I use the vi family of text editors in a CLI environment because it is part of the POSIX standard.

Even if nano is the default, vi will be there too, and I can just use that. Plus, if you know some basic vi commands, then you can get by without nano, and you don’t need to know nano to use it for basic stuff as it shows you the key combos.

I just want my browser to be FOSS, private, and secure. I don’t care if it’s the fastest.

Fast is nice, but fastest doesn’t matter.

Windows 7 era notepad

Windows 7 era paint

I would also suggest Logseq an an option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logseq

I’d say try fedora. Then give Debian a spin as it will expose you to more technical details.

~/bin/ which I add to my $PATH

In addition to this, Signal can be downloaded from their own website and has a self update mechanism. It also does not depend on google play services (which I don’t have on my android phone)

If the Android app is fully open source, then it should be made available in f-droid

Developers should absolutely get paid for their work, but as @mina86@lemmy.wtf said, that is is a different issue. There are plenty of companies that employ developers of FOSS code, both copyleft and permissive licence.

Yes.

Anyone who cares about user freedoms is not choosing a permissive licence.

The problem is developers only caring about themselves and other developers.

When I talk to devs I know who like FOSS, they are always focussed on their needs as a dev when it comes to licences. The real concern was, and always should be, for the software user’s freedoms.

This really depends on her hardware specs and what applications she needs to use.

Without knowing any of that, I would suggest Linux Mint. It is desktop user focussed and a good general OS. It includes drivers and common software in their version of an app store.

Debian is my distro of choice, but is not ideal for a new Linux user.

I would suggest checking what apps she needs and making sure they are available on Linux, or that a close equivalent is. Any apps that will be replaced, try the replacement out on Windows first if available. For example Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape, or MS Office to Libre Office.

For data transfer:

1. As others have said. Backup the current computer fully. This in probably best done on an external hard drive. Make sure you know how to reinstall windows and restore from the backup.

2. Copy all her data onto a different external hard drive. This is not the backup. It is a separate drive.

3. Make sure all the data is actually on the external hard drive and readable from a different machine. Ideally boot from a Lunx live USB and check that the data can be accessed from the external drive.

4. Install her distro of choice.

5. Copy her data from the external HDD to her user account’s home folder of newly installed Linux.

Yes. But it doesn’t have to replace your default terminal emulator. You can have multiple and use any of them.