> > > > Interesting post. I'd agree with a lot of these niggling issues when > my dad decided to use linux, and I installed the supposedly easiest to > 'manage' linux system.
My dad got me a mac when i was in my 5th standard. It used to have system 7 on it. The machine was an Apple Macintosh LC 475 [1] I used it a lot and loved it. My second computer was a Power Macintosh [2] and I loved it to ( It ran System 7.6.1 ) This was when I was in my 9th std, 1997. I managed to install Slackware and later on, Redhat 4.2 on it on Virtual PC. (it was an x86 emulator on PPC ) My mom, dad , sister and myself loved the mac, and we still use a mac at my home to this day. My sister had to switch to XP at college because all the software she requires for ther MA/Russian is not avaiilable on anything other than XP. She still feels at home on the mac though, even though she has a PC laptop now. My point? Most of our family members are non-technical people. They would feel comfortable working with any modern desktop OS that you introduce them to ( Dont give them DragonFly BSD! Ubuntu, OSX , BeleniX and even PC-BSD would do) Install it. Setup their internet connection. They will like and learn their system. Once they learn it, they would not want to switch. As end users, most non-technical people dont care much about the OS. They care about getting their job done. ( chatting with people, some email, viewing photos, watching movies, making birthday cards etc ) IMHO: bundled software on OS more important that OS itself for non-tech audience My dad reads up on medical topics (he's a doc) and my mom does general surfing, chatting and reads about places and travel. For all their needs, almost any modern OS would do. The requirements are 1) Firefox 2) IM ( iChat or Pidgin) 3) A photo viewer t4) watching movies/listening to music I personally find the Ubuntu OS easiest to use for myself. And for my parents i always recommend OS X I like the way OS X "scales" From a super easy-to-use interface to a UNIX terminal. something for everybody. Of course Apple gives such a nice experience since they have a tight hardware/software bundle. Unfortunately OS management is for geeks and sysadmins, perhaps even > my dad, but definitely not for my girlfriends. Call me pragmatic, but > I'd recommend MacOSX to my girlfriend, if I had one ;) My gf uses an _ancient_ computer with XP at her house. I handed her BeleniX 0.7 running on my laptop. She was nervous ( mind you, she's been working in the IT industry, on mainframes, for 2 years now) I told her BeleniX was linux [3] and opened firefox for her. She was able to check mail etc just fine. -- Manish [1] The LC 475 was a lovely machine: www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_*lc* /stats/mac_*lc*_*475*.html [2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Power_**Macintosh [3] Please dont thrash me for this! * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/belenix-discuss/attachments/20080428/8d44515c/attachment.html>
