My parents have this old 2015 MacBook Air that they wanted to use but couldn’t due to no security updates and slow running. I convinced them to let me load up fedora on it instead of junking it. They only really need it for some basic document writing, email, and web surfing so I figured this is perfect for them.

Made a bootable drive with Fedora 43 work station on it, figured gnome would be the most Apple like spin. Everything went super smooth until I realized that the WiFi drivers weren’t installed lol. I also didn’t have a Ethernet adapter for usb-a so I had to overnight it to me while my parents swore I bricked their Mac all night. Got the adapter this AM, hooked it up, installed the drivers and other necessary tweaks, and viola! This Mac has new life.

So far my parents are liking it and understanding it (even though my mom seems more excited about the snoopy wallpaper and Firefox theme, lol). Getting their emails on thunderbird was driving me crazy. Nothing to do with thunderbird, they just didn’t know their passwords smh. All in all not bad. To new Linux converts

  • Kelp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    I personally use Fedora plasma on my thinkpad. Love it even though I’ve done like no customizing of it. I chose gnome for my parents cause I wanted a close out of the box experience…and I also wanted to play with Fedora workstation 43 before upgrading my plasma os

    • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      KDE is genuinely incredibly flexible - you can make it into pretty much any GUI that exists. The default windows like set up is fine, but there are so many easy tweaks and changes you can make to get it however you want. I have a floating dock-like set up instead of a window-like taskbar, with application launcher, icon-only view, system tray, clock and power button.

      For simple tweaks yoy can right click on most component of your KDE panels and select “Show alternatives…” to see different official versions of the same component. For example, the Application Launcher offers an alternative Application Menu with cascading menus like an old-school windows start menu, or a full screen gnome-like Application Dashboard. And there are also loads more user made tools if you right click and select “Add or Manage widgets”. Every component of the desktop is a widget and can be moved, swapped out, duplicated or replaced.