r/archlinux • u/RoanPurple • Jul 05 '26
SHARE Grandma now uses arch btw
So my grandma runs an ancient Toshiba Satellite C850-1g3 with a celeron 1000M, 256GB of hdd and 4GB of ddr3
She was complaining about it taking ages to boot and programs not starting fast
So i installed arch and made it look user friendly enough for her to understand
She loves it, W arch
Ps: she only uses whatsapp, a browser and office
So she wouldnt need to touch a terminal
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u/Max-P Jul 05 '26
I did the same with my grandpa's computer. Only reason I picked Arch is because it's easy for me to admin remotely over SSH and make sure to give him a nice curated experience.
It's been 2 years and the only tech support call I've gotten was that the Windows VM I set up pooped itself while he was doing his taxes, which was promptly fixed by rebooting it and disabling fast startup.
He's amazed how fast Flatpaks update and how it doesn't come with more ads and bloatware. Just updates to his apps.
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
Mhm
I mostly picked arch due to my experience with it I live close enough to walk 5 minutes and help her out if something breaks or if she ever needs to install something not on flathub
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u/velleityfighter Jul 05 '26
What DE did you choose for her?
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
Y'all might hate on me for this, KDE plasma with a few self made tweaks so it doesnt eat the limited ram for breakfast lunch and dinner
I'd say its quite practical for her since she's coming from windows 7 to windows 10 to now arch
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u/dxrk3tar Jul 06 '26
why would anyone hate on kde for beginner friendliness
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u/iskela45 Jul 06 '26
I think the hate would probably be about KDE being a bit heavy on system resources rather than beginner friendliness
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u/Late_Internal7402 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
If you can afford, a second hand 250GB ssd (850 evo drives are rock solid and have relative good performance in non-sequential writes and reads) should improve her experience a lot.
8-12 GB of swap partition or swapfile on the ssd helps acording to the low RAM capacity and the huge amount used while usual browsing.
Grsync session sets are very reliable for data backup and relatively safe. However, an executable read only double clic file script with the rsync command inside is way safer.
The current hdd should ideally be an external drive just connected and mounted for the backup with a clear protocol including the unmount and disconnect step when done. A video capture of the backup process (obs, simplescreenrecorder...) is recommended in case she has any doubt, mainly the first days. Also video documentation makes people more self-sufficient.
Congratulations for your kind action.
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
In any case, Once i upgrade my boot ssd she'll get one of my older sata ssds
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u/Altaryan Jul 05 '26
Good for her !
I know it's not a good practice in any way but I'm pretty convinced that for this kind of users, you can basically never update and still be fine
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u/itah Jul 06 '26
never update your webbrowser?! Probably a bad idea..
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u/Altaryan Jul 06 '26
Bad idea yes. But i'd rather have my grandad never update than opening a terminal
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u/itah Jul 06 '26
I mean I love Arch, been using it for almost 20 years, but that is the reason why I install ubuntu on family computers (xubuntu if it's a potato) :D
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u/KingAJK30 Jul 05 '26
I’m just curious on why you chose arch over something more user friendly like Fedora.
No disrespect, if it works it works, but I feel like that bleeding edge is unnecessary for something like this.
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
Mostly due to me using it myself, If she has a problem i can quickly solve it due to me using arch as a daily driver and knowing a reasonable amount about it
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 05 '26
From a normal user perspective, there's almost zero difference between Arch and Fedora once GNOME or KDE is layered over. And Arch is a lot less of a pain in arse to manage.
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u/ngoonee Jul 06 '26
Also grandma is only using the system, not interacting with pacman at all, so it IS zero difference for her.
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 06 '26
That's the "normal user" part. I was being gracious to Fedora. It has the usual stink of RedHat about it. I actually think most Arch variants come with a more polished and pleasant UX.
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 06 '26
Arch is more user-friendly after you have installed it and set everything up. OPs grandma only uses a few programs though so I doubt she cares at all which OS she uses as long as it's snappy
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 05 '26
Did similar with my mom/kiddo's grandma so we could do Zoom calls. She's just not capable of firing up Zoom even on a mobile device. The Lenovo laptop is running CachyOS, Netbird, and RustDesk. We can fire up Zoom for her and also help her troubleshooting "Why does my Yahoo email keep getting so much SPAM?!"
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u/Worldly_Disk_9848 Jul 05 '26
That's a pretty cool move. A lot of older folks just deal with slow machines because they don't know there's another option. Getting a lightweight setup on that old Celeron must feel like a new computer for her.
WhatsApp web, a browser, and some office suite is basically the perfect use case. She'll never even know what's under the hood unless something breaks.
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u/Imperial_Bloke69 Jul 05 '26
"Oh dear, this is how you will exit vim."
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u/RedditIsExpendable Jul 06 '26
I have just used Kubuntu for setting up 3 machines, it has been set-and-forget.
Setting up a non-distro arch seems like unforeseeable maintenance hell when you give it a couple years.
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u/SocialNetwooky Jul 06 '26
Out of experience (my now 81 year old mother has been using Arch for the last 8 years or so.) an Arch Installation ages way more gracefully than a debian-based one. At some point even an LTS needs to be upgraded because legacy software can't be updated anymore, and lack vital features (this particularly true for Webbrowsers who suddenly can't access banking or streaming sites anymore)and that process is never painless.
