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Mom's Windows 7 is going out on Jan. 15, so I have just installed her a dual-boot with Linux Mint 19.2!
Doing updates now, will move on with needed packages in a bit.
She finally took the plunge!

I have worked ever since on bugs. There are too many of them in Mint for it to be useful to Mom. I'm debating another distribution; however, some of the bugs are upstream, left for ages to be fixed, and are still open after quite some time.
Not sure what to do now.

LibreOffice doesn't have a way to switch languages (Mom needs Japanese Kanji), so I've tried running MS Office off her c:\ drive, and I get "IOPL not enabled." Ran the recommended fixes for that online, none worked. Stellarium segfaults on load with:



Oh! And the biggie, Chromium Browser doesn't work, doesn't load (crashes with an error re: sandbox.cc)



And there is NO Chrome browser for i386 architecture. I have searched everywhere for a resolution to this, nothing works.

There's other things as well. Repositories aren't working correctly, all kinds of stuff. I can't get down to working equivalents for the programs she uses.
I need to do something, just not sure what.

I use Mageia and my mom in law loved it. Turns out that all she need is a Web Browser and nothing more.

My mom needs a lot more than that. You'd run into the same as I did if your mom needed more.

Yeah, mine mum in law is simple. I had her on Thunderbird until she figured how to use the web email service. That is 1 more thing to not to worry about. After her PC took a dive, I got her an Acer Chromebook. I know, a scroogle system, but they are cheap, light and at her age, privacy, in her opinion, is at the bottom of the barrel.

Can the googlified apps on a Chromebook be uninstalled?

I can't get Opera browser going for her even - there isn't one for 32-bit any more.

Is like the doggone phones. Depend who sells the tablet and what BS they install on them cannot be removed. For what my mum in law needs it, is more than fine with the Chrome Browser. Have not tried to to push anything else beside all the factory stuff. My daughter has the same device because the school forces them to use Chrombooks. At least is way better than the Dept of Edu has to offer. All her things are online, so nothing else need to be installed.

Chromebooks are nothing more than an Android Tablet and/or Phone.

What I found that is a royal pain are printers. Sometimes they are east, hard or impossible to get them installed. Is a hit and a miss, however, now days, who uses a printer? I hardly do.

Ah. So you can't uninstall them. Thanks. I won't be getting one then.

Chromebook is locked to Google's Android stuff for "Security reasons".
It can be set to "developer mode" which will enable all the Linux commands that Chromebook normally blocks. It will also enable you to install Ubuntu on it
This is done by entering the "recovery mode":
Esc+Refresh keys (there should be a dedicated refresh key in your Chromebook.
More here

It should also by possible to run any Linux app in Chromebook using Crostini (VM ware style).

If you are the Hardcore type you can dualboot chrome and Linux (Ferdora++) with chrx.
This will require a lot of space that you probably do not have on your chromebook anyway though

The one to install would be GalliumOS

Thanks Viking, have not researched any of it. Lately, I am so out of IT since I switched gears to Aerospace. The 787 Dreamliner got me pretty busy

Thanks, but no thanks...