> > Just wanted to share a short success story. Recently my mother made the > jump from darkroom to digital photography. Not being well versed in PC's she > didn't know the difference when I built her a nice new system running > ubuntu. And I think more importantly she was thrilled with not having to pay > for a computer ! Getting her up and running on Gimp Fspot and Evolution took > a coupe days but when she did she was thrilled with it. > > Regards, > > Jesse K Ziter That's awesome. I've been trying to find a way to convince my grandfather to let me get him set up on Linux. He's always having problems with Vista and assumes since I'm a "computer guy" I can fix it for him. Truth is, I don't know anything about Vista, so I just end up muttering about the "stupid" engineers that built this thing and leave it no better off than I found it. If he had a Linux system I could "set it and forget it".
However, I know if I gave my wife a stack of OS installation CDs and told her to install it, she'd look at me like I had two heads. That goes for any OS, not just Linux. The difference is that most machines are preconfigured with an OS... Not usually Linux. For people who have no interest in learning an OS, or who do not use a computer often enough to make it worthwhile, Linux is out of reach because it does not come preconfigured on 99% of all machines available to consumers. (this is why Microsoft is a convicted monopolist) I agree with the comment that once a Linux system is configured, it is very usable for anyone. Our laptop is setup with Linux and Windows, but I configured my wife's Linux user account in such a way that her desktop behaves just as she would expect under another system. She uses the Linux desktop almost exclusively now... It's faster and is much more robust. If there is a problem I can actually fix it rather than blaming the engineers at Microsoft. -Kris _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Sep 3 - Porkchop - The Areas of My Expertise Oct 1 - Ubikeys Oct 4 - Linux Fest Nov 5 - Releasing Open Source Software Dec 3 - TBD
