I beg to differ, I tried that approach a few years back with my folks, only to discover on my next visit a few months later that they went down to a local PC store and got Windows re-installed.

They never managed to get it working for their liking, it wasn't able to run the stuff their friends used to talk about or share via CD/DVD/USB sticks, and they did not wanted to bother me with "dumb" questions.

So I rather that they have Windows, go down to the local PC store when something isn't working as it should.

> Linux is a great "fire-and-forget" OS for situations tech-illiterate loved ones.

Only if the device is truly 'forgotten'. As in, it is an appliance that's going to do that task forever and ever. Be it web browsing or what have you.

If requirements change, it becomes a problem. If they have to do work on them and interact with companies, you may need either Windows or Linux. Thankfully online Office365 removed a big use-case. But there are others. It is very likely that whatever package you need will be available on Windows or OSX.

I can confirm. That is basically what I did for my father-in-law. The laptop is quite ancient by now (more than 10 years old) but still good enough for running current version of Ubuntu.

Linux is the opposite of fire-and-forget. Eventually a papercut always turns up that will require the terminal.

macOS also has (well, had) extreme UI stability. You could transport someone from 2003 used to Mac OS X 10.0 two decades into the future and they would be able to use macOS Ventura (and all previous versions) purely by muscle memory. Good luck doing that with Windows and Linux with their constant UI churn.

Interestingly enough, by iOS-ifying macOS, they've made it much easier to shift someone using an iPhone from Windows to macOS, because they already recognize many of the UI and UX paradigms.