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Moms Go Linux, And Other Windependence Winners
An anonymous reader writes "There's an entertaining article over at DesktopLinux.com entitled "Why Aren't All Our Moms Running Linux?", one of the winners of their recent wIndependence Day essay contest. From the introduction: 'Why aren't all our moms running Linux? This is a serious question, so don't laugh. I used to get phone calls about once a week, on average; it's my mom, telling me that "my computer is running out of virtual memory" or "my email keeps beeping at me" or "I can't read this document" or (the best one) "my computer is *broken*." I knew that, at the time, she was of course not running Linux. Then, one day, listening to yet another complaint, it hit me. Why aren't all our moms running Linux on their computers?" Maybe it's the cuddly Penguin logo? ;-)" They're adding the winning entries to the site week by week - I wonder how many are from Slashdot readers.
because mom's usually aren't geeks, they just raise them....
;P
FP btw.
Hoyle card and board games...
Linux needs a super scrabble game then we'll get all the moms.
My mom all of a sudden asked why her computer was running better than usual and looked cooler, when I went to investigate i discovered that i had left it booted in Linux rather then windows.
_______
Death wish, n.:
The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it t
Dont you know? LESS is more than MORE :P
Join the TWIT army now!
My mom is still trying to get the hang of her cellphone. She is way too scared to even venture into PC's at this stage despite all my prompting that it is "sooo easy". Somehow, they just manage to intimidate her, which is quite odd as most other things in life don't intimidate her.
I guess it is some kind of mental block.
Interesting to note that he says "No more error messages" and not "No more errors". Freudian slip?
Boy this makes no sense! I find Linux to have a steep learning curve, and I've been using computers since the 60's. Yes, I finally got mom on a computer, but there is no way I could support her on Linux.
But the big issue is why in the world does this story have a megaphone icon rather than the cuddly Penguin logo?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
as soon as I get around to installing Nevy OS on an old 486 for her. It uses Konqueror embedded and QT embedded to work through framebuffer without requiring X. Their preview version is a shocking 8MB download, but only includes the web browser, a notepad, and a network configuration program.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
As a Linux user wanting to spread The Word, I tried to get my parents interested in Linux and Open Source Software. I showed them Mandrake - all the cute little icons and the cool games and screensavers. Since they dont do much other than web-surfing (mainly reading email thru a web interface), it seemed like a natural choice.
Then, I made the mistake of showing my mother a Gentoo Linux install - a screenfull of bizzare and verbose gcc flags scrolling across a text console. She became frightened and intimidated. I tried to explain to her that all I did was type 2 words, "emerge gnome", and that it was nothing to be scared of - and I tried to explain the process. Now, shes afraid to try Linux - and everyone I try to recommend Linux to gets scared off by her proclamations of how "difficult" it is.
*sigh* Oh well.....who was it that said "GUIs are like diapers - everyone grows out of them eventually".
I put Mandrake on my grandmas a while ago. It works great for her needs...web, e-mail, word processing, printer support, and a load of games that come with kde/gnome/etc that are great for the kids when they come over...
---
Always standing, I am a tree awaiting the lightning. -Samael, Crown
I set up a box for my mom to use. She's a teacher, she types papers, prints them out; occasionally browses the web; and checks email about once a week (now that she can). The box runs Linux.
For awhile, I had her running KDE, but the box was as Celery 400 or so with 128MB of RAM, and KDE 2.x is a dog for performance. So I switched her over to ROX (RiscOS On X) and sawfish with a pretty theme (much like one I use).
She has icons for printing, trash, logging in, and OpenOffice, in addition to folders for her documents and public_html (which I explained to her was the place to put documents she wanted to share, so my Windows-using dad had a way to get at them). It works great. She loves it. I can modify it remotely. It doesn't break. It runs Linux.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
My wife uses Linux... Does that count? She's patient, still raising me -- kids are all older.
My mom's 83 years old. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know what a computer's for... She uses phrases like, "New fangled notion!". Anyone know what that means?
Look, my mom has trouble with Excel. You think she'd be able to run Linux? You think she'd be able to build a kernel module? Even install an RPM package?
C'mon, give me a break.
HELLO?!?!?! Linux is **not** the end all, be all operating system! It is FAR from it! Stop thinking it! Mom won't use Linux because Linux is **not** user friendly. Linux is not a desktop operating system. Linux is an EDUCATIONAL and EXPERIMENTAL operating system used by people with a bigger understanding of how computers work and want to expand their knowledge even more. Most people don't want to get "in deep" into the system, they just want to use their word, excel, solitaire. They could care less that the vm of Linux is more computationally inexpensive than that in Windows.
After all, what do moms like to do more than decorate, re-decorate, un-decorate, and re-decorate again their houses? Then there's the endless re-organizing, bed-making, cloth-folding, cloth-ironing, vacuuming, etc etc etc.
It makes perfect sense that moms would like Linux. After, what other OS can they re-decorate the GUI as much in? What other OS could they order and re-order things in so much?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Just wait until moms get into advanced operations in Linux, such as installing a program. How many "What does it mean 'error- can't find gcc' or "Why does it say I don't have permission to access this file" calls would you get if moms ran Linux? I'm halfway computer savvy, and I can't get Linux to do everything I know it's capable of.
Because there is no greeting card software for linux.
I didn't say I understood it, but its true, what geek cares about greeting card makers? Moms seem to love it though.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I was tempted to set up a linux box for my mom to use. All she does is surf the web and giving her a stable envrionment and giving her a restricted access would be nice. Then I realized that some of the sites she goes to uses ActiveX controls and she wouldn't be happy. Damn MS :) Damn them!
I started off with the Redmond theme & window decorations, so that they would at least feel a little comfortable. I removed the Console from the kicker, and put up a minimum icon set on the Desktop:
I taught them how to log in, and they were pretty much set from there. They had access to everything they needed on the desktop, and had no problem figuring it out. Since I configured everything for them, they didn't have to worry about the guts of the OS, and since they really only browse the web and check email, they don't need to install software or anything else. Eventually I moved their window decorations away from the Redmond theme, so that they wouldn't confuse it for Windows; I still think it was a good beginner decision though.
Basically it came down to me asking "Why DO they need Windows?" one night, when my one sister asked me if she should buy XP. First I shuddered at the thought of her using XP, then I realized she really doesn't NEED it! And when I told her that her own copy of SuSE 8.0 would only cost $40, she was thrilled. (Yes, I had her buy a copy, I wanted to support SuSE. Besides, they each liked the idea of having a manual just in case). Let's face it though, for a lot of people, Linux does exactly what they need it to do. We just need to make it even easier so that they can set it up for themselves. And we as a community are getting there.
In the mean time, give your Mom Linux, and save yourself and her a headache
I don't know if this is a good idea. I spend too much time explaining all the oddities involved.
I remember several years ago having to explain to people why there were messages about "leaving promiscuous mode" and other odd boot-up text.
Most of my family keep their distance from me. I will forget who I'm talking too and refer to things as "uber-cool" or when I mention that I spent all night hacking- and then have to explain what hacking means...
My family gave up on me years ago. Now they just nod or smile when I talk about computers...
So then we can all get calls like
"My computer find the swap partition" or "I can't access my Hotmail account" or "I can't read any Word Excel or PowerPoint document" or (the best one) "my computer just said the F-word!"
If she's running Windows {3.1, 95, 98, ME} then show her a DOS window or put her into dos by hitting F8 when it starts up.
Then show her Linux. Let her decide which is easier.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Also, the hard drive in her computer was only 1.5 GB. A full install of RedHat or Mandrake (including all the Gnome and KDE libs) wouldn't fit. (Yes, I know you don't need a full install, but I really don't want to be putting in packages every time I go over!).
She's 79 and has difficulty from time to time, but it really helps that I can ssh in.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Where is the start button?
Why my screen turns blue?
What happen with the E icon?
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
My mom is constantly asking me for tech support for her windows box. She wants to do what all Mom's want to do.
Read e-mail.
Surf the web. (nytimes.com etc.)
Type documents.
For that I think that the best enviornment would be a kiosk-like Linux OS with Mozilla and OpenOffice / Crossover Office.
What distro's do your Mom's use? Are there any kiosk (ie chroot jailed) distro's or enviornments for linux?
un1xl0ser
Actually, his article makes sense. Linux does make sense for the user who can't do anything other than basic office tasks on their computer, as well as for the serious computer professional. The real hurdles to linux on the desktop are the modestly proficient users (such as myself). We can install and remove programs, update drivers, and do basic to advanced hardware ugrades. What we are *not* is programmers or IT guys/gals.
The biggest problem for linux among this group is the loss of power/control on switching over to linux. I tried Suse 8.0 w/ KDE 3.0 in the last half of June. While I could do basic office tasks, it was unnerving not knowing exactly what was going on with my OS -- yes I read the books, yes I'm smart, but I'm not a programmer/IT professional. Tried to install Mozilla and spent two hours feeling like a total tool. In the end, having to run to linuxnewbie.org or some other site anytime I wanted to do something other than word process or surf got to me. I backed-up the handful of documents I'd created, reformatted, and went back to 98se.
Not sure what the solution is. But that's my two cents on the problem.
This article is a joke. My mom has to run TurboTax for her small business, and has things like genealogy programs and recipe organizers. My dad loves his bridge programs and other off the shelf games.
To think that ordinary people can use Linux is to live so deep in the world of delusion that there's no hope for you. If you are that crazy anti-microsoft, then get your mom a Mac. At least she'll be able to use it and common commercial programs that real people in the real world use.
Why would your mom want to recompile a kernel? As for installing RPMs, KDE makes that a 1 click procedure, you don't even have to download anything. With Konqueror, if you click a link the KDE rpm package manager installs it for you.
What my mom can't handle is downloading something , finding it, and installing it.
Linux's core might be hard to use, but KDE/Gnome isn't.
I'm not sure how parent's FUD got modded up.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I want you all to know that my mom DOES use linux. I setup the sytstem for her, and she doesn't have much of a choice ;)
I don't think she has any issues with it particularly related to linux either. All she does is use Mozilla and OpenOffice, so the differences are minimal. Except for the crashing. None of that.
--
grep "xercist"
But she does use another UNIX-like OS. :)
You don't have to build kernels or install RPMs to use Linux. My mom doesn't install software or drivers in Windows anyways.
I'm surprised noone as modded you as "troll" yet.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
would you prefer to have a two hour telephone support call from your mom, or a 10 minute SSH session to fix your mom's computer long distance. ask yourself that question before you ask yourself why your Mom is using Windows.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Sheesh... Look, if you set it up for Mom and put icons on the desktop for her to click on for her email, web browser, and office suite, she won't know the difference. Build a kernel module? Come on... now you're just being a troll.
My mom has to run TurboTax for her small business,
Maybe she could convert to a Linux based brothel management package.
" Look, my mom has trouble with Excel. You think she'd be able to run Linux? You think she'd be able to build a kernel module? Even install an RPM package?"
:) Linux window managers should stop emulating MS Windows so damned much. I use the command line, and the computer semi-illiterate don't know how to use MS Windows anyway.
Right. So here's the deal. My parents have installed two software packages intentionally in the entire lifetime of their latest computer which runs Windows 98 or XP or 2K or what-fucking-ever (a couple years). Their installs were roughly as simple as Mozilla's Linux installer, interestingly enough. Any other software on the box either came there, or trojaned itself on (Gator et. al.).
