ZorinOS. My elderly parents have been using it for years without any issues, so I can guarantee you that it's very noob-friendly.
However, if you'd like to game, I'd recommend using either Pop!_OS or Nobara instead. I'd recommend giving them all a try regardless, just create a bootable USB using Ventoy and chuck all the ISOs you wish to try.
Bazzite. It's based on Fedora uBlue so it's technically Fedora, but being an immutable OS, it works quite differently enough that it counts as its own distro. For instance, you don't use dnf or yum to install stuff, you'd use Flatpak/Distrobox/Nix. Updates are done using the rpm-ostree command, and it's effectively a rolling release model, but atomic in nature so you get none of the instability that you'd get in a typical rolling release.
Give Zorin a try. It's based on Ubuntu but even more user friendly - so much so that my elderly mother has no issues using it, she even prints and scans (a Brother MFD) and has no issues.
Laughs in Fedora 39
It's useful for those who are interested in using an immutable OS. An immutable OS has several advantages over regular OSes, such as reliable and atomic updates, easy rollbacks, increased stability etc. However, a major drawback with immutable OSes is customisation - because certain key parts of the system are read-only, you may be limited in what you can change. Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite solves this to some extent by using ostree, and rpm-ostree to install packages in a layered fashion. The problem with that though is that it can significantly increase update times and also bloats up your system, which is a concern if you've got a lot of packages installed in that manner. Plus, there's also the issue of limited customisations - maybe you want to switch to a completely different DE for instance.
This is where making your own custom image comes in handy. When you fork the template, you can put in all your customisations on git, and your custom image gets built automatically.
You have to trust another party blindly not to inject malicious code
But you're doing that anyway with pretty much every piece of code/app/website that you use without auditing it yourself, so what makes this any different?
In any case, at least with uBlue you don't have to blindly trust anyone because everything in uBlue is fully open and transparent, you can see for yourself exactly what's being done - in plain text.
Risk of not being maintained anymore.
Not really an issue. This isn't a distro, it's literally just a script which builds your own distro using upstream code, which is pulled from Fedora. So the only real risk is if Fedora decides to shut shop or something. But even if they did, someone else would fork it, and you could just rebase to that fork and move on.
Switched from GNOME to KDE
Switched to immutable distros (my own fork of Bazzite)
Started using the Nix package manager
Started using containers (Distrobox, Docker).
Started using mobox to play Windows games on my Android phone
Switched from Hacker's Keyboard to Unexpected Keyboard
Opera also invented the browser Speed Dial, which was super handy back in the day.
But most importantly, Opera invented tabs, or at least the concept of tabbed browsing. I recall using Opera on Windows 3.11 and for the longest time, even during the Win 9x era, no other app used tabs.
In addition to mouse gestures, they had customisable keyboard shortcuts for practically every browser feature, again, something which very few apps bothered with.
The page compression built into Opera Mini was a life saver on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices back in the 2G/GPRS era. Opera Mini loaded pages blindingly quick and there was nothing else like it on the market, even leading up to early Android days.
but thankfully he started Vivaldi which feels like the spiritual successor.
Too bad he made the unfortunate decision of going with the Chromium engine instead of Gecko, or even making their own engine. I would've loved to use Vivalidi if it weren't for that fact.
I had one of those, but sold it after a couple of years. Turns out that a good majority of the games I played either didn't work in ultra-widescreen mode, or when it did, it didn't really make that much of an improvement. Last year I bought a 4K projector and found myself using it way more than my monitor, as gaming on a 100+" screen felt so much more immersive. So I ended up selling my Odyssey and bought a 16:10 monitor instead. I found the 16:10 ratio better for productivity, and also felt it also more suitable for the games I play (mostly RPGs/RTS).
look for USB 3.0
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) is quite ancient by today's standards. I'd recommend a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) or even a USB 4.0 drive (20/40 Gbps) drive.
Sounds like you don't know about the current security philosophy, which is "zero trust". You don't trust anything, not even managed hosts. We operate under the assumption that we are already comprised and that there are already bad actors with access to the network, and therefore the risk is managed accordingly, using modern security controls such as conditional access, RBAC, PIM/JEA, PAWs, AIP etc. Not to mention the use of SIEM and XDR solutions to detect and contain evolving threats. We even have a 24x7 security team who manually monitor all our environments.
Also, our BYOD laptops connect via the Internet to cloud-based services, so it's not like they're connecting to some traditional LAN/VPN/domain etc.
Our zero trust security model isn't something we whipped up out of thin air btw, it was established in consultation with Microsoft and another security agency which specialises in this stuff. Many major organisations around the world now follow a zero trust model, so it's been battle tested. We are a MSP who provide IT services to several organisations - so there are many regulations we need to adhere to, and compulsory external audits are done every year to maintain our certification status. Never had any major issues in any of our audits.
Also citrix is a worse experience than any underpowered work laptop.
Not really. Have you even used modern versions of Citrix Workspace recently? It works just fine. If you had a poor experience then it's likely that whoever provisioned your VMs underspecced them, or your VM host was underspecced or misconfigured, or you were probably accessing some ancient version of Citrix.
Also, it's not like I'm in Citrix all the time, we only use it when accessing certain traditional apps or isolated environments. Most of our stuff, at least the stuff I mainly work with, is cloud-based.
Not OP, but it's because I get to use Linux, a platform that I'm much more productive on. Also, with BYOD I can use a laptop that's actually decent, instead of being forced to use a clunky, underspec'd work-provided laptop. In my case, I use a ThinkPad Z13 Gen1 (Ryzen 69xx, 32GB RAM) that's also pretty decent for casual gaming and has excellent battery life and excellent Linux support.
Luckily we have a pretty good BYOD policy at my current workplace, and my employer even compensates us for not using a work laptop.
also you give your employer the oportunity of always being available on top of whatever insight they gather from your device using their software.
I'm not using their software though (as in traditional apps), they're all either web based (such as M365 apps) or via remote desktop (Citrix, for legacy apps). All the web-based apps are filtered with uBlock Origin to get rid of the tracking stuff. The other apps I use for work are all open-source, such as VSCodium, Git, Ansible, Ruby, libvirt etc, so I don't have to worry about them.
All my work stuff runs under a separate user account, with several work-related customisations in place - including a different, boring wallpaper. Once it's home time, I log off, log back into my normal account and bam, it's suddenly turned into a gaming machine, with nothing to do with work.
The best part is, I'm the one fully in control over my machine and don't need to go thru bs bureaucracy to get simple things installed or customised. For instance, back when I was new to the job and wanted to get Dark Reader (harmless browser extension) installed on my work machine, I got rejected with some bs excuse. Switched to BYOD and now I can use all the extensions I want.
Finally, the next time I replace/upgrade my machine, both my personal and work experiences gets a boost. It's a win-win situation.
So yeah, BYOD is awesome and definitely something I'd get excited for.
Ubuntu Christian Edition, if he's a satanist.
Ubuntu Satanic Edition, if he's a Christian.
Hannah Montana Linux, if he's neither of the above.