Stefan CursanoFeb 22, 2025
These days I have many customers requesting a new a laptop because theirs will soon "die". They don't understand that Windows is NOT the computer and the Win10 EOL worries them a lot. I would like to work on an alternative.
I'm planning on making a custom install of #debian for my customers. Not another distro. Just a fresh #linux install with some added software.
My customers are not tech savvy. Any software recommendations ? In the repos or not !
for ex : Libreoffice or Onlyoffice ?🤔
Show thread-dsr- (minifigurally literate)

@Tinkering_Gator

I did this for my father years ago; it's worked out pretty well.

  • Debian stable.
  • Firefox from the Mozilla .deb repo. Install uBlock Origin for them.
  • Thunderbird-ESR.
  • VLC.
  • audacious
  • XFCE4 as the desktop. Do NOT attempt to replicate Windows; having a big visual difference aids learning, and humans are good at learning when they are motivated.
  • LibreOffice is faster and less buggy than OpenOffice; OnlyOffice is crap.
  • Install sgt-puzzles.
  • Configure the first user. Set up XScreenSaver, not one of the wrappers or alternatives; XSS has the fewest bugs by far.

Pro-tip: nobody will ever complain "that doesn't look like the other programs" until they are fully invested in using the system.

Feb 22, 2025 at 11:21amWeb
Show threadStefan CursanoFeb 22, 2025
@dashdsrdash XFCE use to be my go to option for lower end laptops before I switched to RiverWM.
XFCE is super customizable ! And would be a great choice for this project ! Firefox is the best browser imo. And the choice of the adblocker is an obvious one for me haha and thanks for the screen saver info, I didn't know about that.
Right now I'm wondering if I should stick to the Debian project or try the immutable distro route like an other user suggested 🤔 !
Show thread-dsr- (minifigurally literate)Feb 22, 2025

@Tinkering_Gator

Think about the support burden and cognitive load of talking a user through installing Inkscape or Blender or SuperTuxRacer on Debian versus the immutable.

One way is going to be a couple of minutes...

Consider putting a partition with a rescue image on each machine. A small live image could be under a gig and provide a lot of emergency usefulness.

Show threadStefan CursanoFeb 22, 2025
@dashdsrdash
Also thanks for the detailed post 😁 !
Show thread-dsr- (minifigurally literate)Feb 22, 2025

@Tinkering_Gator

It's drinking coffee time here, what else am I going to do?

Subscribe to the debian-users mailing list. It's extremely helpful and also will showcase what kind of questions you should expect.

Show threadStefan CursanoFeb 22, 2025
@dashdsrdash i just did ! Thanks for the tip