she will complain about how different it is. Does anyone have any tips to help make the transition easier? I have installed “Dash to panel” extension to make it feel a bit more like the Windows UI. I personally prefer “Dash to Dock” but thought “Dash to panel” would be better for her. I also used Gnome Tweaks to bring back minimise and maximise windows buttons.
Because Gnome deliberately breaks with other desktop paradigms, I feel trying to make it more Windows-like is more trouble than it’s worth. My first suggestion would have been KDE Plasma, it is pretty similar to Windows by default and you don’t have to dive into the settings rabbit hole if you don’t want to.
But if Plasma isn’t for you, Cinnamon is also well maintained and commonly recommended as an alternative for people coming from Windows.
I guess the first thing would be to find out how she wants to use the laptop. What kinds of things will she be doing. If she will use it for listening to music at all (maybe with some external speakers) then it might be a good idea to install Parole Media Player or Strawberry. If she might use it for manipulating photos then GIMP could get installed. Anyway, the idea would be to tailor it to the things she likes to do. Also you might have to be the one to do the updates for her so she doesn’t have to worry about any of that.
She doesn’t really use it for more than web, email, ms office, zoom and occassionally ms teams.
MS Office and Teams are going to be the biggest issues. She’s tried LibreOffice and said it was no good as word documents don’t render properly. Teams would mean needing to install Edge browser I believe so shouldn’t be an issue. There is a Zoom flatpak in the Software app.
As an alternative, you can also go with the system extensions, which come preinstalled with Fedora/GNOME, and are less susceptible to break with system upgrades, e.g. Apps Menu, Places Status Indicator and Window List.
I prefer LibreOffice for it’s true FLOSS philosophy, but lots of users recommend ONLYOFFICE for its higher degree of compatibility with MS Office.
When my mom used GNOME, it was easy to fling the cursor to top-left to do everything! Vanilla GNOME with Fedora was fine.
Biggest problem was some paid streaming websites not supporting Linux (main was Xfinity, even with Chrome/widevine/Netflix working).
Funnest was making 20+ custom shortcuts for games with wine That’s what got me into making custom launchers though and I got pretty good at it over time!
To be honest, I think those extensions are really poor. For example, the apps menu one, doesn’t even match the custom folders I made in the “main menu” or whatever you call it in Gnome. That’s just inconvenient and confusing. If it’s not going to match the same organisation as I’ve made then it’s pointless. I also don’t care for the windows list one. I think Dash To Panel is far better.
Edit - and then almost scarily as I finished this post, my Dash To Dock extension fails and won’t open.
You might consider getting live images for several Fedora spins, boot the live images and see which one she likes best. Given that she’s coming from Windows, Budgie and MATE might not be bad choices and, as @l-c-g suggested, Cinnamon.
Personally, I prefer XFCE, but as usual, YMMV.
Good luck and I hope you find a desktop environment for your wife.
I “converted” two friends over Fedora Gnome, then one of them converted his own mom.
I suggest to let your wife use Gnome without any change. If she is used to smartphones she should find Gnome “paging” very familiar and Gnome is so minimalistic that is impossibile to break by accident (which is not the case with other DEs).
Gnome really is confusing coming from Microsoft Windows. I would definitely give Budgie a try. It has a much better UX than Gnome. I have been using gnome4 for some light browsing and email since it came out but when moving all my Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 workstations to Fedora, after some trying I settled with Budgie as in concept and usability it compares far better. For office suite go with OnlyOffice. Libre usability wise eally is stuck in the late nighties.
I don’t agree about Gnome being “confusing”, besides the obvious fact that it was designed to be somehow “touchscreen-ish” then it is familiar for whoever uses smartphones, it can’t be confusing giving the fact that it doesn’t have any hidden part-feature-function, what you see is what you get. Sweep up and down for the “app grid”, sweep left and right to move across workspaces.
I have being using Windows all my life and so everybody else around me and I never had complaints about Gnome being “confusing”.
