I'm planning to upgrade my laptop this Christmas and give my older, low-spec laptop to my younger brother for his college use. It's an IdeaPad 1 with just 4 GB of RAM and a Ryzen 3 7320, which struggles with Windows. Currently, I'm running Fedora on it, but I'm unsure if that's the best option for him. He's not into gaming or anything demanding, so I'm looking for a beginner-friendly Linux distro that would suit his needs.
2 Answers
Fedora's actually a solid choice! If your brother is more accustomed to Windows and hasn't used Linux before, I recommend switching the desktop environment to KDE or Cinnamon instead of the default GNOME. It should be pretty user-friendly for him.
Definitely go with something you're comfortable with since you'll be his go-to tech support! I'd suggest creating some Live-USBs with different desktop environments for him to try out. Let him pick what feels best. If Fedora doesn't handle multiple environments well, a Ventoy USB stick could be helpful for that.
I’m familiar with most major distros, so this will work perfectly. I like the idea of him experimenting with different DEs!