Great post, and some agreement here, too. Now to some contrarianism. 1. Not to start a distro war, but Ubuntu comes with GUI to install all these things, and I do believe PPPoe is easy to set up, though most people use a modem between them and the internet, which allows them to use the current setting or instructions from Bezeq, or whoever else, with tech support and maybe even a technician's visit.
2. IMHO Linux has been ready for the desktop for a long time, especially with a limited requirement set such as you describe, which is fine for most newbies. There were two issues holding it back. The first was people who needed to have MS compatibility for whatever reason (we use office/exchange/powerpoint at work and I must be able to edit it at home). The other was the fear of needing something in the future that would be only available on Windows. What changed are the move to browser based/app based computing, and the fact that MacOS, iOS, Android and Chrome, plus Linux netbooks, reduced these fears. And it helps that 1/3 of all laptops sold these days are Macs, which break the Windows monopoly. 3. As someone who has installed Linux on every computer he ever both owned and used, I can tell you that installing Linux is a bit of a crap shoot. I have a desktop that crashes whenever I login with the latest ubuntu UI (I changed the setting for myself but have some other users which I set for family members and never changed), and a laptop that only runs sound in Linux on the speakers, but not the earphones. Skype is so hoarse and echo-filled on my desktop that I prefer to use another machine. The ONLY computer without any problems is an Acer netbook, until you try to run GPSMan (tcl/tk based) and realize that the screen resolution on the netbook is not compatible with the UI, and some buttons are no longer available to you... That is, if you want to enjoy all that Linux has to offer, you can't use off the shelf equipment without checking components and hoping for the best. Wishing your mother in law all the best with her Linux usage. Z. On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Nadav Har'El <n...@math.technion.ac.il>wrote: > For years, people have been saying that Linux might be good for this, and > good for that (and the list of "this" and "that" has been growing every > year) - > but Linux is *NOT* ready for the desktop and ordinary newbie users. > > Well, for the first time ever, I believe the situation has changed. > Linux *IS* ready for the desktop! > > I have just installed a new Linux computer for my mother-in-law. > She is the quintessential newbie - she knows hardly nothing about > computers, > doesn't want to know much about computers, and only wants to use her > computer > for a limited set of tasks, such as: > > 1. Browse the web (mostly specific sites, e.g., her bank). > 2. Read and write email (using gmail). > 3. Make video calls over skype. > 4. Conveniently view photos of the grandkids (e.g, with Picasa). > 5. Play children movies for the grandkids. > 6. Bonus points: If I could control her computer remotely, fixing > problems and sending new photos, movies, etc., without being > there. > > I have good news, and bad news. > > The good news is that, as I said, I believe Linux *is* ready for the > desktop. > I was able to build for her a Linux setup that does all of the above, and > more, > she was very pleased with the result. Interestingly, she found the "Gnome > 3" > interface very usable and understandable, despite what some pessimists have > been saying about it recently. Perhaps Gnome 3 does show promise after all. > > There is some bad news, however: NEVER suggest to anyone but a Linux expert > to install Linux on their own - in my case Fedora 15 (but please don't > start > a distro war). After I installed Fedora 15 on her new computer, I had to > spend over 10 hours (!!) configuring it to be usable as I wanted. In > particular, I "enjoyed" the following activities: > > 1. I had to install all sort of allegedly illegal software which doesn't > come > with Fedora, but is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for any modern user. This > includes > mp3 playing and video playing with various codecs. > I didn't find Fedora's pretense that this software was somehow optional > to > be comforting. > > 2. I had to install various free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech > software > that doesn't come with Fedora, like Skype, Picasa, and Flash Player > plugin. > Because these programs aren't built specifically for Fedora, they don't > fit into it very well. In some cases (e.g., Picasa) I needed some dirty > tricks to get it to work at all. > > 3. I had to set up ADSL. It turns out that in 2011, the pppoe package still > doesn't come preinstalled, and when you do install it and set up ADSL, > you > discover that NetworkManager has a bug that prevents it from starting the > connection during boot. I spent more than an hour to circumvent this bug. > > 4. I had to enable Hebrew - but just a bit (she's an English-speaker, so > she > wants most of the UI in English anyway). > > 5. I had to find my way through bugs in the Fedora installer (which got > stuck > while configuring the date (!)), bugs in selinux setup, bugs in the > pulseaudio setup (these were the worst), and other problems that should > never have existed in a seriously-tested distro... > > And probably other stuff I don't remember. But to make a long story short, > there is absolutely no way that a beginner - or even an experienced Windows > user - could ever do any of these things. A "Linux installation party" > would > not be enough either. And even a Linux expert (like myself) would need a > second computer and an Internet connection to be able to solve some of the > problems he encounters. > > There is only one short-term solution, and it is to do what I did: Computer > stores can, and should, sell preinstalled Linux systems! Some computer > store > employee could spend 10 hours like I did setting up a typical Israeli setup > on the typical computer he sells, and then offer buyers to have this OS for > free (but with no warantee either), saving them 400-800 shekels on the > price > of the computer, a saving which is particularly significant when you > consider > that the current retail price for a newbie-oriented but feature-packed > computer is just 1000 shekels. > > When 99.9% of the people were addicted to Windows, Linux was "picky about > its friends", and the price of Windows+Office was just 20% of the computer > price, customers might have declined this option. But today, when Windows > isn't the only show in town (iOS and Android are everywhere) and Linux is > more mature and user-friendly, and the price of Windows+Office is 80% of > the > hardware price, I would bet that more and more users would make this > choice. > > So long live Linux, the new choice for desktop. > > P.S. Whether or not the desktop computing paradigm itself has a future at > all, is a different question ;-) I personally think the answer is that it > doesn't, but this is a different story. Here I was assuming that desktops > are here to stay, at least for a while longer. > > -- > Nadav Har'El | Friday, Sep 16 > 2011, > n...@math.technion.ac.il > |----------------------------------------- > Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |I had a lovely evening. > Unfortunately, > http://nadav.harel.org.il |this wasn't it. - Groucho Marx > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-il mailing list > Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il > -- http://www.words2u.net - GPS points and tracks (mainly in Costa Rica) http://www.words2u.net/recipes - Recipe collection
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