[some-guy]

My boomer mother in law could handle Linux whether it be GNOME or KDE. What she cannot handle is not being able to put in a DVD of Turbo Tax 20xx and double click the install button. Nor can she handle not having the native Outlook client, or Microsoft Word.

Yes there are alternatives, and possibly even good enough web versions of these tools, but most of the world isn’t like you and me.

[edg5000]

To be honest I think she can handle LibreOffice. Double-click to open file (can be docx), start typing and click save when done. Open any MS Office file. I really don't get the religuous attachment to MS Office.

I do worry sometimes about fonts. The default Arial replacement should be geometrically idential and thus not lead to issues. TBH I don't know if there are significant rendering issues between LO and MS Office, as I always use PDF. I sometimes upload it to Google Docs to see if it's displayed identically. So far I've never ran into an issue. TBH I think LO is better except for the performance which is okay but not great.

At this point Office programs are commodity. Apple has good options. Google has. And any Linux distro will come with LO. Really a non-issue I think. Even for older people.

[SoftTalker]

Does TurboTax still distribute DVDs? I thought it was entirely online now.

[Telaneo]

The point still stands though. It's no longer a DVD, but it's still a Windows program.[1] She still needs to be able to run turbotax2025.exe and have it work without issue.

To be fair, it probably works. I doubt it's doing anything weird, so Wine should work, given a distro which will just take exes and pass them to Wine. But if it doesn't, TurboTax can't help her, where as they would have been able to help her if it was a true Windows install.

[1] https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/insta...