I always thought a good line for Canonical to get into would be to release a "Granny-buntu" distro that was super-locked down that grandkids could set up for their elders once and then ideally have a few easily identified launchers on the desktop that would launch with sensible defaults, and nothing else.
Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
21–30 of 299 posts
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#22I also tried to. The first thing they did on my absence was having a local PC store install XP again on it, because they couldn't use any of the software for their devices. Nowadays they just use Windows and I am confident any local PC store will take care of their issues, instead of having me deal with them.
The article mentions that first you check how they use the computer, transition them to free software apps, after that transition to Linux. To check if their hardware works you can use a Live session, check the video, sound, network,printer.scanner etc
That sounds like a lot more work to get the same desired result of no more support calls.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#23I'd probably install Google Chrome over Firefox by default.
Usually slightly better with compatibility as most developers target Chrome first and has Flash support for even the oldest of sites.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#24I also tried to. The first thing they did on my absence was having a local PC store install XP again on it, because they couldn't use any of the software for their devices. Nowadays they just use Windows and I am confident any local PC store will take care of their issues, instead of having me deal with them.
The article mentions that first you check how they use the computer, transition them to free software apps, after that transition to Linux. To check if their hardware works you can use a Live session, check the video, sound, network,printer.scanner etc
That doesn't work for stuff they buy on their own, which was what happened on my case.
Additionally any dude at the local PC store can help with configuration issues during warranty.
Or when their network goes tits up and the calldesk from the network provider only has support scripts for Windows or macOS.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#25I was going to comment why not get them an iPad, but that would be a big change all at once. I like your approach of slowly introducing them to the new software they'd be running on Ubuntu on their Windows 10 system. That way they get used to all the new programs and the final switch to Ubuntu is pretty much a non-event. Smart! So smart that I don't think transitioning them to an iPad would be that easy.
The iPad way could also work quite well, but as my dad does a lot of writing he needs a keyboard :D
iPads have decent keyboard cases now. I considered getting one to replace my laptop last month but decided against it because it's not really viable for coding yet.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#26I always thought a good line for Canonical to get into would be to release a "Granny-buntu" distro that was super-locked down that grandkids could set up for their elders once and then ideally have a few easily identified launchers on the desktop that would launch with sensible defaults, and nothing else.
You could do this yourself, by setting a root account for your admin work and an unprivileged account for your parents.
With that setup is not so easy to nuke things over. (But a backup is still important :D)
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#27The best part is when they get that call from a scammer claiming that something is wrong with their windows installation and it dawns on them how obvious the scam is.
And even if they still think it's Windows by the time they get to the 'download this remote access client' stage they won't be able to run the exe and the scammer will probably give up on them.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#28I would have switched to Chromebook, based on the usage pattern.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#29Would love to switch myself but with a 4k XPS had all kinds of scaling issues and gave up which was a shame. Considering typical Linux user probably has cutting edge hardware was surprised how poorly 4k was handled.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#30It would be great if you could install Chromeos on any hardware. I guess Chromeboxes/books/bits are cheap enough.