The complaint is Gnome being TOO SIMPLE, you cannot change anything, you cannot move anything around, you don’t have icons, bars, widgets, anything. People complain that there is too few “confusion” (think of some people’s icons on Windows desktop).
Which I consider the opposite of “confusing”, it is more like “enforcing”, like you are forced to do things in one way only, applications are forced to integrate in the Gnome interface, etc.
Mouse? Gnome is not designed for mouse in fact there isn’t any drop down menu (besides the top-right but only because they could’t fit those things anywhere or anyhow else). Gnome is designed for touchpads, touchscreens and alike and that is why it is so familiar for smartphone users. Optionally, it could be used with the hotkeys but then you miss the “cool” of the animations and you might as well use some tiling WM.
Once upon a time I only used a desktop PC with a relatively big screen. Back then I did not get Gnome at all because with large screens you can multitask without leaving the desktop. Once I moved to a laptop and a low res screen and I got used to it, I found Gnome being better than any “traditional desktop” DE because you always work in “full screen” mode and hava an application per “page”. Not having a precise tool for pointing like the mouse makes not having drop down menues also convenient.
In reverse, probably Gnome still does not fit well with big screens.
I’ve migrated to Linux after decades of windows experience, and couldn’t get accustomed to Gnome. I felt it’s designed for those migrating from Macs. I found it not comfortable at all, and weird. In comparison, KDE is so easy and comfortable. Of course there’s certain bias, but it is difficult to get rid of. And do we have to?
It is always better to be user-centric, as the user will be using the final product. Let her try both worlds couple of days (several days in Gnome live boot mode for internet tasks - мost users need an internet terminal after all, - then several days of KDE). With such practice, she will be able to make the decision.
for office try Colabora office and WPS office, they are quite usable even for content production.
I empathise with the challenges from moving to Gnome from MacOS or Linux. It drove me batty and I was about to throw the whole Linux idea in the bin until a mate sent me a link to a You Tube video that discussed the whole philosophy behind Gnome. I wish I could find that link for you but it’s long gone from my memory. But once you inderstand the five or six things it strives to do really well and then be just a basic desktop the whole thing becomes elegant in its simplicity and beautiful to work with. It enabled me to move on from MacOS and Windows.
So hunt for things that help you understand what it is, not what it isn’t.
I personally think you have the right mindset to maintain your own sanity.
Although I prefer KDE, I’d still recommend GNOME for your case.
KDE is a bit more like Windows, yes. However, the customisations can take up a bit of time.
It also has its own little quirks: Plasma can easily crash when you customise its panel, file copying to external drive not reporting correctly, kio-fuse niggles with its interaction with smb shares, etc.
Packages I’d install (you’ve already installed some of these):
Use OnlyOffice.
It uses OOXML as a core format), so this should severely reduce the MS Office compatibility issues.
Teams should not require Edge browser. I run it fine with Brave.
Good call. I implore you to spend a bit of time with Dash to Panel to make sure it behaves as close as possible to what she’s used to in Windows.
Also do the Multimedia Setup from RPM Fusion if you think this may be needed.
Extensions are the worst idea ever. Since they basically are random code executed on top of your application, they add any sort of quirks, performance and security concerns. Not for Gnome only, in any case. Browsers are the obvious example.
Thanks for all the tips but she has decided she hates Linux and, with myself leaving Linux now too, I don’t want to have to support it. Zoom calls didn’t work properly, MS Teams was a complete disaster and that is just for starters. So we have decided to buy a new Windows 11 laptop for her and I’ve already switched my laptop and desktop back to Windows.
Linux just isn’t for us. At our age we want an easy life and none of this nonsense of spending more time fixing problems than just using the machies for what we bought them for. I hate the idea of Microsoft spying on me but I now just hate Linux more. For us it is the lesser of two evils.
I have Fedora 43. zoom runs fine. I have zoom-6.1.1.443-1.x86_64 , I think from the rpm. I just checked the download. zoom is up to 6.7.0. I haven’t joined teams meetings recently, but I think that I used the web interface on chrome on Fedora 42.
That’s what got me into making custom launchers though and I got pretty good at it over time!