Re: [PLUG] moms and linux

[Jason <jason@nocks.com>]

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On Wednesday 10 July 2002 20H:50, Sean Finney wrote:
> so i've decided to make it a personal mission to convert my mom over to
> path of the enlightened.  she doesn't know a whole lot about computers,
> but she doesn't use them for much either (email, word processing, web,
> et c.).
>

Very cool! Can't wait to hear how this "experiment" goes.

I got my mom one of those thin client web thingies for a Holiday present. She 
had never used a computer before. She likes it. It only lets her browse and 
send email. The biggest downside is that it's Windows based and requires MSN. 
She sometimes gets email about 7 days late or sometimes not at all. I'd 
really like to switch her over to Linux, but am a little reluctant myself.

I'm already the family's local support hotline (who isn't, right?) Sometimes 
it's nice to just say "Call their technical support staff". Unfortunately, M$ 
never really helps her out. I think the whole thing was only like $200-300. 
And, it is truly just about the size of a normal flat panel monitor and the 
keyboard (the motherboard is almost certainly in the back of the flat panel, 
haven't cracked it open, though). Very non-scary for her.

> my plan is to grab, possibly modify, and then burn one of those
> system-on-a-ramdisk cd's, and show her how it would work the same for
> her needs, and then convince her to let me back her stuff up and then
> go to work on her computer.
>

Haven't worked with too many of these. Very interested in what results you 
see.

> unfortunately, i don't know too much about (nor would i consider myself
> a good judge of) user-friendliness of the various desktop environments.
> i'm guessing that i'd be wanting to use something involving either gnome
> or kde, but my experience with both has been more or less "give me
> the xterm".

I've used KDE more than Gnome. KDE definitely seems pretty ready for the 
novice user. I would think that either would be more than sufficient for 
basic web browsing and/or email. Exchanging Word documents is likely to be 
the most troublesome thing. Import/Export filters is definitely a sore point, 
particularly with KWord.

I haven't compared the actual footprints of KDE and Gnome either, but that 
might be a good thing to check out as well. If the needs are real light, some 
of the simpler Window Managers might also serve well with less overhead. I 
haven't used many in quite some time, though (9 years?).

>
> so now i'd like to field any opinions that anyone would like to share
> about user-friendliness for this little endeavor of mine.  distributions?
> desktop environments? window managers? applications?  also if anyone has
> personal experience with any of those system-on-a-ramdisk CD's (I know
> of a few for linux, and one for netbsd), I'd really like to hear what
> you have to say.
>

I'd definitely recommend going with the latest of either (KDE 3 or Gnome 2). 
The usability improves every version. Gnome 1.4 still had some fairly obvious 
usability oversights. The most glaring one is the common file open/save 
dialog. It would trash the filename edit field when you change directories. 
This is supposed to be fixed in Gnome 2.0. This might not be a big problem 
for simply browsing and email, however.

I'm also interested in this project and might try a similar project. Maybe 
this time for the mother-in-law. Possibly a harsher critic, though.

Moms are also an interesting real study in overall usability. No offense to 
the less computer literate fathers out there :) And, no offense to the 
computer literate moms, either. I often here the question, "Is Linux ready 
for the desktop?" Well, let us know how this goes. Personally, I think the 
answer is *pretty much*.

> thanks,
> --sean
>
> ps: i'm cross-posting this to SLUG (swarthmore (college) LUG) and
> PLUG (philadelphia (area) LUG) in the hopes that i get more responses.
> sorry to those who get two messages :)

I'm guessing that I won't see those other messages. Oh well. If this picks up 
steam, I'd be very interested in how this goes.

Good luck,
Jason Nocks
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