They don't change their video resolution. They don't create new shortcuts. They fire up the box, click on one of about 5 icons, use the program, and close it. Sometimes they switch between programs. When they need to do something more difficult (send e-mail attachments, open an unrecognized file extension in a particular program, etc.), they ask me or someone else who knows more about computers.
So, if they were using Linux instead of Windows, and the two programs had installers as sophisticated as Mozilla's (a faulty assumption, so assume they just asked me to install 'em while I was in town), what would be the difference? The difference would be they wouldn't have Gator, and that's about it.
Is there a reason for them to switch to Linux, given they already have something that basically works? No. Would they get anything extra out of it? No. But Linux wouldn't be any more difficult for them than Windows already is.
Interestingly, though I meant for this argument to be pro-Linux, it looks a lot more pro-Mac.
There are many reasons why this isn't really feasible. X and XConfigurator give real techies issues. If your mom has trouble with things like this:
'my computer is running out of virtual memory' or 'my email keeps beeping at me' or 'I can't read this document' or (the best one) 'my computer is -broken-'.
Is she really in a situation to be able to deal with configuring/installing her video card and monitor? Is she likely to know the correct firewall settings? And I'm sure if she needs to install a security patch that she'll be fine recompiling her kernel, right?
Be realistic here. While Linux may not have some of the "annoying" features that she complains to you about, I'd personally rather explain why her email beeps at her than try to walk my mom through a kernel install on Linux.
You really can't get much easier than WindowsUpdate for that.
And with Linux attacks on the rise more than Windows, isn't giving a relatively technologically-unknowing person a Linux box just asking for trouble?
I'm not trying to start a Windows vs. Linux/Unix war, obviously, since that debate has raged for years. And probably will continue to. I am definitely not underrating Linux either. I am just saying as far as "Ease of use" goes, I don't think a rational argument can be made for Linux vs. Windows.
If your mom lives near (read: you still live with her, heh) you, then maybe. But if you do NOT live at home, chances are Windows will be much easier for her to work with.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
My parents called me up a few months ago and asked me to find a new computer for them - their old Pentium 100 running Win95 finally died.
I told them that I could put together a system for them, but that it would not include Windows and they seemed to be open to that idea. Basically all they need to do is email, web surfing and some word processing so I figured that Linux was ready.
I put Lycoris on their new box and delivered it to them a month ago - so far it's working fine for them.
Now, of course they want to hook up their digital camera and an all-in-one scanner/printer, so there could be some challenges ahead.
However, if your computer-challenged parent just needs to connect to the net, send email, surf and do some simple word processing, I don't see why they can't use Linux at this point.
--don't panic
Really, Linux is ALOT faster than a cluttered down windows install, one of the many perks is that there is still so little bloat/spamware availiable for the linux platform. just adding the basics will keep them happy, since there is NO way for them to (atleast not totaly)screw it up (no root, no skroo) and another beautyful perk: another shell account! (take THAT shellyeah.org!) seriously, folks, wouldnt you feel more comfortable visiting your mom knowing she runs linux? (yes, some of us are that lame)
c0w goes moo.
At least with Linux you can also have the ssh fallback for more serious problems, and behind-the-scenes work.
ROC
it's my mom, telling me that "my computer is running out of virtual memory"
Well, since Windows dynamically optimizes the swapfile without you knowing about it, and fingers-crossed she hasn't maxed out her HDD...
She must be using a Mac! Macs back in the day used to ship by default with the pagefile OFF!
If my suspicions are correct, she was on a Mac, and if you think Linux will solve her problems you are insane.
"I can't read this document"
Of ALL OSes, you think LINUX will solve THIS problem? GIVE ME A BREAK! Looking for an OS where you can view any document w/o trouble? It's called Windows, followed by MacOS. Macs may even beat Windows in ease of opening a document cause of the resource tags (I forgot the exact name) that are associated with each file that specify the application that created the file. Gawd, Macs make things soo damn easy, you'd be crazy to put your Mother on anything else. Move a folder somewhere else? That's OK, all the settings update with it.
MacOS Classic worked wonders; unfortunately it never made it to mainstream use as much as it could (should) have.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
At first take the idea sounds preposterous. Moms in general never have been and never will be computer saavy. My mom can't even change channels on the cable box properly (somehow she always ends up hitting the tv/vcr button, or changing the tv channel instead, or any number of other inconceivable screwups that leave her bewildered).
But then maybe that's part of the point. My mom runs Windows on her pc, and she's taken to it like a fish to a bicycle. She hasn't caught on to the concept of "directories" yet. If it's not in the first folder she opens, she tells me her files anre missing and I need to find them. When I give her tech support, it always devolves into excruciating detail: "Choose Save As from the File menu and save it with the name you want... Alright click on File... Now click on Save As... Now type in the file name... in the box that says "file name" next to it... yeah now click 'OK'".
Given these conditions, what is the difference between my mom running linux and Windows? Absolutely none. She can't even figure out that her email "isn't working" because she forgot to dial in to earthlink first, much less install a printer or an application. Anything she does, she needs to be shown exactly how to do first. If the slightest deviation from how it was shown to her occurs, she's completely lost and calls for help. She'd be just as lost on a Mac. Her problems have nothing to do with the operating system she uses.
Linux wouldn't make her life any easier, but then it wouldn't make it any worse either. However her running linux would make my life significantly better. If things don't work, I can login and fix the problem... remotely. I can set up a firewall and update the rules when necessary... remotely. I can install a new application or security updates... remotely. It's a hell of a lot easier to administer a linux machine remotely than a windows machine.
Install linux on your mother's machine. Don't do it for her. Do it for you.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
"...So, I am here to finally tell the moms of the world: you can trash the default operating system, replace it with Linux, and have the full power and reach of your computer, finally, in your hands..."
But this is a bad thing. Many people don't want "the full power and reach of your computer". They want to email their friends, surf the web, do a little word processing, play MP3s, take the red-eye out of their digital photos. Giving them the full power of the computer doesn't give them any of this. They want a machine that does a few things well, not one that makes eveything possible.
These applications are of course made possible because underneath is the full power of the computer. But most users only care about a few specific applications. Linux is a very, very good OS if you care about accessing the core features of the computer; having real control over it. It isn't (yet) the best choice if you want to do just a few things well, partly because it doesn't yet have the range of applications and partly because it still doesn't have a consumer UI.
A consumer UI is not just about how easy it is to do some things (some of the Linux desktops like KDE are getting closer to this goal). Its also about not being able to do some things. A good consumer OS should do a lot of the underlying information management that Linux exposes. Consumers don't want to have to understand the implications of - for example - a UNIX-style filesystem layout in order to get their work done.
Sailing over the event horizon
My mom uses a Mac. Get a grip people. I use all three, have all three at home, can hack all three, for many things prefer Linux. But there's really only one OS that keeps my wife, kids, and parents from calling me with problems... a Mac.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
If your Mom runs, say, Windows 98, what happens when she needs something fixed? She calls you. You drive over to her house. You muck about with your computer while she asks you when you're finally going to graduate from college or how long it's going to be until she has grandkids.
A Linux install and SSH saves both of you time and effort. For example:
Mom: "Something's wrong. I got an instant message link in my e-mail and it won't work."
You (typing in background): "Got it. It's already fixed!"
Mom: "So when are you --"
You: "Oops! Pizza's here gottago loveya bye!"
I'm gonna get my Mom using Linux this year.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
"...you can trash the default operating system, replace it with Linux, and have the full power and reach of your computer, finally, in your hands. No more error messages, no more advertisements, no more sending your personal information to 'register' your machine with some giant corporation, no more lost work, lost time, lost minds. Once you make the switch, you'll wonder how you ever got this far driving behind the wheel of that old clunker."
I speak from experience when I say, "no more error messages," WRONG! Obviously mom needs a gui, KDE is arguably the best/standard/representative-of-what's-available and it's a dog and it crashes. But's it's pretty.
What do you mean by, "no more advertisements?" True there aren't tens of crap programs installed on the desktop for programs you won't ever use -- that's because they're under the new "start" menu. There a huge number of programs installed by default with typical distros, and most of them aren't even named or organized in a discriptive manner.
And for that matter, most advertisements the user experiences come while browsing the web. Obviously Linux has nothing to do with the viewing of banner ads. You have to use an ad-blocker program to get such functionality, and such programs are freely available on all major operating systems.
No more registration? Yep, you don't have to register. And you don't have to get any help when KDE crashes and burns repeatedly either. In fact, if anything goes wrong (and Linux has it's own special version of dll-hell when drivers aren't working correctly), you're pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. Unless, by grace, you're the mother of a linux geek.
No more lost work? Bah, what happens when a co-worker sends you an MS Office document and your distro came with KOffice or some such crap which can't import the file? That's a lot of lost work right there. And incidentally, that's going to contribute to a lost mind.
This essay completely fails to explain why anyone should even try using Linux, especially my mom who's been using Windows for years, didn't pay for it (in her mind) because it came with her computer, didn't pay for the upgrade to Win2k (which is a good OS incidentally) either, and is finally comfortable with just checking her email. This whole essay annoyed me, obviously, because it's just another Linux-is-best jerkoff session. It's practically propoganda.
Some computer jocks are jumping off the horse because it's too bouncy and we think our mothers should give it a spin? (forgive me the horse analogy. i'm not proud of it) If we can barely maintain lesser computer users on windows machines, putting them on Linux boxes is toying on the brink of hell.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Situation: Mom needed computer w/net access. Mac would have been nice as that's what she's always used and knows. But the only Macs I had were 68040 based machines. Problem: Mom uses AOL (arrgh), and AOL's webmail client (which she likes, don't ask me why) uses funky java stuff which the old Mac OS browsers can't handle. Solution: Mom got an old Toshiba PII/166 laptop running Mandrake. I set it up to boot directly into the GUI (Gnome), dial PacBell, launch Netscape, and open the AOL webmail page. On the lower tool bar is a plunger icon-pressing it shuts down the machine. That's all the thing does, and she just barely manages to use it. Most recent problem: Netscape froze up, for whatever reason. Her solution: unplug computer, close lid. 2 days later she calls, "it's stuck, and every time I turn it back on it's still on the same page! What do I do?" What happened-everytime she closed the lid it happily went into sleep mode, and conserved battery power... Concepts such as cntrl-alt-backspace or cntrl-alt-delete are WAY too dificult for her, let alone opening a terminal window, finding the Netscape process, and a nice kill -9.
ehintz
and even *I* don't feel like using linux anymore.
Your answer boils down to a single, simple answer... Linux is far too complicated.
Oh don't believe me? here's my list of top pet peeves...
- APM support never became fully function or free
of administration issues so lets not even
talk about ACPI functionality. So all of
you with laptops probably have at least
as many suspend/power management problems
as I have.
- I find the configuration and implementation
of linux's network interface a complicated and
bug ridden process. For instance why after
coming out of suspend does my wireless MiniPCI
interface not come back up until I restart the
PCMCIA subsystem?
- hardware support... HAHAHAHAHA! try
building in kernel support for just about
anything. Look at the "help" and all you will
find is tons, and tons, and tons of options
or caveats all different depending on your
hardware. You'll find lots of links to "if you
want this you will also need to get tools
from yada.yada.yada...". And this is even
assuming you *know* what hardware you actually
have. "Some laptops have buggy BIOS. enable
this if you laptop crashes instead of
suspending". That's great advice. Which laptops
have this problem; exactly? And, even if you
know, the thought of "crashing" isn't going
to induce any positive perspectives of linux
anytime soon.
