[conspire] Installing Linux on Elise Scher's Chromebook

[Syeed Ali]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2023 23:59:53 -0700
Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Someone may eventually quibble, so:  gtk3 is not technically EOLed 
> (yet).  But it's been happening by degrees anyway, as the GNOME people
> always do:  Development has largely shifted to the gtk4 effort, and
> the gtk2 & 3 branches will suffer, as happened with gtk 1.x before
> them. Also, the GNOME guys have made very clear that they really
> don't care about any project other than GNOME having problems with
> their libs. This problem was not seen during gtk2 days, but is now.

Why would an everyday user care?

To me, the desktop environment is just a container within which are the
applications I care about.

The everyday doodads to interact with windows (e.g. the "x") matter.
The various bars and desktop icons that let me launch applications
matter.  Style matters.  I don't see what else would.

I think saying "install Linux x" to the less-expert would work just
fine, so long as the more-expert is thoughtful about support,
community, culture, etc.  If an underlying desktop environment is
abandoned, the distro would just shrug and switch to something else,
and a less expert user might not care nearly as much as veterans would.

With all that in mind, I'd always offer Lubuntu to users because of the
foundational "light" and "easy" philosophies, and the huge community.
(Reasonable hardware will Just Work, it'll be obvious to use, and
there's help to be found.)