Linked by Charles Williams on Wed 16th Apr 2003 04:11 UTC
In the previous article, our computer newbie family, Mike, Diane, Mary and Carla, had decided they wanted GNU/Linux installed on the new family/business computer. Debian, via Libranet 2.0, was installed on the system, with appropriate business/office software, as well as the Gnome desktop environment. The next steps involved getting the system configured for easy use and adding various minor tweaks. Mike, Diane and the kids were not involved during the configuration phase of the system. 
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"Interested Party" wrote:
...It is taking hours upon hours to get these folks going on Linux, and who is going to be able to do this for very long?
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About two years ago I set up my then 68 year old mother-in-law with an old Pentium and a (legal) copy of Win 95 b. At the time I considered Linux, but rejected the idea because IMHO none of the Linux distros was ready for use by a newbie at that time. Ever since that time, I have essentially been her only tech support.
My mother-in-law is an intelligient lady and enjoys learning new things, but she had never used a computer before this, though she had seen friends and relatives use them. It took more time than I anticipated to teach her the basics - using the menus, connecting to the internet, fetching and reading her email, using a search engine, bookmarks,saving email messages for future use, and keeping all her data within a single folder on a separate partition. I consider this last thing mandatory to permit for relatively painless system upgrades, and I knew it would ease the migration if someday she switched to Linux.
While she was happy to have email and web access, she was constantly stressed over the arrival of the usual reams of computer viruses, email worms, BSOD's, an other all too familiar parts of the Windows experience. Not having enough technical knowledge to differentiate the annoyances from the serious threats, she stressed out over every one. Updating her anti-virus software was a constant event, and despite this she received adware and spyware, and had her browser hijacked and forced to web sites not of her choice.
I, of course, had to deal with most of this.
When Mandrake 9.1 was released, I decided the time had come to ask her if she would consider switching to Linux. I explained some of the security advantages. She was willing, and about two weeks ago I upgraded her computer and installed Mandrake 9.1. So far she is extremely happy with her new computer; using Kmail instead of Eudora, and Konqueror instead of Internet Explorer, is not much of a challenge.
I expect more challenges in future - moving from Office 97 to Open Office may be more of a challenge, and cd-burning, scanning, etc, are things she has never done on any OS. But at this point she is able to do everything she currently wants to do on her new Linux box.
My point? It takes time to teach a total computer newbie ANY operating system. Also, it takes me much less time to keep her Linux box running properly than it took to maintain her Windows PC formerly.
-RN