If you give me enough time I can certainly come up with an almost endless list and I haven't even begun to touch upon topics such as lack of marketing presence or issues concerning the horrible integration of highly disjointed projects. (How many sound "architectures" do we have, at least two. How many printing systems? how many pcmcia projects? How many web browsers?) I'll agree to arguments that each project has its benefits but your mother won't care. Even I'm past caring. I'm more interested in something that works with out consuming hours of my week adminstering the machine's operating system.It boils down to this... I buy a machine and I can put Windows XP on it and it takes me a *total* of two hours after which *everything* on the machine functions and I didn't have to know or choose any options at all. I can choose from a selection of thousands of fully functional software application and all the latest games and entertainment.
If I put linux on the machine it takes me three months to get the MiniPCI wireless network card working at all and after half a year I still don't have support for the modem in the machine [Dell Inspiron 4100].
I figure this post will generate all sorts of "ACPI does work if you do..." or "your PCMCIA doesn't come up because this script on your machine is broken..." or "It works on my machine." But this will only prove my point...
Answer: Your mother doesn't use linux because its too complicated.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Keep on believing that, bucko.
Stop looking at this post!
for the same reason most people aren't running linux...
AOL hasn't put out an instructional video on how to run it.
Laugh or call me a troll all you want, but the there's really no one to teach it to them (at simple fact of the matter is that most moms aren't going to get off their duffs and use linux because they don't want to have to learn it, and least not hold their hands all the way through it).
For a lot of linux users, the computer is the means and the end. The same can't be said for our mammas.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I'll tell you why: OSX. It's _gorgeous_. It doesn't go down. She doesn't harass me about how to use it. It just works. It looks pretty. To top it all off, it meets my technical approval. I'm not sure how I feel about the chewy mach center, but userland feels "right".
First off, the first reason I use linux now is because a few years ago my dad told me that if I wanted to do anything with networks, that knowing linux is a good idea. He doesn't use it himself because it lacks the applications that he uses on a daily basis, like AutoCAD, and at this point he is liking Tiger Woods PGA 2002 for some reason. My first priority will be converting my siblings, because well, first off they are easier to convert to new technology, because my mom a few years ago couldn't do anything with the computer besides turn the thing on, run calculator, and maybe, maybe use word. I have installed RedHat 7.2 on my sister's computer, and have shown my brother my install of RH 7.3, and well, since their computers aren't the greatest powers in the world, celeron 300a, and p133 respectively, they are very interested in something that would run faster than windows, since all they really do with their computers is homework, and games that have counterparts in linux already. Then if all three of us actually use and like linux for a while, I will hope that the Wine project has gotten to the point of allowing the applications that are normally used on the family computer to run in a non-Microsoft environment.
My mom has actually asked a few times about Linux, and seems genuinely interested in trying it someday. Personally, I'm not ready to suggest people use it yet. It's close to being a great desktop... so close I can almost taste it (I've been using free unixen since slackware 3.0) ... but IMHO it's just not *quite* there yet. A few more revisions of Mozilla, GNOME, and/or KDE and we'll see... I think that OpenOffice is a huge step in the right direction, I tried it for the first time a week ago and I was stunned at how much better it got since StarOffice 5.2. Really, I think the best part of my family members switching to linux would be ease of secure remote administration so I can just log in to fix something rather than having to actually drive to their place or walk them through something on the phone (which is painful, lord do I have sympathy for the telephone tech support people out there). As it is I've managed to train my mom in the basics of getting the machine's IP address and how to start up winvncserver so I can vnc in... I think that was one of the first times she really opened her eyes to th power of free software, becuase she was just stunned at how easy vnc made it for me to fix her machine from hundreds of miles away and completely blown away when I answered her "how much does this cost?" question with "not a damn thing, it's free software". I think probably what I'll do if she's serious about making the switch is start her off on openoffice, mozilla, and the gimp on windows, then after she's comfortable with that, give her a new machine running linux as the "invisible substrate" under openoffice et al.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
My plan is: Each time my mom calls with a tech question for her PC, I time the call, and ask her to put $(minutes) into a cookie jar. When she has $1300, I'll tell her to use it to get an LCD iMac.
Kevin Fox
...that this article ran shortly after the articles pointing out Linux's flaws as a desktop OS?
.TAR or .Z or any of that other crap. She's not going to recompile any software. I doubt she'll even use RPM . With a Windows (or even a Mac) box, she can go to the store, buy a prog, slap the CD in, and get going.
If people want their moms running *nix, get them a Macintosh with OSX. Apple had the right idea, and Linux developers should be eyeballing them very carefully.
Make fun of Windows all you want, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is day and night easier to use than Linux when placed in front of 'a mother'. Want to install your USB camera? Plug it in. Oops, does it need a driver? Put the CD that came with the camera in.
It's not just a matter of Windows being easier to use, but it is better supported too. You're not going to buy a digital camera with Linux drivers shipped on the CD.
Let's be realistic here: If you set up a Linux box for your mother, she is stuck with the software you put on it. She's not gonna know how to
Linux needs: a.) Better desktop support, i.e. fix the problems mentioned in that article a couple of days back. b.) Software, on the shelves, in stores. c.) To have a Desktop distro that doesn't require that mommy dearest go type in badly spelt, unintuitive commands in order to muck with things.
This is not flamebait or trolling people, this is exactly what is holding Linux back as a 'Windows killer'. Some of the Slashdot Community needs to face the fact that both Microsoft and Apple did quite a few important things right. The karma I've burned trying to explain this emphasizes my point.
for my mom to call and ask how to run that funny attatchment she just got from her sister in email. or how to install that "Friends" screen saver she saw on the website.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
And she won't (though I've managed to thoroughly convince her that Microsoft is not on our side), because it doesn't run Quicken. She likes to keep our finances, and she's grown very accustomed to the many features - retirement planning estimators, savings goals, and other substantial parts of the software beyond balancing the checkbook.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
A Linux install and SSH saves both of you time and effort. For example:
...two hours later...
You: ok mom. i need you to bring up a shell so i can grab your IP.
Mom: a what? oh...you mean like that C:> prompt?
You: yeah mom. just click...etc.
Mom: is that a right click? where am i clicking again? oh..on the icon down at the bottom? Which mouse button should I use?
You: ok. now that you have a terminal up. i need you to type in ifconfig.
Mom: what's "effconfig?" should I be typing that by the squiggly line? here. lemme...oops. i clicked on something else. hang on....(hand to phone) It's in the cabinet, dear. No, the other side! I'll HELP YOU IN A MINUTE!! I'M ON THE PHONE!!! (phone back to ear)...ok. now what did you need me to type?
You: ifconfig. I-F-C-O-N-F-I-G.
Mom: ok...what was after that first I?
You: F
Mom: ok...F. oh poo! I just typed a G. how do i cancel this? oh wait..wait...hey. what's this uppy arrow plus H mean?
You: (your mom hears the sound of a gunshot)
Mom: honey? honey, are you there? what about my email? honey?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The original essay cited above ends with our protagonist having installed Debian for his Mom. I say, so what?
If you want some real insight into why Mom isn't using Linux, first of all he should have made Mom do the install. He says:
I felt like a chicken pecking my way through all the defaults until I finally had all the packages copied over (took about twenty minutes of installing to get to the point of a login prompt). A few more commands brought down security updates, the X Window System, as well as a few applications I knew my mom would need.
Twenty minutes? How long would it have taken Mom? Pecking chicken? How many of those "pecks" were to answer arcane config questions that Mom wouldn't know the answer to? Command prompt? Please.
This right here is the first reason Mom isn't using Linux.
And even granting him that Mom might be happy on the new OS, I need to hear about her experiences in the new environment to have any opinion. Did she get any strange error messages? What happens when her friends give her programs she can't use? Can she find online help written in plain language to solve her own problems? (even today, these are questions that should be asked of any OS.) For a pro-Mom-on-Linux article, so strange that it ended without Mom using Linux! I hope there's a follow-up I'm missing, because that would contain the real answers to the title's question.
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
More likely your mother is "complaining" about her computer just to spend time with her son/daughter. And using your abilities as a technical guru as a way to breach conversations and contact with you. I know plenty of parents that do that.
While it's great to think your mom will stop calling when they get Linux on their machine, that will never happen. They'll just think of something else to call you about. You can't get rid of mothers, they love you.
Joseph Elwell.
So far I have read about 40 comments saying:
"My Mom *does* run linux....cause I set it up for her."
Exactly. She didn't do it, you did. And until that changes, the why doesn't my mom run linux argument won't change either.
remember, this is a tech site, so of course your mom might run linux, if she is tech savvy or has a son or daughter that is and sets it up for them. Can you say that the majority of moms out there have tech savvy children? Probably not, and 's the issue.
Sent from your iPad.
thank you for your cooperation!
Maybe because Linux isn't a very good easy-to-use desktop OS yet. Granted, Windows isn't perfect, but right now I'd say it's leaps and bounds ahead of Linux. Also the fact that switching your mother from Windows to Linux means that whenever she gets new hardware or upgrades, she'll have to recompile her kernel with support for her new hardware. Gimme a break, like a newbie user will know how (or even want to) do that. Also the fact that she now can't run the same software she was using before.
If your mother/family/grandparents/etc are calling you about computer problems, you should probably just upgrade them to WindowsXP or 2000. WindowsME and 98/95 have major issues of their own, and who can blame them? How old are they? Sheesh.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Then around Christmas, she got some nasty virus and I had to reload her system. This time I decided she wasn't going to get any more virii, so I installed linux as the primary OS, and installed win4lin that she could use within linux as a crutch if she needed one. She previously did all of her email from netscape 4, so it was easy to switch her to netscape 6 on linux. I frequently evangelize all the benefits of linux, and warn her of the nasty things MS is trying to do to their customers, this helps keep the positive idea of her running linux.
The funny thing is, she's had a lot fewer problems now. Her computer works more consistantly, and I haven't gotten a call for help for months. It was a little rocky at first as she tried to adapt to the changes, but I was able to log in remotely to inspect her system and diagnose any problems. Try doing that with Windows.
All in all, she's quite happy with her system. She can use all the programs she's used to, her computer is a lot more stable, and she doesn't have to worry about virii.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
All my mom needs is a web browser and Yahoo Messenger, so I don't think she'd have much trouble running Linux if configured properly.
It kind of requires the person upgrading the computer to know Linux inside and out. I don't and most of my friends don't either. Someone wanna donate a computer to me so I _can_ learn? hehe
BONESAW IS READY!/Randy Savage
linux scrabble .22 seconds search at www.google.com:
w ar e.html
.22 seconds to search it up for her and then spent the time to set things up.
http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/soft
And think . . . some other mom who loves scrable is having the time of her life on a stable platform just because someone spent
Why don't you go to www.walmart.com and pay $300 (and probably dl Mandrake if you can't stand Lindows;) and get her an extra "scrabble" computer? That way you got nothing to lose.
If you don`t do it . . . fine, it`s your life. But don`t blame Linux for your being too lazy . . . it took me less than a second to figure you out.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
My mom prefers KDE, and KDE's patience is plenty good for her gaming needs, internet & email by mozilla, multimedia by XMMS & realplayer, of course i do all the system admin work for her, she does not need root access and i don't run with root access unless i am doing something that requires it...
:)
HappyTrails
Most moms got windows preinstalled. Anyway, any new user leads to a larger market and interest in Linux. So, its actually just like making people you know join a club. Even if they didn't come completely by themselves, they DO make the club larger. Also, new users lead to demand for programs that linux may miss, eg. as one noted, a greeting-card maker.
