Couldn’t find a dedicated community for distro recommendations, I hope it’s ok to ask here.

A couple of years ago my wife and I built a computer and gave it to a friend’s kid. We put ElementaryOS on it since that seemed pretty fool-proof, but it appears to require a re-install to upgrade major versions so it has been stuck with an old glibc and because of that he can’t play Factorio.

For his 13:th birthday we bought him a SSD so it would be a good time to reinstall Linux, but is there perhaps some better choice than ElementaryOS? They live quite far away so I can’t easily pop over to fix his computer if something breaks, we don’t spend enough time there for me to teach him to fix things himself, and he doesn’t seem very interested in learning how computers/operatings systems work either.

  • Hardware: Some old Intel CPU with 8GB DDR3 and a GTX1080
  • Usage: Gaming through Steam+Proton, Lutris and browsing.
  • Requirements: Games work, OS never breaks on updates. Doesn’t need to be “kid proof”, I don’t think he touches any stuff he doesn’t know what it does.
  • Presi300@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    Here are some of my default picks: Nobara, Fedora KDE, Linux Mint. Can’t go wrong with either

    • ffhein@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      14 hours ago

      I’m using Fedora KDE on my own PC, and it has been soft-bricked by updates multiple times, or by doing seemingly trivial things like choosing a theme from the built-in store. Seems quite unstable to me so it’s not something I would recommend to someone without the ability to repair their OS from a terminal.

  • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    2 days ago

    I’ve said this many times, and will continue saying this again and again:

    When in doubt: Linux Mint will provide everything you’ll need. You can distrohop once you understand the basics, customizations and optimizations can come later.

  • markstos@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 days ago

    I have a kid about that age interested in games. There was definitely interest in social pressure to switch to Windows for gaming for the bigger selection and what friends were playing.

  • Charlxmagne@lemmy.world
    23·
    2 days ago

    Majority of AAA games run invasive software like kernel-level anticheat, I’d personally recommend js buying him a PS5 or running them in VMs (Linux or windows).

    • ffhein@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      3 days ago

      Do you know how mature it is as a desktop OS? I saw the official FAQ does recommend against using it as such. I tried it on a HTPC a few years ago but at that point it didn’t seem very usable outside of Steam’s full screen UI.