UNIX for Moms

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a nifty little article about Linux, but what is interesting is the extremely simple description of free software- it talks about Mom friendly unix, but the best part of this article is that its got a Mom friendly definition of why free software is changing things.

Comments

It's just proof sterotypes are bad.

[BadlandZ]

I don't know... I read it. But I am not convinced about the general point behind the statement.

Analyzing the statement "It's not ready for your mom to use it yet" I think the flaw is not the state of readyness, it's the sterotype of what a mom is.

I can honestly say, an iMac isn't ready for my mom yet, she can't even handle point and click only very well. On the other hand, we see this artical where this "mom" is using NetBSD on a laptop. I think the error is not how ready *NIX is, it's the mistake of sterotyping older women (well, technically, a mom can be a 16 year old female, but let's not go there).

So, I think by using a "mom" criteria, the UNIX community is fooling itself. What really needs to be focused on is the real issues.

• Ease of installation
• Ease of setup/configuration
• GUI "friendlyness"
• Software avaliablity
• Software ease of installation

Where are we now? Well, IMHO, installation and GUI "friendlyness" are moving along just fine. Configuration still has a bit of a way to go (but, setting up IP and modem config on any OS isn't exactly perfect, but that's not an excuse to not make ti better). Software avaliablity is getting there, when Gnome and KDE finish a stable and polished office suite, it will be there. Software installation is still a bear, and one that I think needs a lot of attention, and IMHO I believe the LSB will address that.

So, throw out the "mom" thing, it's a sterotype, and if one were to judge an OS based on a sterotype, we have now read the artical by a "mom" and that would be the end of it. I think there is still a way to go... ;-) But I have no doubt progress has been made, and will continue.

apps for Mothers

[Foaf]

I would imagine that 99% of mothers don't know what an OS is, nor do they want to know.

When I moved cities my mother decided to "learn how to use the computer" so she could keep in touch with me by email.

Mum still doesn't have a clue about how to use windows. Mum wouldn't know a spreadsheet from a paint program. She certainly couldn't tell the difference between RAM and ROM. And forget hooking up a printer or grabbing an image with the scanner.

But Mum does email me at least twice a week. She also hangs out in the gardening forum in Yahoo chat which is one of many bookmarks she visits every day. She has customised IE so that the CNN weather for Dunedin is the default website. And last month my mother installed the shockwave activex control by herself - answering two yes/no questions was pretty tough but she got through it!

My point is that Mum-friendly software doesn't depend on the OS it is running on. As long as the app that Mum uses is simple, easy and does what she expects then she will be happy.

In an ideal world, software could be radically customised depending on the type of user. Net based software could implement this with relative ease. Perhaps that's why Mum likes the net so much?