;)
So, even if the way may be wrong, the outcome is good. So, first mom, then your moms friend. Then you start up a company installing and supporting linux, preferably hooked up with som DSL-provider
what i've found is that with the elderly who have no knowledge of computers at all (ie: my grandma)it's just as easy, if not easier, to teach them linux in the first place for several reasons:
1. much more stable
2. more eye candy (the computer illiterate LOOOVE that eye candy...
3. basically all the elderly do on a computer is putter around on the internet, check email, and play simple games...all of these are just as easy to teach for the first time on linux as windows
4. no more of those "my computer's broken" housecalls....hehehe....remote admin is GOD!
thus, the reason my grandma runs linux };->
Base 2 yields only ARTIFICIAL Intelligence
She prefers OpenBSD at work, and OS X at home. Last night we had a nice little chat about proving SOAP services through apache.
"my computer is running out of virtual memory"
that's a pretty tech-savvy mother, assuming you're not fabricating this quotation to support the idea that linux's efficiency makes it ideal as a desktop OS despite it's glaring usability problems.
linux is too fucking hard for mothers, that's why. mothers don't need super stability and speed when all they're running (at most) is word, excel, IE or AOL, windows media player, and Epson/HP/blah Scanning Thingy (and all of this is very unlikely). they don't push the envelope of multitasking, they don't run 3d games, compile software, run servers, render 3d animations, set up networks or beowulf clusters. they type reports, emails, spreadsheets and send a photo or two, maybe install an application every once in a while. what OS achieves such integrated simplicity better than XP? certainly not linux, where one must go into rpm or lib insanity when installing applications. then there's the durability of windows. you can pull the plug on a computer starting up windows xp and when you turn it back on, it'll be fine. the same goes with when windows xp is running. with linux, be prepared to reinstall unless you're god. the microsoft office applications also have excellent document crash recovery tools unlike any linux counterparts. what to do when she accidentally presses the power button in linux?
face the facts, linux is not ready for the masses.
I love this. How many people are reading this through Internet Explorer? Why aren't our mom's using Linux? Mostly because they love us. Too many would have to publicly proclaim from the rooftops:
/. through IE!"
"My mom uses Linux and I read
If she really loved you, she wouldn't put you through that and suffer M$.
When my friend told me he was ready to get his first computer (he's 50), I set him up with Windows. I'm heavily biased towards *nix, but at the time, we were interested in an online racing game that was Windows only. Vnc for windows came in real handy for showing him how to navigate usenet, manage email, etc.
After about 10 months, his computer was infected with spyware, broken media players, fubar registry entries and the like.
I reinstalled his Windows, added Mandrake 8.2 and showed him the ropes via x0rfbserver the same way i had done with Windows. No big deal. He had Windows. Now he's got both. He uses Linux.
Without the remote desktop function it would have been a nightmare to give good instructions for either OS.
I am sure your Mom would be able to build a kernel module, install a rpm package etc, if she felt it was necessary. Why am I so sure? I am a Mom and linux is just fine for me
Why Aren't our moms running Linux?
Easy, because we don't want to hear about our moms getting rooted. That's why.
nuff said
They use Mozilla for both web browsing and email, and AbiWord for simple word-processing. That all runs just fast enough with GNOME, on an old 166Mhz Cyrix box with 64MB of memory. This setup does 95% of what they want, and if I can get the printer working it will probably be 98%.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Oh well.....who was it that said "GUIs are like diapers - everyone grows out of them eventually
Eventually . . . they grow back into them . . . diapers, that is.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
someone threw me into the pool, and it was either swim, or sink. and since im still here typing...
the point is my father did his bi weekly toast of windows and never botherd to put it back on. he runs redhat 7.2 on his dual proccesor p3 machine. he's got 10 uw-scsi2 drives in a software raid.
do you want to guess who 'breaks' the machine more? my mother or my father? same person as always, my father, the unix systems administration man. now i know there are some key differences but still....
my mother checks her email(netscape 6.2) she helps us kids with our resumes (soffice 5.2) she does powerpoint presentations (soffice again) she prints with the hp printer(812). browses the web with a cable connection quite efficently. my mother is by no means a pro. i dont think she (even if she had permission to) could install an rpm not to mention she NEVER touches the console.(before i forget she uses gnome)
the two big things that stick out in my mind.. the only time she has a problem is when the cable service cuts out.. (cable co problem) and she has never, ever said "Linux doesnt work for me because it doesnt look as pretty as windows"
linux works for my mother and thats all she cares about.
enough cop outs about the way it looks, most old people care about functionality, they want to do this this and this, they dont care how, as long as its simple and stable. My father just happens to have it setup that way.
so all your windows users are going ha! she has to have it setup this way! now how many of your parents and grandparents ask you to show them how to do this that and the other thing? all of them! so why not just make the process more stable?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
My mom's not running Linux because my mom has a Mac
Seriously, for the first six months that she had her Performa, she would turn it on, launch Word and write her correspondence, (actual quote: "That spell-check thing is pretty handy!") print it out, and turn it off. When one of my sisters was cleaning up the hard drive, she asked "So where do you save your letters?" My mom said "Why on earth would I want to do that? I've already printed them and mailed them!"
So "All Our Moms" won't ever be running the same thing -- they don't all want the same thing!
She would kick my ass if I tried to make her look at the fonts on Linux...
Give me a break. You linux geek freaks whine about proselytizing Christians, then manage to sound even more fanatical and overbearing.
Mom's don't use Linux because it breaks, it's *not* stable without some pretty in-depth knowledge, few users will help (it's true), you can't play games, and because WINDOWS CAME LOADED ON THE COMPUTER.
Any more questions?
The trick to having your mom run Linux is to maintain her machine yourself. Of course, it depends on what your mom wants to run. My family isn't really big on the popular computer games, so CrossOver covers almost all of our Windows needs anyway. YRMV.
You assume that she would be using a computer at all if I hadn't set one up for her. She only uses it because I made it do exactly what she wants, and she has someone to complain to when it stops doing what she wants. If I'm the one setting it up anyway, why should I use anything else? I'm sure that goes for lots of people here.
I know plenty of families who also go out, buy a computer, and use it as an expensive paperweight, simply because they don't really know how to use it or make it work for them. If I set up Linux for these people, does it "not count" because they didn't set it up?
OK, first the issue was that I was tech-savvy, now the issue is that lots of people aren't?
In any case, people should be tech savvy. Hello, you're all living in a technological world, and it's just going to keep getting more technological (barring natural disaster or war). Ignorance is not OK, folks. Just because you don't know how do use a computer doesn't mean you can't learn. It especially does not mean that you shouldn't have to learn.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Yo mama's so dumb that she was on her way to the airport and saw a sign that said "airport left." So she turned around and went home.
You were asking for it . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
For that kind of user, I'm not sure that Linux with an install utility like Ximian Red Carpet is any more complicated than Windows. People who don't like dicking around with computer stuff are probably *good* candidates for modern Linux distributions.
My wife - a very bright woman who completed her university degree in Finance before her 20th birthday - uses spreadsheets like this: She enters the data into columns, performs the calculations by hand or with a calculator, and then enters the result in the appropriate cell.
Yes, I think it's crazy too - but she just doesn't like (or trust) computers. She's just as happy with Linux as she was with Windows - which isn't very happy, but the point is that Linux is not necessarily a step down in usability for non-geeks.
Kind of an opposite case for my mom - she spends all her time on her Windows PC, in various gardening and photograpy forums, playing Freecell for ridiculously long stretches of time, etc.
But until recently, every time I would visit, I'd end up spending half an hour fixing things, removing virii, and generally un-fucking up her computer. (I say "until recently" because, thankfully, she has a friend nearby to deal with that stuff). And, I discovered the reason I hadn't heard from her for a few weeks was because Outlook Express got so fucked up she could no longer even send or receive mail. There have been so many occasions that she's told me a Windows tale of woe, and I've told her that I'm sympathetic, but that I just don't have those kinds of problems on Linux.
I'm not sure she's ready for a change yet - she faces the same inertia problem that so many countless others face wrt their Windows use; but someday, I'll introduce her to Linux. I'll have to set it up, spend a day with her showing her how to use stuff, show her how to get more software, and so on. But after that I (and her Windows-helper friend) will probably have drastically less work to do keeping that PC going.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Linux applications I've used have a tendency to core dump a lot. Especially programs that haven't been around very long. Also Linux seems to lockup sometimes for no apparent reason. And please don't give me shit like it's my hardware. This is on two different boxes that are supported. In the ILM interview the project leader said that he would come in to work with as many as 30% of the Linux boxes locked up. Thankfully it has improved a bit. It simply isn't ready yet. Maybe in 3 or 4 years.
What kind of a dumb question is this? If your mom claims her computer is 'broken' on a Windows machine, how do you think she's going to understand the more complicated world of Linux?
void women (int money, time_t time);
...if I wanted her to call me more often.
"Son? What's this seashell thing?"
"Son? What's with all these programs that begin with K?"
"I keep typing soundconfig but nothing happens.... what do you mean it's spelled 'snd'?"
"What are all these progs that begin with K? Err why do 6 of them do the same thing? Okay... okay.. whatever..."
"Your sister wants you to bring a new a game over.... that's it? Are you serious? Why did you give this to me then?"
Heh.
With Konqueror, if you click a link the KDE rpm package manager installs it for you.
Funny, mine ALWAYS prompts me for a stupid 'root password'. I can't do anything productive with the system without constantly rekeying the root password, yet Lunix dogmatics would either laugh at you or verbally abuse you if you simply ran a desktop session as root the entire time.
Sorry, it's still not that easy.
creation science book
If your mom is having trouble with Windows, just wait for all the calls when you install Linux! Seriously, you don't want to go there. (This is experience speaking.)
.. Maybe he will be compassionate and let you trolls post 3 times a day
on iBooks and WLAN, no string attached, and the base station do ADSL to the ISP. Though sometimes apps do suddenly quit themselves, the iBooks were never rebooted (except during those upgrade moments).
:-(
:-))
The tech support issues with Windoze are too big a workload for me as a free consultant, Linux on the other hand is too user-unfriendly for a layman. I have tried to give them Gnome on Linux, but they did end up only able to use Netscape and not even a decent mail app with consistency UI is availbale, you could call them stupid but they are old! So Linux is out of the question.
Now they are happy to use the Macs and are able to use quite a few apps and even to produce their own travel documentaries on video (only that their iBooks can't burn DVDs
We are all impressed on what the Macs are capable to bring to these old folks when they hardly known what a CPU is and can't make sense of the difference between a harddisk and their favorite Pink Floyd CD (because I have the CD saved to MP3 on their hd, and that confused them so much
Not to mention I don't have to troubleshoot over the phone with a 90 years old fustrated woman.
Not that the Macs are perfect, there are still a lot of room to improve especially on speech recognition and user-friendliness, but current, if you need stability plus user-friendliness (perhaps also multilingual 'coz my dad and mom also use Chinese), Mac (OS X, NOT OS9! )is almost the only choice.
---
Sic? What sic?
The real value of getting linux to work on desktops is not just that the system is more stable, it's that it is easy for you to ssh into your moms computer and fix whatever problem she is having.
If she can't figure out why mozilla isn't loading, ssh into her box and figure it out. If her box needs upgrading, ssh in and fix it. Etc.
There are utils available for doing this with Windows boxen I hear. But using gentoo, debian, RH or whatever one gets the power of package management, security and so forth.
