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

#171

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #67

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

Sure, but that hardware advantage is something Apple should be able to take advantage of, they worked hard to get it. And I take advantage of it as well. At the end of the day, I just care about my needing to do support and that a computer generally works. I run Ubuntu on a 2015 and 2017 Lenovo ThinkPad (T450 and T470s) and a desktop I built myself. Interestingly it runs the best on my custom desktop. I use Ubuntu du…

your problem here is not linux, your problem is probably ubuntu and lenovo.

ubuntu is notoriously buggy and lenovo thinkpads are more and more hostile to linux since 5-6 years.

Try something like manjaro instead of ubuntu and see if you still experience the same issues.

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

#172

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

bor0 wrote: post #42

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…

Exactly why I switched from Xubuntu to Mac 5 years ago. I just want to do my work, not fix my system after every minor upgrade.

The reccurring issue people seem to have with linux is that they use ubuntu. Just use a decent distro instead and see if that fixes your issues.

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

#173

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

Odenwaelder wrote: post #64

Obligatory read: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfr...

I fully understand it's about the storytelling and not about the actual fix, but expecting another cool, Linux success story, I did come away a little disappointed they just restarted the router.

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

#174

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #20

My father was willing to switch, my mother was not. So: my father is now on his third Linux machine in 16 years (two laptops and now a NUC hiding behind a 24" monitor). Normal updates are handled automatically; I do a major upgrade once a year. rsnapshot backs up to an external disk three times a day. Every so often he tells me that he wants to do something new, and asks if it's possible; the answer is always yes. My…

You may be interested in looking into borg to replace rsnapshot.

https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

https://github.com/borgbackup/borg

https://github.com/borgbackup/borg-import

https://github.com/borgbackup/borgweb

https://github.com/borgbase/vorta

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

#175

Post by akx » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:56 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

`dpkg --get-selections` also lists explicitly deinstalled packages, so you'll want to grep the list first.

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

#176

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

l1am0 wrote: post #9

Rietty wrote: post #3

This is a very minor nitpick, but you do have some spelling errors in there. The one I noticed however is the word: save/saver instead of safe/safer.

Thanks for that info! Yes I am native german speaker, so I appreciate your help here :D

Also not a native Markdown speaker I see :P

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

#177

Post by city41 » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

bigbugbag wrote: post #171

city41 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that hardware advantage is something Apple should be able to take advantage of, they worked hard to get it. And I take advantage of it as well. At the end of the day, I just care about my needing to do support and that a computer generally works. I run Ubuntu on a 2015 and 2017 Lenovo ThinkPad (T450 and T470s) and a desktop I built myself. Interestingly it runs the best on my custom desktop. I use Ubuntu du…

your problem here is not linux, your problem is probably ubuntu and lenovo. ubuntu is notoriously buggy and lenovo thinkpads are more and more hostile to linux since 5-6 years. Try something like manjaro instead of ubuntu and see if you still experience the same issues.

That's totally fair. It's on my todo list to try some other distros. I will probably try Debian first. I chose Ubuntu due to it being so popular and also because my company's IT supports it. But if other distros are more reliable then that's fantastic.

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

#178

Post by qrybam » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

I installed Ubuntu on our spare laptop for general web browsing and day to day use. My wife used it for about a year. Not a week went by when I didn't hear about something not working. Granted, it's probably because I didn't spare enough time to set things up like our network printer and installing Office via Wine (she wasn't impressed with the FOSS alternative). I finally bit the bullet, bought a Windows licence and haven't looked back since.... Some things I'd be happy to put myself through, but would avoid inflicting on my non-techy family members.

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

#179

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

Switched my whole family on Linux 15+ years ago, call for support went down dramatically maybe 95% now versus then. There was a few hiccups along the way to find a suitable distro, dropping ubuntu was a huge improvement in this.

Most recent major issue is when Mozilla decided that they would remove support for ALSA with mentioning it in changelog on a ESR release and suddenly there was no sound in online videos and I had to scramble to replace firefox on a dozen of computers.

Almost all computers can be remotely administered over a secure connection, they have automated backups and most have unattended upgrade.

Issue arise when KDE releases half baked stuff and changes the way things worked, Mozilla messes firefox some more and systemd is being systemd. Once in while there is this family member who is too clueless/proud to admit he messed up who broke something or did not find way something obvious.

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

#180

Post by gnulinux » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

l1am0 wrote: post #19

excalibur wrote: post #12

My nitpick is about some of the inconsistencies. You said that you got them accustomed to Firefox and LibreOffice, and then you turned around and installed Chrome and MS Office in Wine. Does that mean they didn't take well to the new apps, and your user training method wasn't entirely successful?

They use firefox as main browser, but for using DRM content I found Chrome to be the easier solution. They worked their way to LibreOffice, but regarding spell- and grammar-checking LibreOffice really sucks. As my dad does professional writing it was just not enough.

(disclaimer I never used Chrome) What's the problem with Firefox and Netflix? I never had an issue?