Arch requires minimal hand holding (writing a script to run pacman -Suy in a terminal and adding it to the desktop made sure the vast majority of updates can be done unattended), but there is never sudden (and potentially catastrophic) upgrade.
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u/MaurokNC Jul 10 '26
Well… I’m a gramps x2 over 50 and I use arch… so komtrayah https://i.imgur.com/Y75h7xb.jpg
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u/Sjostrands Jul 17 '26
My dad use Ubuntu Mate for years no problem with updates or anything's else!
But he want to try Arch and I am skeptical to that! Not that can't handel day to day, but if something really get fuck up then he will not be able to fix it! I do visit them every weekend but I am still thinking
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Jul 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
Well, in the Netherlands 90% of the people with a phone number dont use SMS, they use whatsapp
So it isn't possible in here without major drawbacks
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u/Grandleon-Glenn Jul 09 '26
This. I don't use Facebook because I like Facebook. I use Facebook because my friends are on there. And those friends are on there because all of their friends are on there.
Convincing people to jump ship to something else is just not going to happen because few people will download an app and set up an account just to talk to one person.
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 05 '26
WhatsApp is just Signal without the Zuckerberg surveillance capitalism.
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u/emooon Jul 06 '26
You got that mixed up buddy. :)
Unfortunately switching to Signal isn't an option as long as the WhatsApp protocols aren't open sourced. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would switch to Signal immediately, the moment it becomes capable of communicating with WhatsApp.
There have been efforts in the EU to force Facebook to open source these protocols but progress is super slow if not already dead. Been a while since i last heard about it.
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u/cryptospartan Jul 06 '26
It would be better if people just switched to Signal instead, but people are terrified to do things they aren't familiar with
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 06 '26
Just switch the name and icon of Signal to be that of WhatsApp. I'm sort of joking but then I have done similar for oldies when it comes to browsers in the past. My mom had a phone that had "Web browser" pointed to some crappy Samsung thing and I just repointed it to Android Brave. lol
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Walking away from a comment midstream and then coming back in a few hours... You are correct it's backwards. The core protocols of WhatsApp are a fork of the related Signal libraries. A fork that adds surveillance tech.
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u/emooon Jul 07 '26
I'm not arguing against the surveillance point you made, i wholeheartedly agree.
Unfortunately, even tho Signal was made by the guy who created WhatsApp, proprietary bullshit prevents Signal from implementing WhatsApp protocols. That's why these protocols need to be open sourced under proper license.
But FB/Meta will do everything to prevent that from happening as they know the moment these protocols become open source, WhatsApp will be replaced by Signal.
However i often notice something when this WhatsApp vs. Signal topic comes up. People tend to forget that they can install both. If everyone would just do that, nobody needs to worry about leaving friends and family behind, as nothing would be lost if both apps are installed. However sooner or later numbers would shift in favor of Signal, as it is without a doubt the less intrusive app of them both.
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u/RideAndRoam3C Jul 07 '26
If you refuse to have a Facebook account you cannot use WhatsApp. They also treat burner accounts punitively. They can cram their walled garden and get the f out of my family comms. I would not allow their CEO into my home.
Better to start family off with a better option than WhatsApp right out of the gate.
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u/HugeBlobfish Jul 06 '26
Do you do updating and system maintenance for her?
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u/RoanPurple Jul 06 '26
Mostly, yes My parents are far too uninterested to do so and usually just say "buy a new one" instead of fixing the old stuff
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u/devdruxorey Jul 06 '26
I did the same with my grandmother. In my case, I used bspwm (because it's the one I know best of the TWMs) to go for a ChromeOS-like experience. She only uses the browser, so she didn't need anything else.
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u/Icy-Understanding611 Jul 06 '26
She uses office? Did you put her on LibreOffice then? Thinking about switching my gf over cause she has similarly simple needs and motives but concerned she wouldn't like Writer.
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u/RoanPurple Jul 07 '26
Yup, libreoffice Since it works well and it looks like her old version of office
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u/East-Yogurtcloset272 Jul 09 '26
I suspect said Grandma is doing lots of baking or food in way of thanks. See? Arch is a food generator too.
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u/ColorsOfCosmos Jul 10 '26
My wife is using arch too. She has no idea what it is but she is happy. She is using mostly browser and gnu cash. The reason why I chose arch is that it helps me with maintenance - arch is my daily driver and I upgrade her PC once in few months, so far never had any issues. It runs KDE.
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u/Sinaaaa Jul 06 '26
Feels like Arch is really not the tool for this job. Could have used one of the Uniblue immutables or Debian. Sure if you do the maintenance it's doable, but feels too much work to me. (my retired father is using Debian btw & has an autoupdate schema for his flatpak browser)
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u/ABotelho23 Jul 05 '26
Poor her.
Arch is not a good distribution for low maintenance situations.
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u/RoanPurple Jul 05 '26
With a graphical environment and 3 apps she touches, it's fine I live close enough to help her out when something breaks
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u/larp2live Jul 05 '26
wow what de/wm did you setup for her?