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GNOME for Grandma
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld colmnist Matthew Newton has written an interesting two part article titled "In Search of Linux for Grandma", in which he shares his thoughts on introducing computers to a 75 year old PC neophyte (through Linux).
He discusses the new spatial Nautilus that he is planning to unleash upon grandma, and quote from the article - "Grandma is never going to learn about "opening a file manager" to "navigate her way" to her documents. They are all going to live in plain view in folders on her desktop. And when she opens them, there won't be any surprises."."
Perhaps one explanation for the poor usability of many open source apps is that while open source may be a great way to engineer software, the lone hacker collaborating via the Internet is ill-equipped to do anything even approaching proper usability testing.
All may not be lost, perhaps a software tool could be written to make such usability testing easier. It could record a user's desktop(perhaps using something like VNC), while also recording their audio commentary on what they are doing.
There should be a distribution that's really straight forward.
During install give the layperson the following menu.
What do you want this computer to do:
( ) Send and Recieve e-mail
( ) Author Documents
( ) Browse the web
( ) Play Music
( ) More options I've missed
( ) Advanced
In the advanced panel there should be "Install Antivirus and Firewall and autoupdater"
automatically checked. (Dear Trolls/Flame-junkies: When linux makes serious dent in the user
market, linux will require AV)
There should be a basic mode and advanced mode interface.
Basic mode should just have the options that were set up during the install.
Advanced mode would allows access to a bash shell and what not.
Both modes should be proactively secure.
One suggestion is that the ability to open dangerous attachments should only be allows
if linked to the use of virus software.
Linux could totally wipe out Windows on all fronts if it had the design philosophy like an ATM:
It performs it's function, and it does it well.
It's an approach i've taken with my mother and the family Windows XP box. I created a custom shell that displayed "Microsoft Word", "Tesco Shopping", "Log Off" buttons.
I have a happy customer.
Simon.
I recently visited my Grandmother, who is quickly approaching 80 years of age. She is *highly* non-technical, and her spouse recently passed away, so she is pretty much on her own (in more ways than one, obviously).
We bought a simple Compaq for her back in the late '90's which was running Windows '98. It was a constant source of consternation and trouble. I spoke with her, and after a little debating, convinced her to 'revolutionize' her computing experience by installing Linux.
This I infact did, putting SuSE on her machine. I told her: "now, just leave the machine on all the time. You can leave the 'internet' window (aka, browser) always open. Be happy!"
Happy she is. While the DE used is actually KDE, the success of her transition goes to show that Linux is ready. In all honesty, I was surprised with the rapidity with which she grew accustomed to her system.
The most advantageous thing about moving her over: no longer are there long stretches of time where she can't email because her computer is on the fritze (she often had to wait for me or her son to visit and correct things). We've been in constant electronic communication since. It's wonderful.
My grandma is running Debian/woody on the machine I setup for her.. I locked most of her config files so that no matter what she does, it will not automaticaly save session information.. so if she messes it up, she can just reboot.
I setup 4 icons for her to click on.. OpenOffice 1.0 (writer), Mozilla, Mozilla Mail, and a button that does a shutdown -h now.. that's it..
I also setup the system with diald, so she doesn't have to figure out how to startup a ppp session.. works great.. she only calls me once a month about "problems with the computer" which always mean, something she forgot, and is doing incorrectly.. like when trying to click with the mouse, highlighting text in OOo, and then typing over the top of whole paragraphs of text.
"grandma, just use the keyboard"
Most humans can't keep upto date with technology as they age, neither should they be required to. I sure as hell will not want to learn Perl 45.0 20 years from now.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Rarely do I come across UIs on the mac that are confusing. Grammas everywhere should be so lucky.
Unless of course, YOU DON'T LOVE YOUR GRAMMA!!!
why make them suffer more over so trivial an issue?
.
While my parents are not as old as yours, they have been retired for a number of years now. About a month ago their win98 machine was due for it's annual fdisk like clockwork! Anyhow my mother asked why she cant try linux. Frustrated by Windows and couldnt understand why i never get p*ssed off with my linux box! I explained that much of her software might not work (the odd thing might run through wine) but she could use linux for her email and web browsing etc.
I tried her with knoppix first to give her a feel for it; evidently she picked it up almost immediately. My dad who is much less savvy has even migrated with no problems.
Anyway eventually I set them up dual booting windows and linux (Mandrake 10). The choice is theirs to make but 90% of the time its sitting there running linux and she just goes into windows to use the Family Tree Program now.
The best part is that from time to time when she goes into windows I hear her muttering about how much she hates windows!
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp