I have personally seen many examples that make me agree with this. Really, if someone wants to get off the Microsoft/Apple financial/technology/control/they-ow

I have personally seen many examples that make me agree with this. Really, if someone wants to get off the Microsoft/Apple financial/technology/control/they-own-your-technology-and-you-cant-always-make-your-own-decisions treadmill, I think you have to decide that slightly less inconvenience (if that) is worth having greatly increased trust and local control. And Debian (or maybe Devuan) Linux (then installing something like LXDE or XFCE) isn't perfect, but it is very easy to install and manage, IMO, and they have a great track record of stability (compared to others anyway), due to how to they manage security, freedom, and overall stability (for example, what you learn is likely to last a long time w/o having to relearn, relatively few bad surprises, excellent documentation, etc. I like OpenBSD, but if I couldn't, next would probably be Debian or Devuan for more reasons I have posted on HN at other times. Further opinions/links on these at my web site...) Edit: I installed Debian for my wife and a number of other locals. It was easy. I recommend adding the package that installs automatic updates (as root: aptitude install unattended-upgrades), and setting "umask 0007" in the default profile, and learning a little, can recommend some other things. BUT: my wife (a public school special ed teacher) doesn't know about those things and doesn't have to. People can use it without "learning linux" or having more than 5 min or general orientation, just like they used Windows XP, to do all their browsing, whatever, thousands of free apps available, and then one can grow from there, at one's own pace! :)