I installed Debian + KDE on my mom’s laptop. She hasn’t had a complaint since. How tech-savvy is she, you ask? I’m sitting with her right now, so out of politeness she put on headphones to watch her favorite soap opera. Mind you, the headphones weren’t plugged into the laptop. She was sitting there, headphones on her head, sound coming through the speakers, watching her soaps like this is how it’s meant to be done.
My dad uses NixOS. My dad knows precisely nothing about computers; just ask him, he’ll tell you. I figure, since he’s gonna call me for free tech support no matter what operating system he has, anyway, I might as well make everything as reproducible as possible for my own sake. I tried putting Debian testing on his computer, and honestly, that was actually pretty good except that I had to update it for him at least once a week in order to keep everything running smoothly, lol.
Don’t you have to update NixOS too?
Yes; the difference with NixOS is that you can go way longer than you ever should without updating it, and then do a full system upgrade, and then turn around and walk away without ever having to worry about anything breaking.