I bought my mother in law a Lenovo Thinkbook for Christmas; I didn't know that the Macbook Neo was coming else I might have waited for that.

Anyway, I installed Linux Mint on there. She has been using it every day and at least according to her there hasn't really been any jank (and I told her to call me any time if something breaks and I'll fix it).

At this point, I think Linux distros have gotten good enough to realistically start stealing users away from Windows. Linux Mint is easy to use, runs fine even on modest hardware, and doesn't push a bunch of shitty ads at you. I think there is an option for telemetry, but I also think that disabling it actually disables it.

Wine and Proton have gotten so good that outside of modern MS Office, most Windows things just run if you need it, but if you're not using MS Office heavily then you likely can get by with web apps and/or the Linux alternatives.

Maybe it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop!