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.

Comments

Are you serious with this question??

[jwiegley]

I've been using Linux since 1991. I've written device drivers under linux and I've adminstered mission critical and e-commerce system based on linux machines. I also have a doctoral degree in computer science...

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...

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.

Re:would you prefer...

[deranged unix nut]

Neither!

I'd prefer to install Windows XP on my mom's computer and use Remote Assistance to show her how I fix the problem so that she can do it herself next time. Remote Desktop Connection, and Remote Assistance make the latest versions of Windows much easier to support from a distance than Linux and they seem to be as stable as linux.

My parents currently run about 50 programs that are not available on Linux. Even if they were available, they use windows at work so it dosen't make sense for them to switch operating systems and applications all of the time.

I still have linux and bsd boxen around, but I have switched *back* to windows after being a unix and OS/2 die hard since suffering from windows 95's crashes.

Leave an icon to this script on her desktop...

[dmaxwell]

/sbin/ifconfig|grep "inet addr">/tmp/ipoutput
gdialog --textbox /tmp/ipoutput 5 70
rm /tmp/ipoutput

# 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!

Still more effort than is needed

[TFloore]

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.