Holiday Linux for Aunt Judy
Two posts ago, I attempted to lay out whether Linux could replace Windows sufficiently for most people. Some rewarding field work today proves it can and does happen. My Aunt was complaining about viruses again after we reinstalled XP less than a year ago. Imagine my surprise hearing of this. But it got me thinking about what I could do about it this time for a more permanent fix. Refreshing Windows is annoying for sure, but worse is the way people respond to their infected computers. They feel uncertain if they can properly use a computer, that maybe they caused the problem. Some feel guilty for wasting money on an lemon, even though their PC is probably fine.
Fortunately aunt Judy has a small set of needs for computing. Webmail and Internet searches and maybe the occasional letter document. She added pressure by surprising me with her dysfunctional printer that could only spit out blank pages. And we needed to give one more critical device a closer look. She hopes to one day see her grandkids on her new webcam before they graduate college.
I only had a disc of Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on hand that I had planned to eventually use at home. It would work fine, though it has too many programs Jude has no use for. Oh well. Either I could spend two hours removing stuff in the package manager or She could simply ignore some of the menu clutter. After a briefing, she assured me she didn’t have anything on the computer she was keeping so I went with an overwrite install on the hard drive. A nice clean slate. Cool!
Ubuntu Studio didn’t come with office, so I installed OO.org. Then I added MS Core fonts and Flash Player 10 for a better web experience. Of course the Ubuntu auto updates were dying to join the party so we let them in.
This “Studio” distribution of Linux is centered around media creation and it’s really beautiful. I loved the startup animation and login screen. The main menu bar and empty desktop are dead simple. I replaced the wallpaper with a fun 3D graphic I created last year and some nice big essential desktop icons. Then I reinstated some of their web favorites. Judy was pleased I didn’t delete Google and returned it to its proper location. Everything was going well, but I still had that feeling that I’d be abandoning them tonight and something they expected wouldn’t be there. I think they voted for Bush so maybe they’ll appreciate security and overlook any of the liberties I accidently might have taken away from them. ;>)
Next I installed the latest skype from a .deb installer file on skype’s homepage. The webcam and video test worked, but later we got an audio io error when I rang her from Skype at home. Add to that, her printer managed to still only spittle out blank pages. This makes me growl. Sure we haven’t lost anything that wasn’t disabled before, but I can’t stand loose ends.
What is great though? Once prolific virus code on Windows will wither and die trying to execute on Linux. Plus the addition of a hardware router (I can’t believe I missed this the last time.) helped us close the door on ancient history.
Now for the absolute best thing about today. Spending some fun time with Jude and Sammy chatting about everything. Family, politics, past Christmas’ and listening to old tape recordings of me, my sisters and my cousin Jen when we were 4-7 years old. I hope she had fun like I did. Judy apologized that it took six hours to do everything, but I could have been out of there in just two hours if I really wanted to just get it done. I loved introducing them to some of the fun stuff I do with computers such as discovering favorite music on Pandora.com web radio. They had no idea something like that existed. We also watched part of a feature film in full screen on Hulu.com and looked at all the free movies and TV shows Hulu has. It was a good test for Linux Flash player too. Judy’s old Dell was performing well and I think it might have long life ahead of it. I’m hoping now there are some new activities that will be enriching for them.
Next mission: Give Judy my old (yet very booming) Cambridge speakers so they have even better radio sound. And we WILL conquer the webcam and printer troubles eventually.
I have to wonder how that comparison would fare if it was Vista vs Linux? We bought a new HP Vista machine and converted an old WIn 2K based desktop to SUSE Linux – http://file.sh/SUSE+Linux+torrent.html . After 2 months the hassles with Linux are far fewer! There are hassles with both, but the Linux hassles are well documented and Novell ($60 SUSE Linux support) actually DOES provide solutions in real English! We are preparing to convert the new machine to Linux as well.