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Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

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Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#91

Post by city41 »

hocuspocus wrote: post #86
city41 wrote: post #39

I run Ubuntu on three machines and never in a million years would I set it up for my parents. I still struggle with lots of little gotchas and annoying issues like sometimes it just doesn't want to suspend. Or sometimes after resuming, the keyboard doesn't work so gotta unplug it and plug it back in. Sometimes my wifi just conks out for no apparent reason. On and on, just lots of little paper cuts. I switched my pare…

My mom's NUC has never caused any trouble running the latest Ubuntu. Network printer, scanner, wireless mouse, webcam, bluetooth headphones, USB hard drives, sleep/hibernation... not a single problem.

Which NUC model is it? I looked into NUCs a couple years ago but at the time they had a reputation of not being great with Linux.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#92

Post by thomastjeffery »

hutzlibu wrote: post #62
gbil wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware. And you didn't switch to OSX, you switched them to Apple hardware with Apple software, not an OS switch. On well supported hardware for Linux I have my parents since many years on Fedora. I even just swapped the drive from an old Lenovo netbook to a newer Fujitsu laptop without any issues in between

"The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware." Which does not change the fact that they are still problems - no matter how unfair it is and how little the Linux-Community is to blame for it. I used Linux on many different machines - and sadly I can confirm lots of problems with hardware. Standby/Resume, etc.

The point here is that the solution is simply to get better hardware, which is much less expensive outside the Apple ecosystem.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#93

Post by walshemj »

mrweasel wrote: post #53
hamilyon2 wrote: post #40

Skype is not mentioned on the page. I guess, we live in different realities.

The only people I know that uses Skype are people working for large companies and they only use it because their employers tell them to. I think it has to do with how your countries telcos developed. If phone calls a cheap, why would you care about Skype? WhatsApp, Telegram and other messaging services seem to be popular around the world, but, perhaps because SMS quickly became basically free here, everyone just use…

Not in the US where I suspect a majority of HN readers come from.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#94

Post by ddebernardy »

yawaramin wrote: post #56

When it comes to parents, a 'tech support call' is not just a tech support call, it's a chance for them to talk to their kids.

When you regularly get calls to fix this or that and spend 30-min to half a day or more dealing with whatever problem they have, there comes a time where enough is enough and you get them a Mac or install Linux.

Also, it's not just parents or grand parents. It's also siblings, in-laws, and their respective close circles.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#95

Post by hocuspocus »

city41 wrote: post #91
hocuspocus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom's NUC has never caused any trouble running the latest Ubuntu. Network printer, scanner, wireless mouse, webcam, bluetooth headphones, USB hard drives, sleep/hibernation... not a single problem.

Which NUC model is it? I looked into NUCs a couple years ago but at the time they had a reputation of not being great with Linux.

https://ark.intel.com/products/76978/Intel-NUC-Kit-D34010WYK

Actually the Gigabyte Brix variant because I didn't want to buy the WiFi/bluetooth card separately. But it's the exact same mainboard.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#96

Post by [deleted] »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #92
hutzlibu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware." Which does not change the fact that they are still problems - no matter how unfair it is and how little the Linux-Community is to blame for it. I used Linux on many different machines - and sadly I can confirm lots of problems with hardware. Standby/Resume, etc.

The point here is that the solution is simply to get better hardware, which is much less expensive outside the Apple ecosystem.

[deleted]

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#97

Post by city41 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #92
hutzlibu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware." Which does not change the fact that they are still problems - no matter how unfair it is and how little the Linux-Community is to blame for it. I used Linux on many different machines - and sadly I can confirm lots of problems with hardware. Standby/Resume, etc.

The point here is that the solution is simply to get better hardware, which is much less expensive outside the Apple ecosystem.

In my experience the same hardware when ran under Windows does not have these issues.

EDIT: also just want to say I'm not anti-Linux, I'm just being realistic. I understand Linux's history and how it has some disadvantages (and advantages). I'm just saying at the end of the day, my interest is a reliable machine, regardless of how I get there.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#98

Post by cookiecaper »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #84
cookiecaper wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar situation here -- my mom uses Linux and my dad insists on Windows (to be fair, he has tried Linux here and there). My mom's computer has been trucking for over 10 years and after initial setup, she has rarely had issues. My dad has been through 4 different systems in the same amount of time and each one ends up riddled with malware and nigh unusable before he decides he just needs to upgrade again. In my dad'…

If switching OS creates those problems, it's entirely reasonable to blame the OS. An attitude of "switch to Linux and if you can't do anything that you used to do then it's something else's fault" while possibly fair is exceptionally unhelpful.

s/anything you used to/a small handful of specific things/

I'm not trying to say that this is a solution to the problems entailed, and I'm not even saying that he should be obliged to go through the inconvenience of using a different OS if it doesn't fulfill all of his needs. There's just an air around the tone that's frustrating.

In general I would hope that performance, security, and system longevity would count for something, but I guess it's like telling someone to eat their vegetables. People are happier to just deal with a constant background malaise they can acclimate to and then ignore than they are to have the centralized in-the-moment friction of "to do thing X, switch to a separate VM/laptop/etc." And I mean, I get that.

So the conclusion is probably that Linux is not stable enough for a potential user until there is very little risk that that user's inertia will ever be broken. This works pretty much fine for my mom since she just needs basic word processing, a scanner, and a web browser. Not as much for my dad.

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#99

Post by williamdclt »

I really would like to do the same. My father is always complaining about Windows problems that just don't happen with Mint/Ubuntu, and my mom has an machine that's too weak and old to run windows properly.

The one thing that prevent me to do that is that they use their computer for work. While I'm certain that I wouldn't have any problem doing their job with Linux, they ask me "can you absolutely guarantee that I'll be able to open and edit any Word document and that it'll look the same when I send it? Or that I won't have any problem with video conferencing?"

Well... No. I'm fairly certain, but I can't take the responsability in case I'm wrong

Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

#100

Post by ddebernardy »

gbil wrote: post #50
city41 wrote: post #39

I run Ubuntu on three machines and never in a million years would I set it up for my parents. I still struggle with lots of little gotchas and annoying issues like sometimes it just doesn't want to suspend. Or sometimes after resuming, the keyboard doesn't work so gotta unplug it and plug it back in. Sometimes my wifi just conks out for no apparent reason. On and on, just lots of little paper cuts. I switched my pare…

The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware. And you didn't switch to OSX, you switched them to Apple hardware with Apple software, not an OS switch. On well supported hardware for Linux I have my parents since many years on Fedora. I even just swapped the drive from an old Lenovo netbook to a newer Fujitsu laptop without any issues in between

> The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware.

No, that would be a software problem; as in driver-related. And as others noted, it's still a problem either way.

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