Got a friend to try Linux and she's happy with it

[Jason]

One of my friends has a very old computer. I know, old is relative among us guys. It was from 2012 and it was NEW and a decent Gateway back then. Anyway, she had Windows 8 on it (barf!) and it was acting up badly. It would randomly freeze requiring a forced restart. Sometimes it would boot fine after that, other times it would say it found errors, fix them and then boot or not. And the times it didn't boot were becoming rapidly more common.

I replaced the hard drive (it was still an HDD) and installed Ubuntu MATE on it. I didn't have a copy of Windows 8 and asked her if she'd be willing to try this. She did and has been very happy with it. Despite a friend giving her a much more capable laptop (i5), she said she prefers her desktop with Linux! I asked her if she said it felt faster and she said, "A lot faster!"

Nice that I got someone else to give Linux a try and like it. I had another friend who disliked Windows 10 and was being forced onto it when the end-of-life approached for Windows 7. I put Ubuntu MATE on it and saw him once at the gym and without any prompting, he said to me, "Linux is so fast!".

I find that people who aren't that knowledgeable with computers seem to find Linux fine. It's those that are intermediate or experienced users that can't handle the differences or just don't like them. It's early yet but I think she might want to stick with it. Sadly, she won't sell me the i5 laptop. She likes taking it to the couch with her sometimes. It also seems like those who have the least knowledge of computers have the nicest hardware! The universe is truly unfair.

[fox]

Always nice to hear a good convert-to-Linux story. 

[Jason]

The laptop has Windows 10 on it (or maybe 11, didn't look closely enough). Hoping that she'll ask me to put Ubuntu MATE on it, too. Her needs are pretty basic; mostly just using the web, Facebook in particular.