So Linux is not only great for maintaining stable and strong computers for the non-tech-literate (Mom) but it's also easier for the sysadmin (Son) to maintain!
I will often see Linux posts go something like this:
"My Mom/Grandma/Dad/Uncle now uses Linux, I set it all up for her/him, and she has icons for this, this and this"
Great, you are obviously capable of setting up a nice Linux setup, but your Mom is now dependant on you for everything regarding the way things are set up, all the way down to the software installed. Now, I wouldn't expect most inexperienced users to be tinkering with their setups - most shouldn't. But putting a user down in front of their machine and giving them virtually no control over anything, is a bit bothersome to me.
Having someone rely on you for every single configuration issue is not what I would consider polite, or something that will improve the fortunes of Linux or whatever.
You may use Linux because it works for you. Giving someone a Linux setup that they haven't the most basic understanding of is just boosting your own ego. "Look at MY platform. Even MY MOM can use it."
God forbid she want to install a simple Solitare program on her own.
Install a new piece of hardware (Inexperienced users may not be tweaking their config files, but they _do_ love their peripherals).
Or anything else.
They shouldn't have to rely on someone else for everything. Lots of inexperienced users figure things out on their own, sometimes with hillarious or disasterous results, but they do, because they want to learn, or at least be able to have a mesure of control over their own system.
She has an old iMac running MacOS 9.1. It works, it's stable, and it's virus-free (she gloats about that to her Wintel friends all the time). She's a reasonably competent user and wonders why anyone ever uses Windows. She hates it.
And she is seriously considering a flat-panel iMac because she thinks they look cool and she likes OS X.
So she's got no interest at all in running Linux, but she's not a Windows drone by any means. And at least MacOS X is a Unix at heart. She won't be hanging around the CLI like I do, but she'll be a Unix user soon enough.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Last time I fiddled with a Mandrake release, its install program basically consisted of "OK, do you know what you're doing? You don't? OK, then, why don't you go have a cup of tea and come back later. I'll deal with this."
Not what I want for my own installs, but nice for the Moms of the world, isn't it?
I had no interest in trying to support a Windows PeeCee from 800 miles away, so I spent the bucks on the [overpriced] touchpad. I think it was worth it, because the damn thing just works, day after day, and I don't have to worry about Outlook viruses, IE security holes, or *shudder* Windows Update.
One simple rule for its versus it's
There is no way that anyone with the computing skills of your mom (i.e., none) can hope to get Linux into a state where they can do anything they consider useful with it.
Not without copious outside assistance and an assurance that if they type the wrong thing they'll only destroy their own computer.
--Blair
Honestly, the lack of certain kinds of software for Linux has kept me from setting it up on my parents' PC.
1. My mom, like most mothers I know, is very interested in creating greeting cards and thank-you notes on a color inkjet printer. I have yet to see a single greeting-card maker program for Linux. (Did anyone ever write one of these yet? Maybe sort of a Broderbund "Print Shop" clone, even?) Even if a free open-source card-maker is available, what kind of card artwork comes with it? For under $25, you can buy one of several Windows-based greeting card programs that come with a CD full of commercially-designed cards from respected companies like Hallmark or American Greetings. I'm not sure some Linux guru is going to be able to match that artistic quality in his/her spare time as a freeware project....
2. My folks also do a lot of family research. So far, I haven't seen a single package better than Broderbund's "Family Tree Maker" for their needs. Again, this puppy isn't available in a Linux version. I'm sure Linux has a number of geneology packages for it - but honestly, I don't think any are as user-friendly or comprehensive as "Family Tree Maker".
3. There's a real lack of children's educational software for Linux. I have yet to see any commercial Linux offerings from any of the people who own the rights to the characters children like and relate to. (Disney learning titles, Dr. Seuss, the Bernstein Bears, Sesame Street, etc.) My parents want their youngest child to be able to play learning games on their PC sometimes, and expect it to handle whatever discount title they pick up at the local Best Buy store.
StarOffice and KDE/Gnome + internet apps are a teriffic "core" -- but until some of these other software gaps get filled, Linux isn't ready for many "family PCs".
So, she now has a Mac running OSX. It's roughly as stable as Linux. It's about as easy to use as Gnome or KDE (not worse but not better either), and a lot nicer than Windows. If there is one thing that's worse it's that my mother finds a lot less software for the Mac that she likes than for Linux.
On the other hand, she can now go out and buy a piece of hardware or software, asking for something that is "Mac OSX compatible" and she can get books that are aimed at non-technical users. Also, the Apple brand name stands for pretty consistently decent hardware, whereas with PCs, finding good hardware is a gamble even if you buy a brand name.
So, consider getting your mother a Macintosh. Technically, it is really no better and no worse than Linux, but Apple's market presence and the support infrastructure around it makes it useful for non-technical users. As long as they remain mostly UNIX/Linux-compatible and don't do something really stupid in their relationship with the open source community, I think they are a decent choice.
Most of the posts I've read on this and similar stories go something like "I set up a Mandrake/SuSe box running KDE 3.0 for them and it looks just they're used to. They can surf the web with mozilla and do e-mail with Kmail. They love OpenOffice.org and they can do all the things that they did with Windows." Don't get me wrong. It's possible to set up a Linux box that is user friendly and has GUIs that hide all the scary geek stuff beneath. It's as soon as something goes wrong that Moms don't like Linux.
When something goes wrong with Windows, it's nothing out of the ordinary. People are used to that. Hey, Moms are cozy and comfortable with that. They know what to do, just reboot. If it's serious they call in the /.er of the family. But when something goes wrong with Linux, that's when it's scary.
I like linux. I'm still new to it, and I find tons of problems when I try to do something I don't know how to. I have to RTM and the Howto and the Readme before I finally learn how to go about it, and then there are all the unexpected problems along the way. For me it's a challenge that I'm often happy to tackle. For a Mom, when they try to do something and they can't, or they create a problem or something just goes wrong, it isn't a challenge. It's a problem and it makes them wish for something familiar.
What's in a Sig?
/sbin/ifconfig|grep "inet addr">/tmp/ipoutput /tmp/ipoutput 5 70 /tmp/ipoutput
:-)
gdialog --textbox
rm
# End of script
Then you say "Mom just read what it says on the screen......"
Of course if her problem is getting online in the first place then this will be less than helpful. Be sure you set that up correctly!
Oh yeah, install gdialog while you're at it.
I know; I know; it's very quick and verrrry dirty but I'm not going to play with sed to make it look pretty just so I get an extra karma point.
ps. The lameness filter screws it up if I put in the #!/bin/bash like I'm supposed to. Grrrrr!
Let's all admit right off the bat that Linux has very little desktop presence.
Let's further admit right up front that it's slow penetration into this area isn't due to price.
We might discuss reasons like the evil business practices of Microsoft. We all know how they have in the past used every legal and some illigal means of preventing OEMs from bundling competitors software. I think we all understand the implications for Linux in regards to those business practices.
But still. Don't you think there is another reason why Linux has very little presence on the deskop? It's just plain not fit for consumer...well, consumer consumption. It's just not good enough in that regard. At least not yet.
Having arrived at this conclusion, I ask myself "why?" One very important answer comes to mind: Linux developers and users (and there's hardly a difference, really) don't want it to become a consumer-ized product. They want, rather, the consumer to become a Linux-nerd. Think I'm exaggerating? A prime example can be had in a comment just a few inches above this one - "GUIs are like diapers - everyone outgrows them eventually."
It is this sentiment that is preventing Linux from moving into the deskop market. Gates' sly dealings with OEMs notwithstanding...I think it's time to admit some of the problem is Linux itself. And the responsibility for that lies squarely at the feet of it's developers.
I've made this prediction time and time again in these forums and here I go one more time - "One day someone will make a Linux distro that truly is consumer-oriented. That distro will be universally hated by the existing Linux community."
Linux will be forever a server OS and a geek-toy until and unless this changes.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Mother early 70s, father late 60s. Mother never used a computer in her life. Father last used a computer when it was essential you knew octal. They have been using NT4.0 on a Celeron for 2 years now. They have had 1 blue screen and 1 virus in two years. I get perhaps one application support call every couple of months.
When they initally requested a PC I thought about installing Linux on it, but discarded that thought PDQ; reasons below.
Their requirements are limited: Office, printing, e-mail and browsing and an occaisional bespoke app. Stability will not be an issue on such a simple NT4.0 machine.
They live in a rather under-populated part of Wales. If something goes wrong with their PC and they need to get help, the nearest places offering support are a rather poor quality independent retailer with no experience of Linux and Dixons!
Once a week they travel to a sixth form college that runs computer courses for the general public. Needless to say these are aimed at Windows users and cover the use of Office applications. If they have problems with their PC their tutor is familiar with Windows and can offer advice. If they were using Linux there would be no such courses to help them. An interesting additional side-effect is that these courses have become part of their social life and they look upon them as a form of entertainment as well as a source of education.
All of their friends are using Windows. They have on occaision picked up tips from them. If they were using Linux they would have no such local peer support.
My father does work for the local national park and other environmentally active organisations. These organisations develop their own software for certain projects - erosion monitoring, biodiversity monitoring and footpath maintenance - and it is, without fail, only available to run under Windows.
The local newsagents stock a plethora of Windows orientated magazines aimed at all levels of PC user, but not a single Linux title.
The preceding line was intentionally left blank.
I told my wife: "Windows is something they torture me with at work and I'm not putting up with it here. You want Windows? That's fine but when it breaks I'm not fixing it." To her credit, she is intelligent enough to grasp the concept of things like "spyware", "EULA", "copy prevention" and be offended by them. It really wasn't a hard sell. We run Debian now.
She complained about the spams we've been getting lately so I added Spamassassin to the machine. That won a few points for me too.
Interestingly, though I meant for this argument to be pro-Linux, it looks a lot more pro-Mac. :) Linux window managers should stop emulating MS Windows so damned much. I use the command line, and the computer semi-illiterate don't know how to use MS Windows anyway.
You know, that's a really good point. I've been lusting after a mac, but just can't afford one (to the specs I would want). Currently I'm running Mandrake w/ KDE, but I'm really not completely satisfied with it. And the main reason I want a Mac is for the OS. If there was a distro (or whatever) that mimics MacOSX, I'd use it in a heartbeat.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
October 2001, my mother asked me to build her a Linux system. I tried to talk her out of it, explaining that she'd have to re-learn how to use it. Her response? "If I can learn Windows, I can learn Linux." I explained that I wouldn't be able to fix it if it got messed up (I lived in a different state at the time). Her response to this one was, "I know it won't mess up as much as Windows does."
She got a Mandrake box for Christmas.
I mean, come on, how can someone fuck up a desktop with only a fluxbox menu showing "web browser" "word processor" "shut down computer" and "my documents" ...
;)) and perhaps some kind of im so they can reach me if online.
and of course, dyndns so i can do support with ssh if needed, browser - mozilla, openoffice for word processing (don't think i can get my parents to use TeX yet
There have been a lot of posts about how many /.er's moms ARE running GNU/Linux, but they have geeks to support them over email, telephone, and SSH. The avererage mom, or computer user for that matter, doesn't.
An idea came to me: What if GNU/Linux geeks "adopted" about five gnubies to support? They could use SSH, chat, or maybe even telephone, helping gnubies! And when the "adopted" gnubies got good enough, they would no longer need help, and might even help others. A chain reaction to help the widespread use of free software? That'd be cool.
