My prototyping team bought one of those Walmart Lindows machines to play around with and I remember being impressed, especially with the way a user could find and install software packages. I think the machine sold for some trivial amount, like, $200.

> the way a user could find and install software packages.

And even with app stores neither Windows nor macOS come close to the seamless experience of updating all software from a single place.

Apple had, for some time, OS updates in the App Store, but not anymore. The software update in the preferences app is a step backward in that sense - why have two ways of doing everything?

And Windows is even worse. I have at least 6 apps I need to open if I want the Windows machine to update everything.

I bought one of my parents a Walmart PC with Lindows. It worked out pretty much the same as a Chromebook would today, but with more apps.

My mom was on Ubuntu since she upgraded from MacOS 9. She even learned to run the update GUI by herself and would call me to tell she did it.

Sadly, my evil cousin upgraded her PC with Windows and I no longer know when she needs to update or clean up the disk.

My mom used linux from the late 90s through the early 2000s. She did not adapt well to using a mouse and windows but wanted to do online shopping so I set her up with a machine that started directly to a full screen browser and dialed the internet as soon as an internet connection was needed. She eventually got good enough with her mouse that she moved on to an XP laptop but I really loved being able to tell people that my mom runs Debian.

My dad and I got my grandmother set up with an EEE PC for sending emails. I don't know if she ever used it (perhaps she emailed my dad, but she wouldn't have been emailing me) but I remember setting it up to be as easy to use as I could (e.g. big icon that said "Letters" underneath for an email application) and writing her instructions.

I like to imagine there's a couple of these still in use. :)

It must be harder to get an i686 kernel up and running, but my 32-bit ARM machines are quite happy with almost newest ones.