> > The day my grandmother can get over the learning curve of managing > > her own Gentoo box, then we're"close." > > ?? > Can your grandmother manage her own windows computer? Without help? > Without some preinstalled, preconfigured system? > > Wow, what a grandma...
My mom, who is 73+ and is a grandma, manages her on Windows box just fine. She installs her applications herself, (mostly bridge games and genealogy stuff) does her own backups, writes letters and emails to people. Grandpa does the same on his Windows box using Outlook and IE. He runs Excel a lot, and does his banking online. They both have a copy of PC Anywhere running in the background, but I haven't had to help them in the last year. In my small recording studio I run two Windows boxes, one win ME and the other XP Home. Both run fine and never seem to get messed up, but I am very, very careful about what I install and use Norton Ghost a lot to protect myself. On the other hand, I'm mid-late 40's, a computer hardware professional, and I cannot manage a Gentoo or Redhat Linux box very well at all. Most web-based multimedia types down work in any other browsers I've tried. Alsa based sound is VERY spotty. Java doesn't work very well for me. Email really does work pretty well, but I have no virus protection so I partition email in it's own private account with limited access to the drive. Please don't get me wrong. I run Linux every bit as much on most days as I run Windows. I have run Wine for a few apps, hoping to give up Windows completely, but it's not ready for prime time so I haven't been able to do that. (Yet!) If there was ever an attempt to have a concerted effort of making a real desktop, user friendly, version of Gentoo, so that right out of the box it did the things grandma and grandpa expect, then I'd love to jump in and help define and test it. Unfortunately, it's not there yet. - Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
