Yes, *I* am preparing computers for average folks, within the scope of the OS
image. If I have access to the physical hardware, I'll do what I can, but as
much of the time I'll only be doing the installation, or even letting them do
that, I cannot expect the ability (or time) to get my hands on the hardware.
If I can, of course, I would modify the hardware for freedom's sake (provided
it doesn't interfere with the Windows installation, on dual-boot computers).
My grandma is one of *many* concerned - pinning down just her will not fix
the greater problem, as it is not about one specific person.
I would never refer to my grandmother as dumb at all, thank you very much.
I'm not depicting her as dumb in the slightest; she has actually become quite
tech savvy (for a grandma) in recent years and I'm proud of her - but
compared to the over-idealistic technophile you clearly perceive the average
user to be, I can then see why you would call her dumb. She is not. You're
not getting the picture:
"let her talk to us" - not only could I do all of that on my own, but these
kind of people wouldn't even *know what a forum is.* It's great they are
becoming comfortable within a web browser - but outside of that is always
flaky, and you'd be fooling yourself if you thought you could sit down and
have a conversation about kernels.
Your idea of the modern world of internal components continues to amaze me:
How, good sir, would one go about removing the video card (that you claim to
commonly exist) from a laptop computer? Or do you now see that the notion
that computers come with “a video card on top of the motherboard for better
performance” is silly. I'd invite you show me examples of this in any
laptop for sale now. Even desktops don't do this very often, simply looking
at ports offered by the motherboard and noticing the /lack/ of a VGA/DVI port
is telling enough that the card is required.
However I can see how you'd come to that if you believe the even sillier
notion that “All reasonably recent Intel processors have a graphical
chipset”. Really? My brand-spanking-new Core i7 chip in my newly built PC
has on-board graphics hidden somewhere? I didn't need to go buy a graphics
card along with the motherboard? How about all of these Pentium/Core 2 Duo
towers that were given to me?
I think not. Unless you were referring to laptops, but I doubt you would
suggest that the laptops have video cards. If any of this is news to you:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090621032249AAqIgNM
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/hardware/articles/69791.aspx
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/discrete_fail_why_do_so_few_pcs_feature_graphics_cards
“If you go for installing a Linux kernel with blobs (I would never
recommend that)” - yes, we're long past that point - “but do not want to
mess with the repositories for APT” - I'm totally fine with messing with
them, and already have as described in OP - “then that kernel would never
be updated” - actually, since it's pure Linux, it will be more updated than
the linux-libre kernel, as Ubuntu is always ahead of Trisquel. “On the
contrary, the kernel that Trisquel ships receives (security) updates.” So
does upstream's.
Now again I ask the general forum public: what is the best method and
repository (PPAs or otherwise) for installing the upstream kernel without
interfering with the stock libre kernel?
