Setting Grandma Up With Linux

[hard candy]

I thought this was a good Howto for setting older folks up with Linux:
Building A Linux System Even Your Grandmother Could Use (http://qrxx.4t.com/linuxbeat3.htm)

[jme]

For the hardware, the rig I set up was a dual Athlon XP 1800+ with three 40 gig 7200RPM hard drives, 1 gig of RAM, and for video I gave her a dual-head ATI Radeon 8500 with 128MB. That ought to give her enough speed to last a couple years at least.

wow - a bit of an overkill if all the system is going to be used for is the grandmas surfing and emailing!!

[JamminJoeyB]

I wonder if he would build me a beast.

Talk about a bit of over kill on a system for grandma. She won't need to upgrade the hardware for along time.

[irlandes]

Originally posted by hard candy
[B]I thought this was a good Howto for setting older folks up with Linux:
/B]

I don't. Giving such a system with so many choices to a woman -- or man -- who has never done much with computers is not real smart. If you have a Grandma like that, pick out the easiest choices and don't install anything else. If she says she wants other choices, you can install them later.

This is not just an idle opinion. Befofe I retired, one of my job assignments was training people on our process/time-charge computer system. I was usually assigened the people who had no computer experience, because I have almost unlimited patience when I am paid by the hour. :-)

If she wanted to do all this stuff, and make all those choices, she'd have been doing it already.

This is K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, Stupid).

I was not at all surpised she didn't make ti beyond the bootloader choices. And, I do not expect our hero to make one phone call and it will all be clear to her. It's not going to happen.

This is more like a caricature of how NOT to set up an older person with no experience with a computer.

[hard candy]

Hey Ma, I got me another bite!

Reel 'em in, careful now.
:)

[Modorf]

It looks to me like a $700 paper weight for grandma or a $700 new toy for me.
I feel this guy built the computer the way he did because he knew it would be coming back to him in less than a year.

N

[Icarus]

Oh ya, that is exactly what grandma wants, 120GB of hard drive space, an older but still very versital video card (does grandma need a video card with more then 16mb of memory??), TWO installs of Linux (Mandrake and Gentoo..??Gentoo, for grandma??), Dual bootload so she can switch between LILO and GRUB..!?!?!???? I know she's looking for the 'what's right for me' ;)

oh and that black KDE desktop is just the slickness that grandma was looking for...and gkrellm monitor because we know grandma want's to know exactly what her computer is doing in the background!I put Java and Limewire on it so she can start building a music library, and I installed CrossOver so she can run WinMX and Kazaa if she wants to leech some DivX rips. I set up X-Chat to connect her to my favorite IRC network for warez, and as a courtesy I installed WineX so she can run Windows games if she wants.That's exactly what my grandma is looking for...but he forgot to mention the 120GB of hard drive space is so grandma can store all the porn she's downloading with the Fractional T1 she has!!


Too bad grandma is going to be pissed because he didn't set the DMA on the hard drives and DVD :D

[hlrguy]

Originally posted by hard candy
Hey Ma, I got me another bite!

Reel 'em in, careful now.
:)

No way, I can see grandma wanting to add WiFi to her preconfigured network so that she can stream MP3s using XMMS to the bathroom or something.

hlrguy

[o0zi]

You can kind of get the gist of the entire article from this quote:
" I'm not sure if System 7.5 can talk to Samba very well, but if she wants to patch the old Macintosh LC into her LAN she can probably h4xx0r something together in the smb.conf file."

That helps you determine its value on the Hoax-o-meter:)

[hard candy]

He did leave out the force feedback game controllers, so grandma can sleep peacefully after sitting on them after playing Mechwarrior or Grand Theft Auto. :)

[El_Cu_Guy]

Sounds like BS to me.

Either he's a complete idiot or is attempting to poke fun at Linux users.

Apparenlty everything is overkill and we are out of touch with the below average point and click user.

My Grandmother had purchased a brand new PC. She got a discount for being a retiree from what is now a division of Honeywell. Nice considering she retired about 15 years ago. She was happy because it would run her tax software but a little nerved because I hosed her old system (I'll explain below).

It came pre-loaded with WindowsXP. Her old system ran Win95. She almost had a heart attack because she couldn't find the Start button! She's like that, but once you show her the ropes she can do what she needs to as long as you put things within easy reach (ie Turbo Tax icon MUST be on the desktop or she won't find it).

Now if your Grandmother is anything like mine there's no point in getting her to switch OSes. Considering this guys Grandmother is older and less experienced than mine, it's all BS.

Ok, ok so how did I hose her old computer?

Here's the story. This is for you enjoyment to read about stupidity. Unlike the linked story above, this one is true. Cut it down and left out some minor details and some stupidity (on the part of the original builders).

