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- ErrandboyOfDoom, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31"I just switched my 55 year old dad to Ubuntu!"
That's great, but is Ubuntu really meant as a substitute family member?
I say this goes too far. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22grabunutu
- btipling, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21I switched to it and my wife thinks it's just like windows. She doesn't understand the difference when I make a big deal out of it, she laughs at me.
- SebastianProoth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17I think thats awesome. Everyone should have access to this stuff!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Deja vu! I just switched my 55 year old dad to Ubuntu on Wednesday!
- sometemple, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12My mom uses Ubuntu. She's almost 60.
- LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19Interesting idea, but when Gran picks up a CD with a game on it (say, a majjong, bridge, or poker game) and can't figure out why she can't play it, I reckon she's gonna be upset.
That said, It's reasons like this article why Linux works for those who just don't care about computing much. It's got all of their basic needs and assuming that nothing breaks after installation, it should be smooth sailing from there on out. - deadfones, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13It's gotta have an extensive crossword puzzle library and a Matlock episode guide to catch on in the 'home scene.
- loginname, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10My 85 year old grandma has been running linux since Mandrake 8.0. The first time I setup linux for her, she was running Mandrake 8.0 with the Oeone frontend which was a type of kiosk mode for linux so she could check email and surf the web and IM.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=oeone
Now she has graduated to running the latest Ubuntu. She has a Microtel PC from walmart.com that came with no OS. It has Ubuntu installed, hooked up to a scan converter to her 36" TV with a wireless mouse and keyboard so she can sit in her recliner and email, surf, and IM. It's really a trip to see her get into it and really use a computer.
Best part about it... when she has trouble, I can VNC or SSH into it from anywhere in the world and help her out! - Knightwise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9True that,
But that is why I used Ubuntu in the first place. It comes with some 150 plus games, enough to keep granma occupied for ages. These older people don't hop from game to game like we do. They sit down on a specific game, play it for days untill they realy get the hang of it and only then move on. And the objective here was also to offer an operating system that would not set gran back a grand in order to buy it and buy all kinds of software for it. - treasonx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I come across a lot of people who have teenagers who are constantly clogging up their windows computers will spyware and what not.. Maybe someone should take on the more daunting task of teenabunutu. Come up with a linux install that will satisfy the average teenage. Most teenagers are heavily into multimedia and file sharing. What type of installation would work and not alienate them from their windows loving counterparts :)
- Knightwise, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You are right, but that would mean buying granny a slightly more powerfull laptop, having her spend 200 euro's on a Windows XP home and then some more money in order to give her all the games she has right now. The objective was also to make it as cheap as possible. And NO i'm not gonna hook granny up with an illegal copy of XP, Imagine the RIAA sueing a 79 year old Belgian Granny for software fraud.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12No sweat, just show Grandma how to configure wine.
- shadowmoses, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Awesome the problem most people have with Linux is that they are so used to Windows, so when you show someone Linux first before anything else they always find it much easier.....
- theonlyvlad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Hah, I guess it's still a hit and miss -- I just installed Ubuntu a week ago and my wireless worked flawlessly out of the box.
But realistically -- if you want to use AOL, you dont need linux. You don't even need windows. You need what Google, or another company, will eventually offer: a small computer with only one app: a web browser, and all apps you would ever want will be run on some server. - jbus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Granny doesn't want viruses and spyware... XP is not an option.
- tactless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6×Haha, DIGG! My grandma used to use Ubuntu, but when she got a new PC, the nVidia driver wouldn't support the onboard card, and she videochats with her son using MSN messenger (he lives abroad, and won't install Linux). She misses Ubuntu like crazy...
I miss it too - everytime someone told me Linux is not user-friendly, I'd tell them to tell that to my grandma :) - livestradamus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Excellent point
PCLinuxOS would be perfect for a teenger fresh out of Windows world. Has KDE by default, all audio/video codecs, downloaders, torrents... perfect for a teen.. or any1 else as a matter of fact.. take a look into it.. - Powerdrift, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Makes me wanna get Ubuntu
- Knightwise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Ok, maybe there is no wireless support here , but If i could insert a pcmcia card with a prism chip set it would work right out of the box. If you look into the ubuntu forums you'll find tons of help to get your card working if it is supported. Now suppose granny does want to go on line : Just add the Firefox icon, the GAIM icon and she would be off. WITHOUT having to worry about spyware, virusses etc.....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Ubuntu Dapper ships for free:
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ - SkeletaLlama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well one of the reasons Ubunutu appeals to me is that I am in "penny pinching mode" because I'm going to be a grad student in a year and I need all the money I can save now. I can't really even afford to go out and spend $50 on a new WiFi card.
- brentcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4not to interrupt any important flame business, but I thought I'd mention to anyone who is interested that there is an app called aMSN for those who want to video chat over MSN on Linux.
- blankartist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ubuntu comes with BitTorrent. E'nuff said.
- dbug, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I just had to check my pinky for imprints...
- juu801, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Around Xmas time I set my grandma up with an old Compaq desktop running Simply Mepis. It has become her solataire machine. She seems to have less probelms with it than my mom does with her HP laptop w/ XP on it.
- trib4lmaniac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We;re currently at version 5.10. 6.06 comes out in 5 days (June 1st).
- pabster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, I'll never understand why these distro's don't implement better networking support right out of the box.
For example, my wireless nets are all WPA2 encrypted. The only distro I found that worked with this right out of the box - no wpa_supplicant ***** to configure, et al - was SuSE 10.1. Ubuntu, among others, requires you to write a config file, load up wpa_supplicant, pray that it can connect, and then I even had to issue a dhclient to the wireless interface for it to get a damn IP address. Very disappointing.
Broadcom seems to be troublesome, but SuSE 10.1 works right out of the box with the Broadcom Gigabit in my Dell 9300. - spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Meh PCLinuxOS, just Mandriva with a different skin"
I hope you're being sarcastic. I really do. - PeppinoUsuraio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3My grandmother uses debian testing ^__^
- terminalspin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Oh this is just silly - everyone knows that Grandma uses BSD.
- EpicCrusadr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You just went way too far there.
- jbus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Most, if not all nvidia cards are supported in ubuntu & you can chat on MSN with Gaim.
- brownspank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"He switched him TO ubuntu, not FOR ubuntu. "for" would mean he replaced him with ubuntu, "to" means he made him use ubuntu."
Perhaps if you put down your funny shield... - gekkokid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2My grand parents asked me to sort out a basic pc so they could use email, read the news, write letters and purchase stuff, i created a mini-itx system and installed ubuntu, they are really happy and have had no problems at all with it,
- SkeletaLlama, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3This actually helped me out with Ubuntu. I installed a few weeks ago and haven't used it since because the game selection was minimal and nothing would tell me how to get media like DVDs playing on it. His explanation is nearly infinitely less complicated than a lot of Linux help pages make it out to be. I figured it must be easy but for some reason Linux "help" pages make everything nearly impossible to follow by using terminology a newbie to Linux isn't going to be familiar with yet.
If I could only find a replacement antenna for my PC's WiFi card which broke off I could have Ubuntu up and running on the net and get rid of Windows forever! I'm so close! - blankartist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I've tried Fedora Core, Knoppix and Mandriva. None of them could get the bootloader installed properly. Then just yesterday (odd timing) I installed Ubuntu. Why? Because it worked flawlessly AND recognized my Wacom tablet right from the start. But I'm suspecting when Google releases their Linux distro and crushes Windows, I'll use that.
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Exactly.. It's not computer-illterate people who have a problem with linux.. It's people who have used Windows (Even a small ammount), and are used to it.. Ubuntu (And others) are fine for basic stuff, or if you know a lot about linux.. But inbetween that your kind of screwed, and theres a few things (Like webcam support in MSN, for example) missing that could either not be an issue (For someone who's hardly used a computer before), but to others that could be a large reason not to bother..
Same thing with drivers.. If you have a peice of hardware that works with Linux, great, it works with no fiddling.. But if it doesn't work (I had this problem with a TV card), it gets very very hard to make it work (lots of searching around, configuring, compiling software/drivers etc), compared to Windows where most of the time it involves wiping out the old drivers, and downloading a program of the manfuactures site and running it..
