piezoelectron

I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).

First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?

Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.

If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!

I plan to have the following services running concurrently on it:

• A VPN (OpenVPN or Wireguard)
• A very lightweight personal website
• A Nextcloud instance (25GB storage max)
• A Vaultwarden instance
• An Invidious instance
• A Matrix server
• A Lemmy instance

I'm unsure if these would be private or public instances. But I'd be curious to hear any thoughts on how much more space I'd need for public instances too, if you'd have a sense of that.

I currently have a VPS with 2GB RAM + 50GB storage. Would that be enough? Thanks in advance!