I need a distro that is stable with a particular need to set up zero input automatic updates. If an update asks for a password or needs user interaction in basically any way it simply won’t get done. All he needs is a reliable platform for browsing the web. I am replacing an Ubuntu system that has apparently just stopped working (I have not had a chance to examine it yet) after years and years of not getting proper updates after he forgot his password.
Something like Bazzite is intriguing because of it’s locked down environment although he is very much not a gamer. Is there something locked down like Bazzite but with long term LTS release cycle?
I personally have installed Mint (Debian edition) with similar needs. Absolutely zero input might be a bit much to ask, since user should be aware of that something is going on before shutting everything down, but when that’s taken care of the unattended upgrades work just fine. Just recently I had to fix a laptop with mint to friend of a friend because upgrade was interrupted. Just running ‘dpkg --configure -a’ followed by apt upgrade and apt dist-upgrade did the job, so not big of a deal for me, but for the owner of the machine that would’ve been pretty much impossible task since they just refuse to learn even the slightest amount of their computer and have a very short temper on anything like that. And I can kind of understand that too, at least up to a point. There are things which I just can’t be arsed to learn which are equally easy to different people.