ares35

if it supports the basic hardware, there’s nothing wrong with peppermint for basic stuff like your use case. after the base system is installed, add a browser and libreoffice and you’ll have a nice little system for writing on.

if you want to keep using windows on it, you’ll probably have to ‘start over’ with a plain install of windows (without hp’s junk, and to a clean–partition table cleared–‘hard drive’), uninstall the useless crud like candy crush that comes with the base windows install, ensure compactos is enabled (it should be automatically enabled with those specs), install your browser and word processor. you shouldn’t have to do thing where you connect an external drive for ‘working’ space for updates (something i’ve only ever had to do twice on 32gb emmc models) anymore as long as updates stay relatively current.

but with only 2gb ram and a 10 year old ‘atom’ based cpu, i’d probably go straight for peppermint.

and this is why i refused to give you my social back when i lived in your service area and had a land line installed.

if they don’t need a new printer, and if mom is happy with what she has… don’t fix what ain’t broken (in mom’s eyes). or just look for 3rd party ink for it. many and good reviews, reputable seller. it may take a couple tries to find some that work. hopefully mom hasn’t allowed an hp firmware update that nixes that option and doesn’t let you roll it back.

if you do replace the printer:

if they’re low volume, can live without color, or are sporadic printer users, get a laser. a b/w brother with the features you want, that has 3rd party toners and drum kits available.

if they’re higher volume and regular printer users (they don’t not print for weeks or months at a time) and ‘need’ color, you could consider one of those ‘tank-based’ color inkjets. do not let it run out of ink and always leave it plugged in to the power (let it go into power-save on its own). they also usually have 3rd party ink available. you may want to see if and how the printheads themselves get replaced when needed and whether or not you can actually buy them (we’re binning one here because the printer says it needs a new printhead—but you can’t buy them!).

for photos, stick 'em on a flash drive and go to walmart or a drug store that has the self-service photo printing stations or use an online service that ships. it’s much cheaper than printing photos at home.

read the box, and all its fine print. some printers (mostly, but not exclusively hp) are shipping with strict blocks on 3rd party consumables. hp had previously reserved the hardcore blocking to the first firmware update you’d get after setting it up (let that update come in, you were screwed. disabled firmware updates and you were ‘ok’)… but not anymore.

duplex printing (both sides, automatically) is something we use a lot. a sheet feeder (adf) on top for copies and scans is another feature we couldn’t live without at the office. even though it might only be used occasionally–when it is needed, it saves so much time.

two other features that are often overlooked is a second input feed (even if it’s ‘manual’/one sheet at a time) for envelopes, letterhead or a sheet of labels… and a main input tray with a decent capacity… the one i’m using now only holds 50 sheets (about 30 in practice, because if you dare to fill it, it will misfeed frequently), and that’s just not enough.

for printing from phones and tablets. look for that feature in the printer specs, then when you set it up at home, set it up as a wifi printer.

samsung sold their printer business to hp in 2017.

messed around some with slack 0.99.

but first one to actually see some regular usage was buzz, which progressed over time through to potato.

and the first to get its own dedicated box long-term was woody.

apple does ‘support’ their hw better, it’s just that it’s a pretty low bar to start with these days. they and their competitors could do better–much better, but zomg! someone has to think of the shareholders. they’re far more important than users or the planet.

i do edit photos and video on a 15 year old desktop. yea, it’s not as fast. it even still only has mechanical hdd. it works. i really don’t give a shit how long it takes to encode. it can sw encode hd h264 in ‘real time’ (sw giving better quality output and at a smaller file size than the faster gpu encoding), that’s good enough for me. it does everything the much newer system i’ve been able to use recently at the office can do–it’s just slower at some things.

you don’t even need a player script; browsers today can play media on their own.

and scripts with added features is a very crowded market.

new ui is literal trash.

media formats it already does, and it is expected to support nearly everything. but as far as a front-end for whatever tf they’re planning–there are plugins and extensions already, it should be there. not in the base code.

i still use a ‘dumb’ phone. it gets replaced when it physically breaks to the point it’s falling apart. i’m on my sixth one in 22 years. two of those were used on a second line i no longer have.

My toilet latrine posture is pristine you philistine

“got mine, fuck you—and your children and children’s children, too.”

recovery records are an essential feature for… uh… certain ‘distribution methods’ about which we are forbidden to speak of.

when i was a kid, drive-thru was ‘new’. one place, instead of redoing the whole building to put in a drive-thru window and work area behind the counter, used a chain-driven basket to carry drive-thru orders that went up and over the dining area then down to a pick-up window.

8-year-old me thought that was just the coolest thing. they operated like that for a decade before finally rebuilding to reposition the building on the lot to better fit a drive-thru lane and pick-up windows.

“pull up to window 2 to pay the surg-arge applied after window 1”…

at the last window, “we need another $3.50 to give you your food”

that’s great. most of us are more than a billion dollars short of a billion.

still is, and always has been. and that’s not a bad thing.

Fedora is often considered “the new Ubuntu” […]

no. it’s not. and i’ve never, ever heard anyone say it is–until now.

system disk encryption is possible, yes.

imho getting windows-based games running on linux isn’t for someone ‘new’ to linux. they gotta get their feet wet first, and mint is an excellent choice for that… or they will be spending all their gaming time–not gaming.