Yet my mom does not have a Ubuntu desktop. And if I set one up for her, I woudl have to split my time between my job and tech support for her. So well funded, but not sure they are the right company.

My 73yo mom actually runs RHEL 10 on her laptop, uses one of my 16 free developer licenses.

But it would never work without my help. On the other hand, Windows wasn't working too well either and I just couldn't help with that.

RHEL was the most stable alternative I could think of when her Windows computer stopped being reliable.

I have setup rustdesk on it for remote support.

What kind of issue would you expect that the OS she currently uses does not have?

Anything she buys won’t have specific drivers, e.g. Webcams or mice or keyboards or etc.

First, is that so? My neighbors just got their 80-year old parents a Thinkpad. All works. They bought a mouse the week after. Worked right away.

Second, they don't buy this kind of thing every week.

It's actually not really that bad. If you have to split your job likev you said, then you have to do it when she's using Windows too.

Linux has made a lot of progress since 2010.

If low tech ppl in family get phones, I want them to be apple, less work for me (not an Apple user). If they get a PC, I want them to use Ubuntu. Less work for me.

And if there's some work, I'd rather ssh into their PC and fix it using a shell with bash, then get annoyed with Windows and it's quirks.

You're going to have that problem with any kind of change.