Both of our computers work well. Of course my mother who got her computer from the Chasids down on Central Avenue has a sweet machine. I 233mhz pentium (1 or 2). Mine is a 200mhz Pentium I ordered from Gateway.
She is a way more conservative user than I am, no heavy duty web surfing, fewer greeting cards, much less pop up infested crap, fewer spam pits to dodge though she did fall into Send4Fun. I keep a three ring circus going on this machine. Still Adaware run several weeks ago revealed only a handful of cookies. I'll be running it three or four times a year. I also use web based email (I avoid Outlook like the plague) that does NOT open attachments, and I see a ton of infected mail. I run virus protection software on this machine as well. I have yet to see it detect a virus. Crap avoidance takes a pair of sharp eyes. I think my mother has those.
My mother seems even better at repelling crap than I am. Arthritis in her shoulder is partly to blame. She cacn't do heavy duty online time. She had a color printer but decided that since the black ink that was all in one cartridge with the colors used up first, to switch it only to black. Arghhhhh..... She loves doing her taxes on her machine and online banking.
I told her my machine was for fun and not for
ugly money things like this. We are so philosophically apart on how to use our machines that I would make one heck of a poor support person.
My mother's computer support came through colleagues at work when she was working and more
recently through her boyfriend and through people she meets when she volunteers to do taxes. My mother loves machines and all things practical so her computer works and is well cared for. I'm a social butterfly whose been around the block a few times so my machine is also well cared for.
I just wish my mother would learn that sometimes it's better to pay market price and get good service. She has a time limited ISP and is thinking she's getting a bargain. For a few dollars more, I told her she can get all she can eat internet and on very good backbone. In the Northeast my provider rents some of the finest lines I've ever used.
Of course my mother got all those cheap phone deals and now has four bankrupt phone companies. I am glad I didn't install anything for my mother. All we'd do is fight over support issues. Let her boyfriend handle it, and we all love our PC's. They love us back.
Now if any one can tell me how to teach a mother to learn html. My mother would be superb at it, so would my dad for that matter.
Please visit ZOID CITY Community and Community Competition http://www.zc2zc3.st
is the day i pack them off to the local Lizard Ranch (aka retirement home). I despise AOL with a passion. Between the credit card fraud they inflict on their customers (aka billing after an account is canceled), their cynical marketing of AOL as a child safe isp when in fact AOL is the one of the largest child molester in existance. Any self respecting geek should forbid family members from using AOL.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
It only took four calls to get that installed. And now that he has MS Flight Combat Simulator, all hope of installing Linux on my parents' overpowered machine have gone up with the proverbial blue smoke.
-Scott Hutton
Let's see. My money's on the devil.
Linux: It's not your mother's OS.
I've been buying Macs for my folks for 15 years. They never call. Must be working.
Why even do that much?
Use one of those nice temp dns services, and you just ssh to mymom.dyndns.org or something like that. Check out www.dyndns.org and see what they offer.
Set up a script on the linux box that updates the dyndns entry every time it connects, and you don't even have to ask mom to read anything off the screen. And you don't ahve to worry about your own typos when she reads the numbers out either.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Because moms are female, and females tend to be tech handicapped.
They can't change tires, fix computers, repair plumbing, etc, etc...
That's the way it is.
Get used to it.
This is quite possible, especially for a pre-installed system sold through a mass-market retailer. You know what the hardware is, and add-ons will be USB or FireWire. Few users will ever open the box. That's all you really have to support in those low-end Linux boxes.
Microsoft Office.
She's a professor at a univeristy, and as such, frequently writes proposals, grants, papers, et cetera. Since the entire department uses Word for papers and Power Point for presentations, she's stuck.
I figure that i could easily switch her over to linux given the chance. I get at least 5 phone calls a week for some type of computer related problems just for windows, so any support i would have to do for linux would be more or less equivalent.
Unfortunatley, because of the lack of a really good, 100% compatable office suite for linux, I'm stuck feeding her microsoft habit.
----
One of us needs to stick ones' head in a bucket of ice water.
- Hobbes
It would definitely make remote diagnosis of problems a lot simpler. Instead of "What does it say now?" it would be "Just a second; I'll log in and check it out."
I bet there are a ton of moms running Linux. If you're a Linux mom reply to this thread!
Maybe it's because Linux is harder to use and much less useful for most people than windows.
Sig is taking a break!
Now, of course they want to hook up their digital camera and an all-in-one scanner/printer, so there could be some challenges ahead.
... one thing about Free Software is that 5 year old peripheral will still be supported, years after Microsoft has dumped all support of it on their OS).
... in fact she has come to detest her Windows box at work). She uses openoffice, mozilla, kmail, xmms, and isn't afraind to type a few commands I wrote down for her at the command line when she wants to watch a movie using mplayer.
Their scanner may or may not work, but their digital camera should be just fine. It is important that they know not to go buying hardware until they are certain it works with Linux...they wouldn't buy a Mac scanner and expect it to work with windows (indeed, they wouldn't by an older, used scanner and expect it to work with the current crop of windows XP would they
gphoto2
Also, if you find they want to hook up an ieee1394 video camera, that will work as well (ieee1384 drivers, dvgrab or, better yet, kino).
My mom is also running GNU/Linux (and loves it
Most of our parents who dealt with computers at all prior to 1995 had to contend with DOS at one time or another, so if they are made aware that the occasional criptic command is available if they need it (but not required if they prefer using a GUI), and you're willing to sit down with them, show them how it works, and write down the command they need to use, all but the illiterate of the illiterate will be fairly comfortable with that.
Add to that the lack of worms, viruses, crashes, and unpredictable, erratic behavior that so plagues microsoft platforms and you end up with a very happy camper indeed.
Being able to fix any issues in 5 minutes via an ssh link, rather than spending an hour on the phone talking them through a cranky winddows gui to fix their video (or whatever) doesn't hurt either. In fact, I haven't had a call for help in almost a year...because her system just plains works, day in and day out.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I agree.
My mom won't use Linux. She's finally gotten a good grasp on Outlook, has loads of Actual Applications that are Windows based for the business she's in. She takes her laptop to work and docks it into her network. It all works for her.
This essay was by someone who seems to have A) a mom with a lot of free time and minimal computing requirements, and B) plenty of their own free time to babysit their mom's OS.
The thought of putting my mom on Linux is insane. Crap articles like this are truly inane, irrational, clearly the work of someone with very little insight into the real world of users and users habits.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Then they complained that they want to sleep early, so I set up an account, gave it shutdown capability and then I can ssh into the machine to shut it down. So now my mom don't even need to bother to wait for the login prompt to appear.
The better question question is:
why isn't everyone (especially your Mom!) using a Mac?
Just think if Apple replaced WinTel, the power of the hardware they'd have (economics of scale) and quality of OS (I've always wondered why is it that so many people use Windows and it's still the buggiest program in the world?)
Linux is great for servers, but what else? It sucks. Hehe coming here at Slashdot to insult Linux. It's obvious I'm from the Mac web.
But for a home PC, for internet apps and what not, nothing beats a Mac for "easy." and that seems to be all people really want!
Linux is not "easy." Windows is, until there is a problem, or the user doesn't do EXACTLY what the All-Powerful-All-Knowing M$ Wizard(TM) wants you to. So, Windows isn't easy either.
I wish more people used Macs. With BBEdit, REALBasic, Cocoa, the Terminal, the dev tools, fink, Tenon's iTools (X11 in Aqua!) and Darwin, it's got the NIX side covered, with Aqua it's got "easy" covered. The best OS in the world, right?
A good point was raised about SSHing into a PC to fix it remotely. Gee, the UNIX way. The Mac way? Apple Remote Desktop (Network Assistant in OS 9) You can still SSH and do other CLI stuff, and hey even use vi (how sad) but with OS X, *anyone* can become a power user. Including your Mom. Guaranteed she'll like that=)
> Is there a reason for them to switch to Linux, given they already have something that basically works?
Yes there is.
As you said, Linux would do what they need, and would be just as easy to use, so there is no downside.
But on the upside, Linux, and Linux applications, would:
- Protect them from viruses.
- Prevent them from breaking their own system.
- Protect them from random, unexplained breakdowns of the OS.
- Protect them from shifting, secret file formats, that could cause them to lose access to their data.
- And so on.
Plus, when they are using Linux, it provides advantages for you:
- You get fewer "something's wrong" phone calls.
- You don't have to keep reinstalling their OS.
- You don't have to keep cleaning viruses off their system.
- If they ask you to make a change, you can do it remotely, using Webmin.
- And so on.
When you come right down to it, the biggest advantage is peace of mind -- both for you and your parents.
But let's not forget all the money you'll save on future upgrades, and on not having to buy any new software to set up automated backup scripts, videoconferencing between you and your parents, and a hundred other things.
Honestly I had the same problem, and some of my friends & family member too. Those who don't know jack on PC are fine off with Linux *pre-instaleld* on their PC. As long as everything is shut down correctly and they only use their app everything is fine.
The Problem comes when a moderate user updating its driver, changing its hardware, adding printer/networking stuff/changing ISP, adding applications. The learning curve is too high and the problem resolution stuff is far too complicated.
And since there seems to be a lot of "sons" which are moderate user and not "power-linux-geek-it-programmer", they won't install Linux on their mom computer either...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
She happens to like VMS...especially the versioning features
---
"Ignorance is not OK, folks.".
;)) drive it.
Ignorance is OK because of different domain of competence. I can't make a car out of piece, I can't repair it, but I can ("barely"
People can use computer, only when it boils down to find solution to problems they have difficulty. That is what I call the "lowest common denominator".
The moms above mentionend would have AS MUCH problem finding SOLUTION to technical difficulties with Linux, Mac or Windows. Even more to Linux because if their Son is not tech savy, they are out of luck. (did you try recently to browse in howtos to find a solution?).
There is a difference between being Tech-savy and knowing a lot of the innard of your system, and being "tech savy" but in reality only knowing how to "drive your pc" and install new driver, new application. Most people belong to the second category. And this is fine because its not their job to know how their PC function. Their job is only to drive them.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Why Linux isn't ready for the desktop" by Ilan Volow
Case in point:
I was at a restaurant with some of my lug members. I won't name names, the city, or any specifics (so I don't have to pay the price of my criticism at next week's meeting). In my home town, there is a very, very big linux distribution company. Everyone has heard of its distribution and many, many people use it. There are a number of programmers who work at this company who are also lug members, and at the restaurant, I got into a discussion with one of them about the distribution's installer and why I thought its UI was so poorly designed (after the conversation, I found out he wrote most of it. Boy, I felt stupid). Now, this installer is revered by many to be easy enough for your grandmother to use, but I counted a good 15 or 20 usability errors.
As a little bit of background, I as studying to be a UI designer (and a damned good one at that). I can give you the professional opinion that many of these errors involve simple, "duh" kind of stuff. The problems were things like ambiguously labeled check boxes and radio buttons. Or widgets laid out in ways that users do not naturally progress in. In some of the worst cases, the widget layout conveyed information so badly that it could confuse a user into not being able to start up in X (very important for newbies and secretaries). The most annoying error was a modal dialog that obscured information outside the dialog that was pertinant to making choices inside the dialog. The only way to refer to the information outside the dialog was to close the dialog, look at the information, and then re-enter it. All these problems are things that would be easy to change (just modifying/adding 300 lines of code at max). And making these changes would not involve creating stupid talking paperclip avatars or wizards that insult the intelligence of power-users and inhibit their progress. Making these changes would simply add greater clarity to performing the procedures involved in installation, and would allow both power user and grandma to navigate more efficiently and effectively. Real Ease-Of-Use (as opposed to Microsoft Ease-of-Use) is not about wiping the user's ass, it's about not kicking it. But despite the ease of changing the UI code and the benefits it would bring, I seriously doubt this linux distribution company will ever see these problems as problems and make the necessary changes. And I'm certain the programmer I talked to probably wouldn't, either. And probably no one in the linux community will step forward and make the changes, since they all think this distribution's installer is the greatest thing since sliced bread just because it's graphical. And because they can use their linux expertise to get around the most confusing parts of this installer's UI.
