Linux for Seniors

[Keith Lofstrom]

Howdy. My mother just had her **th birthday, and I got her a used Thinkpad with Redhat 7.1 so she can talk to kids and grandkids (and soon greatgrandkids) over the net. Since her last exposure to computers was a card sorter in 1965, I figured there were no Windows legacy problems, and that once she got the hang of Linux it would be easier to keep the machine running than with Windows (Linux usability rocketing up, Windows rocketing down, viruses a problem).

So - are there any good places for >70
year olds to hang out to get started with
Linux? Any Linux Seniors user groups out there? Any hints and techniques for making a Real Simple setup, so she can concentrate on mail and surfing and printing, and not worry about crashes?

Keith

[Dark Ninja]

Any hints and techniques for making a Real Simple setup, so she can concentrate on mail and surfing and printing, and not worry about crashes?

Linux? Crash? NEVER! :mad:

Honestly, though, there are a few "Linux For Dummies" books out there that you may want to check out. I believe there is a Red Hat specific one, so check it out. Then, just let her play with the OS and look up things as she needs to. :-) I'm glad the older generation is getting into Linux.


Dark Ninja

[Shadoglare]

Well, I've never heard of a "Linux for Seniors" users group, but I'd probably set up Linux for the PC-Illiterate the same as I would windows - Run KDE as it's probably easier for beginners than Gnome (at least I found it to be at first), and dump shortcuts for the few applications she'll actually make use of on the desktop - one for the RedHat Dialer if she's using dial-up internet, one for her word processor or whatever, and etc. And just tell her not to mess with stuff under the KDE menus if she doesn't know what they are :)

[keating305]

I'm 54 years old. I'm running a triple-boot system (Win98, Libranet and Corel 1.2 for word processing). I don't like to think of myself as a "Senior", but I'm getting there! I'm going to start building a server setup next- BTW, I've only been interested in Linux about a year, but it's really grabbed me.
I built the box I'm using myself (Duron 600 Mhz, 512 Mb RAM, two HD's, CD-ROM and CD-RW), so don't sell the capabilities of Seniors short. Us old farts can adapt pretty well- we've been doing it all our lives. :D

[trekker]

Hear! Hear! Hear! :)

Thumbs up for all the "Seniors" out there!!

[Keith Lofstrom]

Original questioner here. Good replies so far, indeed, there are a few Linux books (Dummies, Learn Linux, etc.) in my mother's reading pile. However, she would rather spend her time gardening and reading mysteries and writing letters (and she already has a religion :) ).

I want to set her computer up as close to an appliance as I can, zero maintenance. She is quite literate, and still pretty sharp, but is rightly protective of the time she has remaining to her.

As an example, I personally have been using Netscape browsers since they first appeared. On Linux (at least mine), Netscape 4.77 has a nasty lockup behavior every 4 hours of browsing or so. I get out of it by doing a ps -axw | grep netsc , then killing the offending processes and restarting. That is far too nuts-and-boltsy for mom; she could handle one or two of those, but not two dozen.

She will be dialing up my machine for internet access, I will firewall and act as sysadmin through that link. So the weekly tweaky stuff I can handle. I hope to put all her /boot, /etc, /usr and so forth partitions on CDROMs so the machine is easy to rebuild, and I can be spending my time hauling sacks of fertilizer to her garden rather than pounding on keys all the time.

So ... what is simple out there? What is the easiest-to-use mail package, browser, letter-writing text editor? I'm confident Linux is solid as a rock. What should I build on that rock? What apps have never, ever failed you?

Keith

(PS - for our 54 year old friend, I'm a boomer too - target not your age, but your mother's age. What would you give to a starting-to-be-forgetful heart patient? Certainly not Micro$oft, but no beta software either!)

[keating305]

Keith, I ran across an article a while back about a machine that sounds like what you want- it runs Linux off a CD, theres no HD. It's designed to be primarily an internet appliance.
Unfortunatly, I don't have the magazine right here, but I will look it up and post the website for you as soon as I find it. I seriously thought about it for my mother (77 yrs, mean as hell!!), but she told me she wasn't interested.
It kind of reminded me of the Fred Allen (remember him?) character Titus Moody, the old guy from Maine. Some one asked him if he had a radio. He replied (in a down-east accent) "Nup, don't hold with funichaa that taalks."
BTW, I don't argue with my mother. When my dad and her met during the war, they were stationed at Corpus Christie N.A.S. He was a Marine and she was a WAVE. Just kidding around, my dad arranged for her to shoot with the Marine pistol team, because she had bragged that she was a good shot- she qualifed EXPERT. She's still got the medal! :eek:

[cbfunky]

I think the most important thing is to tell her that she can't break anything.
That's what my mom is really afraid of so I tell her "Look, whatever you do is ok, don't ask me if you should do it or not, just do it and it will be fine".

It really helps.

[rch-tech]

Originally posted by keating305:
<STRONG>Us old farts can adapt pretty well- we've been doing it all our lives. :D</STRONG>


I love it when people call themselves "old farts"

That cracks my butt up...dunno why, maybe its the word fart...

[Nalle]

You don't need to do all these things when Netscape 4.7x freezes.

Killall works fine, but you also want to remove the lock file Netscape makes. I've made a script to do that (you can even make a shotcut to it from the desktop in your windows manager:

First, use your favourite editor to edit the file "killnestcape", containing:

#!/bin/bash
# Begin killnetscape
killall -9 netscape
rm ~/.netscape/lock
# End killnetscape

As you see, the #Begin.... is NOT the first line. The first line is to tell Linux what kind of shell that is going to run the commands following.

Save the file and exit your editor.
I've got mine in the "/bin/" directory (cp killnetscape /bin), but I'm not sure it's the correct place to put it. It's in path, anyway *smile*

Now, don't forget to make it executable:

chmod 755 /bin/killnetscape


That should be it!

&lt;/nalle&gt;

[keating305]

As I said in my earlier post, there is an inexpensive system available that seems to me to be ideal for someone who hasn't any computer background.
The link is http://www.thinknic.com/ The device runs off a CD-ROM, so you really can't hose the system, no matter how hard you try. The listed price is $199.00- not too bad for what it can do! It uses a Cyrix 266 Mhz processer, has 64 Mb of RAM and a CD-ROM drive (obviously!) It's at least worth a check of the website. ;)