Same for me. I distro-hopped for about 20 years with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Fedora being the most memorable desktop setups for me. While all that was a valuable experience, NixOS feels like graduation.
For the Nix-curious: I wish someone would have told me not to bother with the classic config and build a flake-based system immediately. They're "experimental" in name only, very stable and super useful in practice.
Take a lot of time researching content management systems / frameworks. Consider hosting and licensing costs, tech stack, user / customer preference. Avoid lock-ins.
That's great! I feel the same way. With Windows it was always, "OMG why can't this just work", but with Linux it's more like, "hm, I bet I can figure this out."
(Also, you can already contribute to FOSS by filing good bug reports and improving documentation, no programming needed.)
I totally understand where you're coming from, and I'm pessimistic that any flavor of Linux will be an acceptable experience for the person you're describing. Something like Silverblue may be least obstrusive, but compatibility will still be a prominent problem.
Alternatively, you could show them surface level cool stuff that's easier to do with Linux. Like blocking all ads, running your own Minecraft server, downloading YouTube videos, building your own PC with cheap parts (and maybe even pirating movies and TV shows, depending on your own practices and relationship to that person). There's a lot to love about Linux even if you don't care about privacy and open software as abstract values.
When I was 10 years old my father told me the grain joke. Do you know it? This extra-terrestrial reports on her travels through space. She has studied the earth. ‘‘An interesting planet’’, she says, ‘‘it is inhabited by grasses of various sizes. Some live in shallow water and others on dry land. They all have two legged creatures working for them. These creatures eliminate other plants so that the grasses may grow without being disturbed too much. They also keep hungry beasts away. At the end of a season, the creatures carefully assemble the grains of the grasses, so as to sow them again on the next possible occasion and set a new cycle in motion. The creatures keep a few grains for themselves to feed on, but overall they expand the grasses’ living space a bit more every year. It is very impressive’’.
Mol, Annemarie. 2008. I Eat an Apple. On Theorizing Subjectivities. Subjectivity 22 (1): 28–37. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.2
Same for me. I distro-hopped for about 20 years with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Fedora being the most memorable desktop setups for me. While all that was a valuable experience, NixOS feels like graduation.
For the Nix-curious: I wish someone would have told me not to bother with the classic config and build a flake-based system immediately. They're "experimental" in name only, very stable and super useful in practice.