Back to my conversation with the guy who wrote the installer, when I mentioned several of the problems I listed above, he still couldn't understand what was wrong with it. "You don't think it's pretty enough?" he asked. I think that moment, more than anything else, defines why Linux just isn't making as much progress on the desktop as it should be.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Now one could ask oneself, what would such a story read like with a Mom-compatible Unix rather than something lacking fit, finish and finesse?
care to offer a solution instead of being a dick, fuckface? Hello?!!!? Linux is and experimental and educational operating system?? I can't continue. I am not worthy of your genius.
I'd say Linux is perfect for moms. Why?
./configure && make install.
/, but I doubt they will even try).
1. You can setup a Linux installation for them. They don't have to install it themselves. Remove all icons and put a few icons on the desktop/panel. That's all they'll use.
2. Moms and dads (and grandmothers) don't install software. They just use what's installed already. So they won't get in trouble with RPMs and
3. The permissions ensure that they can't mess with the system, so the computer will never break (unless they find out how to use the root password to get into a console and do rm -Rf
All the common "Linux is not ready for the desktop"-arguments do not apply here. Mom doesn't use the Control Panel, she doesn't care about the resolution, she doesn't install software, etc.
I put my parents behind Linux. All they do is browse the Internet anyway. So I made a password-less account for them and when they doubleclick on their icon in gdm, Galeon and sawfish launch automatically. If I put them in Windows, they will get confused by the start menu and the icons on the desktop and the tray.
"I'm surprised noone as modded you as "troll" yet."
He wasn't modded down as troll because he's right. Why would she install RPMs? Why WOULDN'T she? Face it, you build your mom a Linux box, and she's stuck with whatever you gave her. She cannot go to the store and buy new apps. At best she could get them on-line. So either she learns how to do RPM's, or she doesn't add anything to her computer.
Haven't you noticed all the times people have to use the phrase "All she really needs..." in order to explain their ability to use Linux as her OS? Don't you see a problem with that?
Maybe her computer is Ok after all (at least, no more broken that usually). Maybe she just doesn't see you often enough and just found this cool pretext to phone you regularly and hear your voice. You asocial geek, turn off your computer and go visit your relatives, somtimes.
What do you expect from Jamie "Censorship" McCarthy?
I gave my parents a friend's old Pentium for a Xmas present in 2000, as my Mum had several times asked my what this Internet and Email things were about (we have relatives in India and the US and my parents like to travel a lot by camper throughout Europe, there are lots of good resources on the on the Web naturally). :-/ Then they let it just sit there for abaout half a year and I thought, well, experiment failed. Then, in May '01, my parents visited a computer course for senior citizens at a local school. Amazingly my Mom got very fast the hang of it (she said after the second course day "Well, it's not THAT difficult and that guy (the teacher) doesn't have a real clue anyway, so we'll just go on by ourselves !" :-) ) and has been happily surfing the Web, emailing and writing stuff on the computer since then.
The first thing they did was buy a cover, so that it couldn't get dusty.
I considered several times putting Linux on her machine, especially as it is as said an old, slow Pentium running Win95. But in the end I decided to leave her the '95. Reason ? She enjoys using multimedia stuff she sometimes gets from the local library or on the Web like Web postcards and the like, and as she is surfing the Web a lot she constantly encounters Web sites not very usable without IE. I don't think she would appreciate it very much if the stuff she gets from the library won't run any more (because it's Linux), her Web pages look funny or don't work (because it's Linux) etc.pp. (I think you get the idea).
I can only applaude the several posters that said before that people like our parents usually use their computer not for it's own sake like a lot of us do but as a tool. This even more applies in my experience to our parents than to not very computer literate friends of our own age.
You really don't want to have to explain 'Enter root password' and ask which device is the problem after a power failure (yes, it's not hard, but it gives a bad impression).
I dont ever want to see debug/status text on by default.
is -debug so hard?
.... but only because she runs FreeBSD.
:)
She's retired, but it has to be said that she isn't running BSD because of me - she chose and installed it herself... she used to be a *nix systems admin
Apple truly does make their machines and OS extremely easy to use for a beginner. An OSX user never has to see the console or a command line. The hardware is of generally very good quality (my old powertbook has been running for three years now without one problem ever.).
Stupid
And how hard is that? Fire up red-carpet, click subscribe on the channel you want, mark the software she wants and click install...
Or download it and double-click on the rpm (your dist should have a gui rpm handler installed).
It's not harder than windows. Unless you make it so.
My Mum plays Frozen Bubble and a bunch of card games under Linux Mandrake 8.2 every night after work. She loves the cool games and the reliability of Linux - our computer locks up all the time under Windows XP but never under Linux.
my mom can barely type on the keyboard and hit the print button with accidently getting out of her element (getting mixed with different windows, accidently changing the font/size of text). The littlest things can scare moms and your asking them to abandon all and try a different OS. If virtual memory is that much of a problem then please mom by throwing in an extra 128megs and telling her to hit the reset button. Trust me, thats the option that should be taken.
If only we could get mozilla working we could switch our moms over to ps2 linux.
It's cheap, it fits in their living rooms (mine keeps complaining about the grey box) and with Linux it's up to the task of checking mail and surfing the web. Let's equip this baby with a usb-printer and we're set...;-) If only...
cu,
Lispy
Never ever show Gentoo/Slackware/Debian to your family and tell them "That's Linux".
.deb files for download, but then you'll still be stuck with the dependancy problem.
From their point of view (it's very important to try to see things from their point of view), that 'Linux' thing is like Windows: one single thing, set in stone. It is not obvious to them that there as many kinds of Linux as there are types of needs to fulfill.
If you're gonna evangelize your family, FIRST tell them that your Linux is geeky because you wanted it so, but that if you were to install them a Linux of their own on their computer, you'd choose an easy-to-use version. Success stories with, say, Mandrake, abound: I switched my girlfriend from Windows to Mandrake and she's very happy with it.
Do NOT try to convince them to use your Slackware/Gentoo/Debian. You'll scare them off.
On the other hand, it can go a long way if you make them an account on your machine, add plenty of links on the desktop so that they never have so see a command-line, and then let them play around with KDE, PySol (a *great* solitaire game that many moms seem to love), Konqueror (or Mozilla, or Opera), Open Office, etc. It also helps to use the Redmond theme at the beginning, so that they feel 'at home'. Also be sure to tell them that the system is secure, and they CAN'T mess it up even if they tried to. You can even try to explain them the concept of privilege separation, if you feel able to put it in simple words.
It worked pretty fine for me. My family knows that 1) my computer is geeky because I wanted it so, but Linux is much more versatile than that; 2) The desktop (KDE) is pretty fine and sleek, and easy to use; and 3) There are lotsa nice apps.
Result: my dad is gonna get a new computer soon, and he told me he wants to remove the mandatory preinstalled XP, and put a 98 (that's what he's used to) AND a Linux.
This said, there's still a major usability issue with Linux, the way I see it: there's still no easy way to install new software. When my girlfriend wanted to install the Psi instant manager, I couldn't get her to install it herself. It was too complicated to hunt for the right lib RPMs and everything.
We must design a non-centralized, click-and-install way to package Linux software. And no, RPM doesn't cut it: if you try to install some stuff that wasn't packaged for your distro, or you don't have the right lib installed, or whatever, it'll often fail. Portage and apt-get don't cut it either: they're centralized things, and there's thus no easy way for the amateur software developper to, say, offer his software for download on his Web page. Well, you can put
I've started working on it, but it's an extremely tricky problem, because, due to the nature of Linux, we can make no assumption about what libs are installed. Anyone wants to contribute ideas?
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I've installed both MS-Windows (3.x, 9x, NT and 2k), some of them multiple times and on multiple different boxes, and I've installed various versions of Linux on different boxes. Personally, MS-Win has given me every bit as much grief as has Linux. Sometimes more. The only thing, and this is a biggie, that has consistently given me more trouble, much more trouble, on Linux than MS-Win is getting X going. That really needs to be fixed.
I'll also concede that installing new apps after-the-fact is easier for the non-techie on MS-Win than on Linux. Unless, of course, something goes wrong and trashes MS-Win's registry. Then you're really hosed. And it does happen.
Personally, if mom were going to be a new user, I think I'd tend to lead her to a Mac. Depending on what she wanted to do: maybe Linux second.
My mom didn't install Linux. She wouldn't be able to do it. And she didn't install Windows either.She wouldn't be able to do it.
Because I'm the neighborhood's computer guy, I get plenty of pleas for help with people's computers when they 'break'. Guess what? They're all running Windows, and people are still stuck when it doesn't work. Heck, once I had to install a printer for a friend of my father's, which was as easy as: 1) plug it in the USB port; 2) it's done, it works. And yet the guy wouldn't do it himself.
Now, don't take me wrong: there are several serious usability problems with Linux (mainly: X is a bitch to configure, and there's no simple click-and-install software installation system -- see my other post about this). But for someone who wouldn't try to install software or change the configuration (which means, for the most clueless users), Linux does work pretty fine.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
There is no way that anyone with the computing skills of your mom (i.e., none) can hope to get Linux into a state where they can do anything they consider useful with it.
But she could get Windows to such a state?
Repeat after me:
Normal people do not install operating systems.
Normal people do not install operating systems.
Normal people do not install operating systems.
Computer people set all this stuff up either at a OEM vendor's lab or at the user's home, and they make sure that normal people don't have to do anything but turn on the power. That's how it's done with Windows, that's how it done with Mac, that's how it done with the ATM at the bank, and that's how it has to be done with Linux.
Talking about normal people setting up their own computers is pointless, because they don't do it any more than they do a brake job on their car. They simply use the thing and call an expert when anything complex needs to be done. I've received enough of these calls to know.
There may be reasons that out-of-the-box Linux distros are not ready for prime time, but this is not one of them.
Very true post. The original article was so one-sided it's ridiculous. Linux is complicated. That's a fact. And another very important detail no one seems to remember is that linux has no tech support, unlike windows. Instead of buying $70 on a new hard drive, how about buying some tech support from red hat or whatever? And all this "mom" stuff is a bit sexist, in my mind.
Read the headers, and log in. The other way is to try to guess the IP number. Most dial-ups have a pool of numbers that are assigned based on the POP they dial into. Finger her login at those numbers till you find the right one. It doesn't take that long. When I want to talk to my parents on the phone and their line is busy, I log in to there machine, shutdown PPP, and make my call.
Ugh.
If anyone has any suggestions please please post. I have found some info on he problem I'm receiving with ISCAN "Can not send comand to scanner", but have been unable to resolve. The scanner shows up on USB bus.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
At least one, although my story hasn't been posted yet.
=)
-B
She couldn't understand winshit, so I installed icewm(the computer only has 40mb of ram), and basic software. She has had no trouble with it.
:).
