Thanks, but this seems to be rather an unofficial hack, no? If Microsoft decides to block this approach, the setup may cause trouble out of a sudden which I’d like to avoid as my relatives live quite far away.

what kind of state of mind you have to be in for that

Probably crazy enough to demand that the PC repair shop has to bear all the costs he caused by his genius idea.

That sounds like an interesting fallback and better than Windows 11. Do you need a new licence for that or can you just change from Windows 10 Pro to IOT LTSC?

give them a fair and informed choice.

I think to make an informed choice you need a certain understanding of what an operating system is at all and what might be differences etc. I’m talking about people who are afraid that their emails disappear from the webmailer if they buy a new laptop.

From my experience it’s important that, after booting the PC, they immediately find the 1-x icons on the desktop to open the browser etc. Within the browser they need bookmarks to find webmail, banking etc.

They won’t try to install new software, enter commands in the terminal or tweak around with the settings.

But to calm you down a bit: if they really don’t like it, they can stick with Windows. ;)

Thanks for your post.

IMHO Windows is getting harder to use with every update. Context and start menus are changing, you get annoyed by One Drive, asked to use a Microsoft account for everything, suddenly stuff like Notepad has Copilot integration, suddenly links open in Edge instead of your default browser and you’re confused that your bookmarks are gone etc. Apart from that, hacks to install Windows 11 on non-supported hardware might work fine today, but may break with every next update.

I moved my mum to Linux Mint one year ago and so far didn’t have issues or complaints. In fact she’s super happy with the Solitaire game as it does have way more play modes while not having any annoying advertisements. She’s using Firefox and LibreOffice which she already had on Windows before. It was less of a deal for her than a new Android major release on her phone.

But my mom is living much closer to me. In worst case I can fix any issue in person. Unlike these other relatives. There I need some kind of support access for troubleshooting.

Thank you very much, that GUI looks very similar to Teamviewer which they already know.

if you don’t want to use their servers, you can even host your own

I didn’t download and try it yet. Do you know if you can indeed use their servers as well without self-hosting? I went to their website and scrolled through the GitHub FAQ and at first sight I can only see the self-hosted option. They even advertise it as ‘non SaaS’.

I can see that challenge with the key holes. You could also check if anodizing the aluminium might be a viable DIY solution. I never did that myself, but it looks pretty nice and I’d expect it to be more durable than any form of paint.

https://sendcutsend.com/blog/diy-anodizing-in-10-steps/

I think pretty much every coating that you may add will wear down pretty quickly when it touches abrasive surfaces, is bumped against a table etc. Maybe you could try with a foil that’s used to wrap cars or just adding stickers to it.

That’s not how you create swimlane diagrams.