Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #120

phaedrus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would need in order to do the upgrade were turned off in the meantime. To be fair, Linux Mint states that a complete reinstall is the recommended way, but since I do development, it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. Also I t…

it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > ~/installed_pkgs.log cat installed_pkgs.log | xargs sudo apt install

Except it doesn't work that way as some package name have changed and the command fails due to some package not existing anymore.

It give something to start with but still requires human intervention from someone who knows how to navigate in this mess.

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

#162

Post by martimarkov » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #140

Synaesthesia wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should get him an iPad or consider it. My grandpa who’s 94 won’t use anything else. That said he’s probably used to the setup now.

My grandmother (100) just phoned me using FaceTime on her iPad. I find this insanely cool. She was born during World War 1, experienced World War 2 and is now able to enjoy modern technology to get in touch with her family. The only issue she has is accidentally touching the screen.

There is a setting for that in iOS. It’s somewhere in accessibility

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

#163

Post by m45t3r » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

I remember years ago I setup a XFCE desktop on my Arch Linux to my mom, since I was tired to fixing the problems that my PC got every time she wanted to use it.

I just explained: this is "the internet" (Firefox), this is Word (OpenOffice.org Writter), this is Excel (OpenOffice.org Calc), everything else you can come to me and ask (I lived with her).

This did reduce the number of reinstallations I had to do, and I don't remember she ever asking for some actual problem (mostly some basic questions).

Nowadays she only uses her smartphone and it is much easier to avoid problems. Since she doesn't blind install apps before asking me if they're safe too, her smartphone is clean.

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

#164

Post by city41 » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #133

ddebernardy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think the point is that if you buy Apple hardware, of course macOS is going to run well, because you bought hardware specific to that, so do the same for Linux, buy Linux specific/well tested hardware instead of just any old crap, because you weouldn't do the same with macOS.

It's a fair point. Especially now that you can get purpose built Linux laptops, even from Dell.

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

#165

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #134

Many years ago I idealistically tried to switch my dad over to Linux but that was a nightmare, mostly due to hardware incompatibilities. My missus also ran Linux at some point but Ubuntu upgrades kept breaking and 3G modem drivers never worked properly. But that's years ago so I am sure the desktop Linux situation has improved slightly. Since about 2010 my entire family is on Mac and support calls have also pretty mu…

Hardware incompatibilities goes both way stuff that won't work on windows or that requires some obscure/bloated driver will work plug and play on linux. Depends on the hardware and the work put on it but the opensource people.

Many people have their first linux experience with ubuntu which is a shame seeing how this distribution is riddled with problems that are not being addressed because the distro is going to be binned in 6 months anyway and devs have to work on the next release.

I agree with you, daily usage is mostly a web browser / email client but there's also all the uncommon stuff and exotic hardware except my experience is that 70-80% of time you plug it and it just works, 10% of time it requires some web searching and meddling with installing/configuring somethins and 10% of time it will not work (85% of those are apple devices).

There's also one important thing to take into account, in 2010 Mac were repairable and serviceable, since 2012 repairability of Mac is abysmal and consistently get the worst score on fixit. The long list of Apple engineering failures[1] adds to the idea that getting Mac just to be able to run OSX is not as good as it was in 2010.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

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

#166

Post by wander_homer » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

jaredandrews wrote: post #44

Just to add another anecdote... Back in 2008 or so, my relatives did the really nice thing of buying my Grandma the cheapest possible Walmart computer they could find. You know the sort of Windows eMachine that comes preinstalled with spyware? Of course, my relatives live about 6 hours away from her and all of the "on site support" fell to me. In the first 2 years of my Grandma getting this computer I must have gone…

So how do you take care of updates and upgrades? There should have been at least 3 major dist upgrades required to keep her on security support since then and afaik back then Linux Mint offically didn't support major upgrades and suggested to do a clean install instead, which is defnintely not something I'd let my grandma do on her own.

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

#167

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #140

Synaesthesia wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should get him an iPad or consider it. My grandpa who’s 94 won’t use anything else. That said he’s probably used to the setup now.

My grandmother (100) just phoned me using FaceTime on her iPad. I find this insanely cool. She was born during World War 1, experienced World War 2 and is now able to enjoy modern technology to get in touch with her family. The only issue she has is accidentally touching the screen.

Wow! what a waste of money.

Buying expensive hardware and relying on closed software that can only communicate with other expensive devices of the same brand when you can do it from the browser is a really sad reality.

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

#168

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

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…

Well Ubuntu is a broken by design bleeding edge attempt to be microsoft with linux so it is not something I would use myself (ditched it 15 years ago) and even less install for people who are not computer literate with time on their hands.

I have two main issues with OSX: it only works on overpriced hardware with no repairability and some things are hidden or very difficult to find when possible (sort of the civilized version of GNOME's way of removing settings and features and thinking the user is dumb).

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

#169

Post by simion314 » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #159

simion314 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, i would not recommend this for all cases, as the article mentions it worked because this following things applied 1 you were already wasting your time when visiting the parents on fixing the computer 2 the parents were transitioned to the Linux cmpatible applications like Firefox,Chrome, VLC, 3 all the parents workflows were accounted for and were met by Linux 4 the switch is done to Ubuntu LTS and not so…

Regardless of whether these conditions apply, teaching your parents to use new software is more work than doing nothing.

It depends, if they only use a browser,solitaire,image viewer and video player then the Linux equivalent are very similar or better. If they use some exotic software then I agree with you.

But keep in mind that there are people that will have no idea that you changed the software, I was called by a neighbor to check why his laptop has no longer sound, somehow he muted Windows without knowing(maybe he hit some keyboard shortcut). With this low skilled people there is o retraining cost because their skill is already close to zero

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

#170

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

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.

Try running OSX on the same hardware and see how well it works of if you encounter problems too.

I experienced some standby/resume issues a few times along my years with linux, sometimes the fix was simply to upgrade/downgrade the kernel, sometimes using a different distro did the trick, sometimes it was a matter of configuring things correctly and sadly sometimes the hardware manufacturer was hostile to linux.