Whenever it needs a new program, I can fix it remotely through ssh(the second most important program, IMHO, for internet communication, just behind telnet
Linux, like UNIX, was designed to be easy for the casual user, and powerfull for the advanced one.
NOW WTF CAN'T I RUN ZSH AS ROOT IN OPENBSD!?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
My mom runs Solaris.
Windows XP has a very cool thing called 'Remote Assistance', which is quite VNC-like. Using such a system you could go through the problem with your Mum/Dad/Brother/Sister/Son/Daughter/Friend on their screen while they watch - and it includes built-in voice communication so you can talk them through it while you do it, if they're using the internet on their only landline.
No need to go anywhere.
rmdir ~/Desktop/Trash
It's quick and dirty, and the folder (and hence the icon) will be recreated every time you start KDE.
As I don't put any icons on my desktop, I also did 'chmod ug-w ~/Desktop' to keep things the way I want them.
Board games [link to monopd and Atlantik] under Linux work
But because they're not Hasbro brand, they can't use the exact copyrighted look of the Hasbro boards. For instance, Hasbro may be able to win a lawsuit against somebody who uses the exact layout of the shortcuts on the Candy Land board or on the Chutes and Ladders board in a free clone.
Unfortunately, you live with a brandist. Brandists are people who claim that anything that doesn't carry the original brand must be inferior. As cuyler wrote in this comment: "And the final note, whatever scrabble game you'd find for linux might the the most amazing thing in the world but it's missing one thing. It's not Hoyle. It doesn't matter."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Mom's using Linux? When are you people going to get it through your thick skulls that LINUX IS JUST NOT FOR REGULAR DESKTOP USERS.
Dear God! just give it up already!
What do I expect from mccarthy? I expect a new pose. That hello.jpg pic on the goatse page is getting old.
My parents are both using FreeBSD. My mom mostly plays games on the very old (dual) Pentium-100MHz. Vanilla X11 with twm and the Netscape-4.x are great.
My father is using Applix' Office suit on his old (dual) PentiumII-200MHz...
He also listens to a few European radio station, which broadcast in Ukrainian and Russian over the Internet (BBC, Radio Liberty, Doiche Welle (surely missspelled, sorry, German readers)) using the Linux version of RealPlayer. Netscape-4 and Konqueror are his web-browsers...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
She loves having the ability to run apache for my little brothers soccer team's web site. She also likes being able to send mail to her friends in her bridge club. Thelma flamed her for using pine, but then she switched to mutt and all is OK.
But even Mom has problems from time to time. Once this perl script she wrote to send her friends on her mailing list an email every time she added a new cookie recipie(formatted with LaTex BTW) got out of hand spawning new processes, so she called some real guns: my grandma.
"Normally I would have told you to RTFM", my grandma told her, "but grandpa was feeling frisky this morning, so I'm in a good mood. Here's what you do:
"First, you want to make a file containing a list of all those rogue processes. I normally do something like this:
ps -ef | grep cookierecipe | awk `{print $2}` > killfile
"Now that you've got your list, you simply loop through them in bash and kill each one. Whatdya mean, you don't know how to loop in bash?!! Sigh
for $pid in $(cut -fl -d:/home/mom/killfile; do kill $pid done
"Simple as that"
And, with that, my grandma went back to her knitting, and mom happily got her new cookie recipe out.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Now for my mom, she doesn't know how to fix her car and she should not have to. She bought it to drive from A to B, not to tinker with the stuff under the hood. Sure, some technical knowledge is good (tape up a leaking hose, to make it to the garage etc.) but it's not mandatory to drive a car. In my opinion it means exactly that. Any one person can not be an expert in all possible areas. Why should expertise in "computers"/Linux/BSD/whatever be mandatory? I'm all for some basic knowledge, to be able to make informed decisions. But that does not justify the amount of time needed to get familiar with any of the free Unix-clones.
So, if I'd buy a computer for my mom, it'd probably be a mac. Because it just does what it's supposed to do (or so I'm told).
what would such a story read like with a Mom-compatible Unix [link to Mac OS X] rather than something lacking fit, finish and finesse?
There would be a difference, and it would be about four hundred U.S. dollars. A low end PC with Windows XP Home Edition installed costs $700, while a low end Macintosh computer with Mac OS X 10.1.x installed costs $1100 (eMac base model). Many families cannot financially justify such a difference.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The above should be modded up to +5 Hooray!
because she doesn't have a computer.
And that makes you what, Alex? Pussy little high school faggot from MASCO that thinks he's some big-time Slashdot flamer? You're a flamer, alright -- the self portrait you love to link to so much proves that.
...because you will just hear her say:
.sxw file...?"
... at least those are a few reasons why I don't use Linux.
"Why can't my friend Janis open that document I sent her, she says it's an
"Why don't I have root priveleges?"
"Where did I put that file?"
"What's usr (pub, dev, mnt, etc.)?"
"It said I just needed to double-click on that RPM file; where is it now?"
"So first I type './configure,' and then I type 'make'... or is it 'install' and then... Why can't I just double-click it?"
Firstly, it should not take 2 competent computer literate (not to mention highly knowledgable) guys to install and configure a Linux box. The time it took us would have paid for Win2k in loss in income only.
Ignoring this, we forged ahead to do the "right thing". We got email and dial-up working with effort. (Next time this will be easier... the docs were misleading and out of date - I will not go into detail, it's besides the point)
It was all on a newly purchased PC, thus the hardware was pretty well supported.
Now after 2 weeks of harrowing use, we wiped Linux and installed Win2k.
Firstly I would like to state that it was not Linux at fault... RH7.3 was a pretty good installation. The problem was that the most important sites needing to be visited were IE specific... Netscape 6 did not work, neither did Mozilla, Konquerer, Opera etc.
It's a sad story... but it's true... IE is killing Linux. Where Games, Windows2000, MS Office has failed, IE will triumph.
-sigh-
don't tell me we're gonna start seeing some "your momma's so fat, she uses Windows cuz it's more bloated than her"
:-)
Quck and easy way to locate all the linux-geeks in the room
Geeks, My mom is actually using Linux because I'm living in a different country. So she didn't want the machine to crash and to get a new virus. So install linux a month before i went out home, and after that everything is running perfect.
Is just a problem of customization and previous analysis.-
Cheers!!!
My mother's running Linux via the NIC padded cell system.
It works reasonably well; the hardware is trailing edge, but you don't need blazing chips to run a web browser...
What you've said here is very interesting. Why can't we have a list of dependancies that is used by a, something like gnutella, client that searches the web for the missing libraries, and installs them, recursively ofcourse.
This would be a great boon, if all the developers needed to do was create a dependancy list, and then the client would use this list to determine if the computer has the needed files and if not search a p2p network for what is needed. Once everything that was needed had been gathered the program could be installed.
To get into what I'm thinking I want you to pull out your inner newbe.
Now you think newbies want user friendly GUI systems?
Really?
What is "user friendly" to a newbie? what is "gui" to a newbie?
They are "Complex computer words like mouse keyboard and on switch"
What do newbies want?
They want a computer to go on the Internet with. They want e-mail.
Go into a computer store. Your a newbie.. what do you see?
You see Macs and PCs. No not Windows just Macs and PCs.
Look at the Macs. pritty Macs. Wow. But those pritty Macs are expensive aren't they. Thats a lot of money for a pritty computer.
Your a newbie what do you know of processing power or capabilitys. It's a pritty computer with a big price tag nothing more.
Look at the PCs. Well some are really expensive some are really cheap. But they all seem ok. Some pritty. Some pritty and cheap.
Now a salesmen walks up...
"Why are those so much more expensive?"
"Those are faster store more information and have more memory so your documents can be bigger."
"Wow" Now your getting an idea of what power is. But your already looking at the PCs.. the Macs no longer exist to you.
"But you can always upgrade later.. add memory, bigger hard disk etc"
Ok your transfixed on the cheapest.
"What is Windows?"
Your not going to go away not noticing the big Microsoft Windows logo plastered on the screen.
"Thats the software than runs the computer.
It's very populare and runs all your favoret games and business programms."
Notice not a single mention of "user friendly".
Some times the salesman says "The most populare" but usually they sink back with "a very populare"
But he dosen't mean populare in the same way the user expects.
"Populare" has become market speak for "monopoly".
But the rest of the world expects the majority of it's users to be happy with the product.
If you lissen to tech support and avrage user complaints you'll know thats just not the case.
Can you spot the other misleading half truth?
How about "all your favoret software" not "All the software you need"
or "All they software you'll ever want" but "All your favroet"
your a newbie at this moment in time you have no favoret software so saying a pocket calcuator runs all your favoret software is true..
it runs none at all and thats exactly how much software is your favoret.
You won't have a favoret untill AFTER you get a computer.
So your sold... he asks you some basic questions and helps you get the best computer for your needs.. well the best PC for your needs.
Horray you have a PC.
Think about this. Linux runs mostly on PCs. when we pick a computer to run Linux it's always a PC. Why? Macs and Sun Sparcs are suppereor.
So what are we doing with PCs for servers desktops and game boxes?
Simple... PCs are the best price for the money. Piriod.
My idea of how to really move Linux into the consummer market is to make a new computer system.
We've already proven Linux runs nearly anyplace so now just design a whole new consummer platform system.
First issue is cost over speed. Use the Amiga method. Use co-processors for everything so the computers CPU isn't loaded down with junk.
But go with a CPU that runs on the very low end and very high end.
I'd say Intel but my best suggestion would be to work with Transmeta and IBM to build a new processor for the task.
One that has an ultra low end version to ultra high end version. The low end is the cheapest and the first released.
Open the basic system (Not the CPU) for commertal reproduction.
The CPU and chips are all closed but can be obtainned from IBM or Transmeta partners.
The key of the low end version is also cheaper memory chips.
Build it ground up to be both expandable and user friendly. So I'd say use a cartrage method of adding cards.
Slots in the back and you slide the cards in like cartrages but not when the computer is on..
maybe a safty bar can lock in place when the computer is on to protect the cards from being added or removed.
User friendly interface is a MUST design the hardware with that in mind.
Maybe set it so each card has driver binaries on a rom chip so the card will work automaticly.
BUT... have drivers in the Linux kernel for additional preformence for the expert users.
The preinstalled Linux should have a GUI. The system should have a built in CD rom drive or DVD drive.
It should include a CD or DVD collection of free Linux software for users to install.
It should include a directory of known Linux User Groups offering free trainning.
It should include a self playing CD with a video on it "How to set up your Linux computer"
Just pop the CD and it boots the Linux on the disk and automaticly drops to a secured user account to play a video about how to set things up.
This will solve the problem of not being able to buy new hardware...
While users usually don't buy new hardware anyway becouse it's so hard to install they can at least be sure it works with Windows or Mac Os.
But not Linux.
With a specalised Linux platform they user can buy hardware for that system and know it will work on Linux.
Ferther if the user dosen't have to open the box it's even easier to upgrade than Windows PCs.
Also you'll have to go bribing companys to port software to Linux at first.
To make sure drivers exist you'll also need to put together a "Linux Box" logo program.
Say you name your system "TuxiCom" then you'll have a "TuxiCom certification program" certifying software
and hardware conforms to the TuxiCom standards and can have the TuxiCom sticker.
For hardware you want an open source version of the driver as well as a working binary on rom.
For software you just want to be sure it dosen't do anything dangerous or stupid.
I don't actually exist.
Thank you very much.
/. ...
Yes Mom, you can carry on reading
IANAL but write like a drunk one.