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this is a topic i've been heavily involved with because i still consider myself to be someone who prefers using technology at a very beginner friendly level, plus it's very good when a linux operating system makes you feel right at home when it has a modern desktop environment. this is why i really like gnome, its simplicity and usability is something available for everyone, for beginners and for a lot of other people, but if you had to, say, rearrange xfce or kde for someone who was an elderly person or an absolute beginner so that they wouldn't have any trouble using linux, how would you do it? (screenshot is my current linux mint desktop, very simple and extremely user friendly!!!!)
Honestly, there isn't much to it when setting up Linux for elderly people - in fact, I find it less troublesome than setting it up for a teenager.
Most often the issues regular users face with Linux are related to installing packages from external sources or broken updates. Elderly people tend to not do that.
Set up a stable distro like Debian, Linux Mint or Ubuntu LTS with KDE Plasma or Cinnamon, install LibreOffice, Okular and a browser with strong ad blocking, and any other applications you think they might need. Enable a simple firewall, hide the root / folder from the file browser's sidebar, and you're done. Perhaps set up scaling to make everything bigger on their monitors, disable mouse acceleration and set the speed slightly slower than usual.
I wouldn't bother with immutable distros, Flatpaks are nice and all until permissions turn using a simple app a confusing chore with broken interactions.
All good ideas, IMO.
And I had to look this up, so:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okular
And I'm a KDE user! ʘ‿ʘ
Yep! Okular is amazing, and it's available on Windows too. Install it for someone and they'll never bother you again about PDFs or EPUB documents, it's performant and everything works: printing, resizing, selecting text, searching, signing, adding comments. Never worry about paid PDF software or shady slow apps that keep trying to gatekeep features.
Okular is awesome. I use it even on gnome.
I think it's a fair point that immutable distros are still a developing concept and probably not ready for primetime, but I do feel that eventually this must be the answer to make things absolutely bulletproof for people (of which there are many) who have a natural ability of nuking their OS.
Sure, but I wouldn't expect an elderly user to be one of the people with the natural ability to nuke their OS.
I've daily driven Bazzite, an immutable distro, since July, and I haven't seen the kind of Flatpak issues they talk about - or frankly any major issues, this whole experience has been way easier than Windows ever was with updates (it took me a few minutes to figure out Proton and Heroic launcher though). I didn't know about the new Fedora update until I booted up and my lock screen was different. My experience is that Bazzite (and likely all of the other uBlue Fedoras) is fantastic and absolutely ready now.
That said, nothing is more stable than something like Debian. Unless you've got some hardcore gamer grandma I think the immutable distros are a solution to a problem not present in OPs hypothetical.
To me it's like the old saying from Win9x days "Help, I've deleted the internet". Removing an Internet Explorer shortcut from the desktop might be easier than nuking a Linux installation, but I think if the point is to be of service to absolute tech-illiterates then you need to be ready for anything, any edge case. And like you say, if Flatpaks and all that just work then what would be the downside of immutability?
I mean in theory one can make deep-rooted changes to macOS, but I haven't once seen it fail to upgrade successfully. And I definitely wouldn't consider Windows immutable with how many things can go wrong in practice. I've had more than a few customers who lost wifi drivers through no fault of their own, in one case the entire device wasn't visible anymore, so reinstalling a driver wouldn't have done anything, all I could do was roll back the feature update and ensure it won't install it again. In that sense, immutable Linux might even be the best offering out there today. The only thing it lacks (besides Android and SteamOS) is a multi-billion dollar company backing it for wider desktop adoption.