[CLUE-Tech] Linux for mom

[Kirk Rafferty]

About 3 years ago, my (now 61 year-old) mom decided it was time that she
started learning about this internet thing.  Before then, she had only
ever used a dumb terminal.  Shortly before she retired she was stuck with
a Windows box.

I did what any loving son would do, and set her up with a RHL 7.1 box.
(okay, the distro may be debatable from a "loving son," but work with me
here...:) After about 3 years, she's okay with working in KDE, but the
dialup interface in KDE has always given her fits.  The 7.1-era dialer is
fairly flakey for end-users, and I occasionally make the house-call to
launch a terminal and clean PPP up.

I'm thinking of upgrading her to Mandrake 9.1.  Can anyone give comment on
how stable KPPP on Mandrake is now?  Stable may not be the right word
here...predictable is more like it.  She gets fairly frustrated when it
doesn't work according to her script (literally...she has written
instructions she follows to get herself connected), and I'd like to give
her something that doesn't require me to house-call every couple weeks.

I use Gnome pretty exclusively, so I'm a little out of touch on KDE these
days.  But she's comfortable in KDE now, and I really don't want to move
her over to Gnome.

By the way, mom is registered Linux User 321098. :)

Thanks for any input.

-k