CrocodilloBombardino

Back up your music data to an external & a cloud backup. Then the OS matters less.

I inherently distrust anything with crypto mixed in

Seafile is a good option

Seafile or nextcloud

No link?

That is not true. The terms of service cover “your access and use of Server Operator’s (“Administrator”, “we”, or “us”) instance”. Access includes reading data from the server.

@Aurora: I think most Pixelfed instances/apps have a way to block NSFW content. You’ll have to make sure your sister has NSFW content blocking on (and keeps it on) and you’ll want to check in with her every now and then about her experience there. I think marking images as NSFW is optional for the person posting the content, so not every single NSFW image will necessarily be blocked. It’s hard to give someone a completely clean social media experience.

One other thing you can try: look for instances that are focused on a topic your sister enjoys that is not likely to have NSFW content in it, like ppl who are interested in trains or playing a musical instrument. There are some here: https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers/ (but you should check the server before she joins)

to all the commenters saying the fediverse is not a good place: these kids are going to be on social media, one way or another. It could be tiktok, bluesky, snapchat, or whatever else they can get onto. Some (but not all) parts of the fediverse should be accessible to them. Ofc that means someone has to do the hard work of hosting those instances, which is not easy. Just saying “this isn’t for you” isn’t doing teens or the fediverse or parents any favors.

Linux is super configurable! You’ll just need to try out a bunch of different window managers, taskbars, etc to see which one you like best, but maybe look for some videos to preview a couple first.

The unixporn Lemmy community also has examples

Don’t pick a whole distro based on the UI. The distro choice is about stability vs bleeding edge packages, package manager, minimal/maximal installs, security hardening vs convenience, use or avoidance of particular systems (e.g. systemd), and things like that.

The UI will come from your choice of desktop environment, window manager, compositor, etc. Those can be installed on most distros. You can also look at dotfiles for more theming. Ofc it’s silly to install a different UI on a particular flavor/version/spin of a distro built for a given desktop environment (like Kubuntu), though it’s still possible.

I’m enjoying Niri rn. It’s a scrolling & tiling window manager. I have it running on opensuse.

Dual boot

Use a seedbox and the arrr suite instead of streaming services

Anecdotally, from teachers I know, they use chatgpt.

But libraries are not just print books! They have digital collections and online materials too.

What’s quicker: searching bad info sources online or searching better info sources at the library?

Also OP didn’t say it had to be quick

your local library is also a great option

1. Send them links to posts they would like
2. Goto 1

I haven’t been a mint user for a while, but the fact that the mint folks specifically release MATE/XFCE versions is a good sign that they are tested for compatibility. You can try those versions on liveusb, too.

I’m guessing here, but the “less terminal needed” parts of Mint are probably specific tools and GUI settings managers they have put together to be more user friendly. if you search something like [name of Mint settings manager or tool] XFCE compatible, you’ll likely get an explanation. You might want to check out their Matrix chat room with specific questions: https://app.element.io/#/room/#linuxmint-space:matrix.org

Mint comes with a few desktop environment/window manager options: https://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE. It’s also capable of running KDE and basically any other option, you just have to install it in a slightly more manual way.

They will try to fill instances with bots, propaganda accounts, etc. They’ll DDOS them. They’ll try to get them shut down at the hosting level or cut off their donations by having credit card companies blacklist them

I think mine was gentoo, waaaay back in the day. It didn’t go great lol.

I’m loving opensuse rn though!

I would never trust a billionaire to do anything for us. If he doesn’t just carve out an exception for only people like himself at first, he’ll still lobby to have new restrictions on sharing if they threaten his business model.

It’ll end up being a back-and-forth between him and the IP companies, so if he has enough leverage, they’ll just find a way to give him what he wants without doing so for regular folks.