My father is trying to set up an old PC (10 or 12 year old Compaq
Presario tower) to give to an elderly friend. She will be mostly doing
email and a little Web surfing, and cannot be depended upon to keep OS
and AV updates current. The box had Win 2000 on it, and he installed Win
XP, but it refuses to fully boot up (apparently needs a new activation
key from MS -- I know the disc has been already used 2 or 3 times). At
my suggestion, he downloaded and burned a CD for Ubuntu 10.4. He says it
(live CD) boots up OK and seems to work, but is frustrated finding
things (he uses Vista himself). Does it sound like a good idea to use
Linux (specifically Ubuntu) in this situation? He's a competent user but
not terribly computer savvy, and she can turn the power switch "on" and
not much beyond that. He can provide "local support" only about 5 months
out of the year, at most. She's in a very rural area with probably no
Linux geeks nearby. I'm too far away to give hands-on support to either
of them.
To add to the misery, she'll be only on dialup, and I'm guessing that
the built-in modem is a WinModem. Does Ubuntu 10.4 have a cleaner way of
configuring and using dialup than the 6.06 I last used dialup with? That
is, GUI-based configuration and either autodial from Firefox or at
worst, an on-screen dialer icon? Any of his old printers he gives her
are probably WinPrinters. I know he could look up what's compatible
online, but he's already complaining enough about how hard it is to find
things with the GNOME screen. Should I gracefully withdraw my suggestion
of using Ubuntu? I suggested using it because he wouldn't have to buy
any Windows copies (the hardware probably won't support Win 7 or even
Vista, anyway), and it could probably survive a year at a time without
OS and AV upgrades. Regarding AV, the big problem is that her emails
need to be checked for embedded nasties, so that she doesn't spread them
around when she forwards things (apparently not all her friends run AV
to check incoming mail). I'm open to suggestions on which AV to use
(AVG?). The machine has something like .5GB RAM and 20 or so GB of disk,
so it's a shame to send it to the dump.
Any suggestions on how to proceed will be passed on to my father. Thanks!
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