The big thing that changed side 2010 is that most distros are perfectly usable on most hardware.
I keep tossing Linux onto random stupid hardware I have lying around, and lately it just goes spectacularly well.
I should be ashamed of even asking if Linux will run on it, but Linux ends up running well on it.
Around 2010, I used to tell people that if they did their research and used Mint, for simple web stuff, they're going to be fine.
Lately I end up telling people "I don't know how to do that advanced thing you're debating which Windows product to pay for, because, of the last three random Linux distros I tried, all thee provided it for free and pre-configured with sensible defaults".
I'm sure there's still plenty of interesting reasons to need a paid operating system. But for the simple practical stuff, I find Linux so much easier, even on my random poorly researched distros and hardware combinations.
I might well have just had an incredibly lucky streak, of course.
Most of the useless AI makes me giggle, because the idiots doing it will soon be fired. It will be briefly incredibly embarrassing for them before they fail upwards into a new role teaching people how to hire people to replace AI that didn't work.
But this just makes me angry. Lots of people actually need government services and don't have an alternative.
Just to be clear, the person answering Flatpaks isn't being flippant. Any tools, editors or games that Mom wants, she can safely install by searching and clicking 'intall', all without enough permissions to harm her computer.
Linux, for less technical parents, is genuinely really nice, now.
Yeah. I'm still looking for a good answer to create. There's a huge number of technology mods in Luanti, but I haven't found one with the same maturity, yet. If I find one that's close, I may fork and update it, yet.
I think I'm most of the way to having AE2 replaced, for my needs, using Pipeworks and SWRobots.
I can confirm.
Source: I learned most of what I know about computers (which is genuinely quite a lot), by doing dumbass stupid stuff I didn't understand yet.