My father asked me to set up a Raspberry Pi with the essentials to try out Linux and potentially ditch Windows if he likes it enough. He specifically requested YouTube, Amazon Kindle, GIMP, Audacity, KeePass, and a text editor like Notepad. I’ve installed Armbian Debian with the Cinnamon desktop environment. What would you have chosen?
As for the essentials, I’m not sure where to find a list of the most commonly used programs to install. I’ve just installed what I think he would appreciate, for example, Firefox with uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, KeePassXC-Browser, and G App Launcher extensions. Now I’m going to see if I can install Amazon Kindle and Notepad using Wine, along with a couple of alternatives like Calibre and gedit. Then I’ll set up a Google Drive folder so he can share his files with his main computer until he decides to switch. Finally, I’ll use Timeshift to create a snapshot after I’ve finished setting everything up.
What essentials am I missing? Do you have any suggestions?
edit: I’ve realized that this is a bad idea. I’ll just install Linux on one of his spare x86 computers and explain that many programs aren’t available for ARM. Then, after he gets used to Linux, I can install it on his current laptop and maybe move his Windows installation to the spare computer, if I can figure out how to do that.
Yeah, you’re risking a bad experience with the pi. You can probably get a cheap PC sans OS on eBay with a real drive. SD cards just crap out in an instant at random, so if your whole OS is on one… One day he’s gonna turn it on and EVERYTHING will be gone. Every SD card I’ve ever relied on for OS purposes in a Pi or Android situation has just died within a few years.
My main concern is if its him trying out linux for the first time and hes on a pi he might associate things like no ARM compatility for some programs, slowness due to low system specs, etc with the linux os rather than with the pi itself. Its comparing apples to oranges. To compare 2 OSes you should run them on the same type of machine.
He already has a couple spare computers. I don’t really know why he asked to try it on the Pi.
if he wants to try it on the pi itll def work and all just maybe explain the experience wont really be the same he would get on a regular pc also to really try linux out id suggest letting him try a bunch of different DEs and see which he likes. Personally i think on small screen mobile devices like a laptop that Gnome is best, and on a desktop id go with KDE plasma. Cinnamon is also pretty good just depends what you want.