Buut, for grandparents (And in some cases parents), Linux is great.. Install Firefox, Thunderbird, VNC-server and SSH (to help/fix remotely), and that would cover 90% of grandparent-ish computer use
- Ben - LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Until it has a link to myspace on the desktop, teens won't adopt Ubuntu in mass.
- pabster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2PCLinuxOS... Meh. Just Mandriva with a different skin.
I actually thought Puppy Linux had the most 'Windows XP'-esque interface. - raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vlad, AOL isn't merely a web interface for simpletons.... it's a gated community that many people, especially new computer users and seniors, are dependent upon.
Yes, you and I hate the chat rooms where just showing up is enough to get you on every spammer's mailing list, and wouldn't be caught dead in their retarded version of web forum software, but millions of people aren't ready to give up the friendships and support networks they've built on AOL. I think AOL knows this, and so it'll be a while before we see those communities available to non-subscribers, if ever.
I weaned my parents off of AOL a few years ago (when they bumped the price up to $25 a month that helped a lot...) and have gotten other people off of it too, but to think AOL is merely an easy interface to the web misunderstands AOL's roots and what few core competencies it has left. - asshopo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It's funny that this article comes the day after I install Ubuntu on my laptop to determine if it's going to be good for my kids to use on their computers. I was getting frustrated by trying to get NickJr.com and their other favorite websites to work. The 3 commands to install automatix made my choice for me. I can now get rid of the nagging WinXP bitching about the "free" copy of windows on their machines :).
- jamester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I digg this. I have tried Linux a good many times over the years, and have pretty much given up on it. However - Ubuntu thrown on my old Dell Inspiron 3800 runs great (albiet slow). There's some quirks I need to get used to, and a hulla-lot I need to learn, but it's coming along nicely. I just might throw this on my main machine sometime.
- miaow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2exactly. its perfect for basic surfing.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Whether it's linux, XP, Vista Beta2, or SCO Unix my grandmother is still going to ask "Which button is the Internet again?"
Ubuntu is great but it's not the be all end all of OSes. The fact that people digg anything with the word ubuntu in it is pretty scary. - Knightwise, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The whole point of this article was twofolded : ONE letting people see they don't have to be afraid of linux, that it CAN meet your basic needs if you configure it right. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want. The second and most important point is that we have to let loose of the illusion that life begins with Windows. For users who have never seen Windows the Linux desktop might even appear more simple. We should step away from the thought that everything has to be Windows like or windows compliant. We have to look at the DEMAND we get from a user. What does he / she want to do with her computer, what kind of an enviroment does he/she need. THEN formulate the answer. If its Windows its Windows, but if we can resolve and solve the problem with an adapted LINUX os ? Why the hell not. It worked didn't it ?
- miaow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1people forget how awkward windows would be to install on a new computer for novices. you need to be familiar with some basic things to install it. nowadays someone helps the novices or it comes preinstalled and usually boots up. Im sure most novices likely have all their spyware still installed in their new dell computers. probably subscribed to norton thinking they had no option.
ubuntu is as easy to use as windows, apart from a few potential problems with codecs. overall its just as easy to use imho (maybe easier), and preferable. the free improvements over the next few years are infinite, and never include lock-in philosophy. - anjinash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is pretty cool. I've been slowly introducing Ubuntu to my non tech-savvy fiance, and thus far she's having no problems with it. I installed it on our laptop, which she uses more than I do, and for surfing the web, chatting with GAIM and other basic tasks she's needed very little hand-holding through the process. In fact, the only thing I had to show her was where the shut down and reboot "icons" were.
Next up is her PC. She's open to using Ubuntu on that, with the one caveat that I set up a dual boot so that if she finds anything she can't do with Ubuntu she can reboot into Windows.
Now if I could only set my mother up with Ubuntu as well... it would save me so much time and effort in tech support. That's a whole other issue though.. I can't even get her to use Firefox. She's afraid her precious Pogo webpages won't load in it (which I know they will). Oh well.. one down at least. - Knightwise, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25.10 with six point .... around the corner.
- veritech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1bad network support is mostly because the wireless drivers aren't open sources and not released under the GPL, and therefore technically copyright content in a copyleft environment. It's a no no in the OSS community to include not community stuff in a distro.
It's not open if part of it is closed? -
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