She can test out different distros in her browser on https://distrotest.net/index.php

Really though, if she’s just gonna use it for text processing, web browsing and emailing it’s more about the DE than the distro.

Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Elementary, Fedora… should all be good choices.

I think it’s most important to teach her about the differences, no more exes, but instead repo, debs, appimages, flatpaks, and stuff like that. Watching those recent Linus videos might give you good insight in what differences might confuse her.

My grandmother was completely happy with elementary because more user friendly and she just need a browser and office apps

People need to experience something before they can ascertain if it is a viable option. Install Ubuntu or Linux Mint on a secondary device, let her see how familiar it is to her.

Then you can explain some of the other advantages of using Linux.

Well, first of all, is it worthy? If she uses photoshop and stuff like that, maybe she just can’t switch / it’s just not worthy. If she uses excel, it’s only getting used to libreoffice. If she uses stuff on browsers, well she can switch easily. If she’s in the second or third category, just say this things: free, open source, fuck microsoft/apple/google, no viruses, it can run even on toaster, I always used it and never had problems (don’t laugh while saying this), r/unixporn, active community and more stuff that I can’t think of rn. If you’re lucky at this point she’ll want to switch and then just guide her in the distro choose.

My mom has a business and mostly uses Windows and Mac OS X

Do all her applications run on Linux? If not, please don’t switch. She makes money with that. Money > ideology if you can’t afford losing it ;)

Explain the concept of free software to her: that it is free to use for everyone, and reproducible in case the original programmers aren’t interested in it.

Since she is going to use it for her business, she will want to know if it can use peripherals well, which it can in most cases, and if it runs Office. The main document format of the world is .docx, so recommending LibreOffice for the regular user isn’t a good idea since the document isn’t translated well after edited by LibreOffice. I would recommend OnlyOffice - it’s like Google Docs in its features, but it works offline. And it comes bundled with Manjaro, which is an easy to use distribution.

install it everywhere and say it’s Windows 12 Update

I think you should pick a good desktop OS like Linux Mint, and install it and just put it in front of her.

I would avoid complex presentations about what Linux is and stuff like that because that can introduce all kinds of nuances that aren’t strictly necessary to know, which can scare people away.

I recommend Trisquel. Use plasma DE for sure, it provides amazing user experience. Tell her to not expect things exactly like those of Windows or Mac and learn till she becomes comfortable. Initially she’ll struggle, later she won’t even think of using Windows or Mac.

• Show here the benefits and explain the benefits of FOSS to her. I would not only pull the money argument, also the security and usability factor should play a role.
• Show here examples.
• Find weak spots, aka problematic software and show here alternatives which run on every OS e.g. Jami over MS Teams and so on. Help here pre-install necessarily programs.
• Run a test for a month before you come to a final conclusion.

I wouldn’t mention it unless she had problems with either Windows or MacOS and expressed a desire to switch to something else.

Install ElementaryOS on an old laptop, and let her use it.

She runs a business, so sell the ‘free, but used by lots of people’ standpoint, hard.

Is she using anything besides a web browser?

“Linux, this is Mom, shes looking to adopt you so you be nice Okay?” “Mom, this is Linux”

I’d suggest something like Linux Mint for someone switching over - but rather than me make assumptions about what she’s used before, I usually recommend librehunt.org as a nice starting point to help choose.