this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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How to grandma-proof Linux? (self.linux)
submitted 2 days ago by stefounet to c/linux
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In short, my question is "Is there a way to prevent a non-malicious but unknowledgable and clumsy user to ruin their own home directory?"

Say my grandma opens a file browser looking for a picture, finds those dot files or those mysteriously-named directories distracting, sets her mind to deleting them. And assume she somehow finds a way to do so. While I understand that dot files or mysteriously-named directories of a non-privileged user are of no ultimate importance, it is a maintenance nightmare.

Plus, it's not only mysterious files that are prone to be targetted. She might well delete by accident the picture she was looking for.

Two kinds of solutions that come to mind are: -Restrict file permissions in an adequate way -Implement an easily operable, fool-proof, back-in-time scheme

Is there a mainstream, well-supported distro of GNU/Linux that has figured this use-case out?

I figure it might come in handy when Window 10 is no longer supported and the reports of hacks keep coming in.

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[โ€“] p_consti 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Immutable distros aren't immutable in the home folder though, they would be unusable otherwise, so that doesn't solve OPs problem of dotfiles/personal files (I know nixOS tries to get rid of dotfiles, but in my experience that almost never works, it's only helpful for replacing config files in /etc)

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

home-manager for NixOS has escaped your notice. ALL of my dot files are declared in my nix-config.

Furthermore, this module would likely complete the possibility of building a grandma-proof immutable OS complete with immutable home folders: https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Impermanence