My Grandmother's system, (386SX running Win 3.1) needed a massive upgrade for Win95. So my mom's now ex-husband and his brother decided it needed a complete overhaul (new mobo CDROM, lose the 5 1/4" disk drive and a bigger HD). While not successful in his business venture the ex built and sold computer on the side. His brother was a computer sales man.

I wasn't there but I heard that they had fried an HD and made a few other "mistakes". They did get around it so it did run. Somehow.

So years later need an upgrade for Turbo Tax (her system fit the BARE MINIMUM requirements except for RAM). So I opened it up to plop in some new SIMMs. I also decided to "clean things up and remove unnecessary junk. After frying the HD the dynamic duo had obviously found that the mobo was bad (IDE1 fried anything attached to it). However, rather than return it and seek compensation for the fried drive they stuck an add in card into the machine. HD plugged into IDE2 and CDROM into card. How everything ran one can only guess.

So I pulled out all the unnecessary cards which included a second modem. One modem was jammed in there and actually had a small crack as a result of unnecessary force getting it in. Pins were bent all over the place too. I removed the exansion cards. Due to pins that were slightly bent on IDE2 I set up the HD (master) and CDROM (slave) on IDE1 (remember I wasn't there, I didn't know about IDE1). Booted it up and...you guessed it!

While a bit nerved my grandmother told me not to worry because it was slow as she was considering buying a new computer within the next couple of weeks anyway.

So now she's got a professionally built system and has had little problem with it in over a year. Well, that is until my sister came to stay with her for awhile. She likes to get on other people's machines and download and install stupid stuff that she believes make it better and easier to use without their permission.

Sidenote:
My sister once (I hope this isn't something she does often) went on the internet, surfed and download something, installed it and then clicked yes to reboot all while defrag was running in the background. I only know this because when I cam back to the house she was shutting down IE and had just clicked OK when I walked into the room.

Hope that was as funnier and more believable than the linked story.

[Stoofer]

What A monkey!!

I cannot believe he actually thinks for a second his grandma is actually going to use more than about 3% of what he set up, assuming that she even gets that far.

So she has alzheimers and he's expecting her to have a significant capacity to learn? Perlease! Have some compassion on the woman. this is going to make her sit there feeling stupid!!

If I was setting up something for my gran I would put only the bare minimum on it and lock in down totally. she fears this sort of stuff to the nth degre and venturing into the unknown at this stage of life is highly unlikely. big 2 inch square buttons that she clicks on for get mail. one for send mail to chris, (me) one to ken (bro) and so on.

she'll never run any scripts. probably never boot into one of the two distros set up. And certainly never play any games.

I just burst out laughing when he said, three 40 gig drives she'll never use that!!! Even if she spend the next 40 years (assuming she lives 40 years) typing the letters she loves to type she'll still never fill it all up. she'll never download any videos. she'll never get into gimp. most of what is there won't be used.

If the dude that wrote the article ever reads this then I'm sorry mate but that is a class example of missing the point. Still I have to commend you on wanting the very best available for you family, that is very sweet of you, really.

In fact some part of me thinks it is a microsoft thing taking the piss out of the linux community in that only a linux freak would do something with so little awareness for what is known as "user-level".

[hard candy]

If the dude that wrote the article ever reads this then I'm sorry mate but that is a class example of missing the point.
He could say the same for the last 2 posts in this thread. :)

[skinner422]

i think if the guy who wrote that, read this topic he'd get a kick out of it. i don't think he'd expect so many people to believe his article. i have to say it was a really good article though. i laughed almost nonstop through it.

[BOFH1]

I know what it is... it's because grandma has millions of recipes for making cookies and cakes, and she wants to store before she forgets them all, and it would take such a machine to store all of them.

Oh, and btw, I'm the King of England. All bow before me. :D

--Bob

[Satanic Atheist]

Come on guys! This (http://www.divisiontwo.com/) is a satire site! You ought to know that!

James

[elderdays]

You have all been trolled I believe.

[AndrewLubinus89]

Originally posted by El_Cu_Guy


It came pre-loaded with WindowsXP. Her old system ran Win95. She almost had a heart attack because she couldn't find the Start button! She's like that, but once you show her the ropes she can do what she needs to as long as you put things within easy reach (ie Turbo Tax icon MUST be on the desktop or she won't find it).


Haha, sounds like my Grandma. :D

[otbibb]

The best image for me was the cron job to change the desktop theme and widgets once an hour. Can't you hear Grandma now... WTF????

Bryan

[SDS]

lmao, she didn't get pass the stage to pick her boot loader.

[plattypus1]

To anyone who didn't get it: It's a hoax you morons.

To everyone who did: Rather humorous. I can just imagine my grandmother booting into Gentoo... *LMFAO*