My family switched to Gnome 2 a couple of decades ago. My mother quite liked it and has consistently installed it on every new computer she bought. Her only confusion lately has been with the ubuntu snap packages and how they behave between multiple accounts on the machine.
replyThese days she uses MATE which still offers that Gnome 2 layout. Awesome thing about Linux is that option to fork, so her desktop environment has remained consistent for over 20 years.
Cinnamon has a very classic Windows layout. I am getting very comfortable using MX Linux with KDE, especially that I have been able to move my NVME drive over several laptops now. Starting to get the itch to find a rolling distro to skip reinstalling the OS every two years.
replyI've been a full time developer since 1988, using linux since 1996, and kubuntu is the only linux distro I'd use ATM for a desktop.
replyThere's paper cuts but it feels about right.
I tried kionite but there was too much friction.
Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then? My mum adjusted from Windows XP (when that was current) to Ubuntu 14-ish fairly easily, by simply remembering "switch it on and then click on the big swirly fox thing".
reply> Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then?
replyIt matters a lot if you deviate from the ones that (are set to) behave in a similar way.
"Click the big orange blob" is pretty universal.
replyAlthough I guess one of the reasons I dislike KDE is because it's so random, unintuitive, and unfamiliar.
Ubuntu comes with a dock which is close enough to Windows.
replyThe comment chain you're replying to is arguing that vanilla GNOME is too different, and they're right.