[CLUE-Tech] Linux for mom

[Kirk Rafferty]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:45:10PM -0600, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> Ever thought of just getting her DSL or a cable modem? They're not that
> much more expensive, and no dialing is necessary... 

DSL isn't available in their area, and she's on the internet so little
that it would be hard to justify the cost of cable.  She surfs and checks
email about 1-2 times a week.  Occasionally, she does a little typing in
Open Office to keep her typing skills up.  Otherwise, the computer is
pretty much unused.

> If that's not doable, you might also want to look at SuSE with Ximian
> GNOME... it's about as user-friendly as a desktop gets. I don't
> recommend Red Hat 9, I've had a few problems with it (notably, the
> updater has died on me, and I can no longer get system updates using
> it... and for some reason, Adobe Acrobat doesn't want to work...), but
> SuSE is pretty solid. 

I mentioned in another post that I looked at a friend's RH9 with Ximian
Desktop 2 yesterday, and came away really impressed.  It's definitely a
desktop she could use, despite what I said about not wanting to switch her
from KDE.  The only thing I couldn't really try out was the dialup
interface, since he's got DSL.

The obvious question here is "what does *she* want?"  I think what I'm going
to do is setup and old machine to tri-boot Mandrake, RH9 with Ximian (I
might do SuSE [35,000 Germans can't be wrong, huh?], but that requires
downloading it, whereas I have the RH9 CDs already), and Libranet.  She
may not have the patience for a full-blown usability study, but she may
prefer one over the other.  I'll report the results back here, in case
anyone is interested.

-k