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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

#221

Post by metildaa »

nitrogen wrote: post #205
metildaa wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here is why I switched to Debian. Got tired of downstream forks breaking the upgrade process, which hasn't been an issue since switching a few years back. The Gnome software center makes it easy to find and install apps too, reminds me of click n run from Linspire.

It's not very often you see Click-N-Run mentioned. Early versions had an easter egg if you queued apps to install whose first letters spelled ClicknRun, then pressed Ctrl-Alt-Shift-C.

CNR was years ahead of any of these app stores, really wish it had continued on rather than others having to build APT clients that still don't work quite as well.

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

#222

Post by rhizome »

rabidrat wrote: post #150
rhizome wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)

If they're running Linux, I can ssh in and do it myself. :)

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

#223

Post by grogenaut »

zapzupnz wrote: post #203

I got all my grandparents iPads. The only tech support calls I get is when they forget their Apple ID passwords. Thankfully, I know them all.

till you're on vacation and they go to the apple store and they "helpfully" set a secure password on the device. Happened to my mom. She doesn't always remember to write things down. Now I'm on a 3 way call with apple trying to get the password reset for an hour then talking her through resetting it on her several devices. They wouldn't let her set what she thought the password was.

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

#224

Post by pbreit »

izacus wrote: post #199
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…

If you can afford to drop a pile of money for a Mac, why can't you buy a Linux compatible hardware stack?

Nothing to do with cost.

And if it did, Macs can easily be a better value with their better longevity and resale value.

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

#225

Post by flukus »

rootoor wrote: post #114

My 97 year old grandpa has a MacBook Pro and a few years back he was constantly on the phone with my mom trying to fix issues. We installed a Remote Desktop server so my mom could fix things quickly. After a visit we diagnosed the problem. Because of his poor motorskills, he was clicking and clicking-and-dragging things by accident. To mitigate this, we installed some software that locked the applications in the dock…

I had the same experience with my father on KDE. I tried locking it but he would somehow screw it up and toolbars would be all over the place. Gnome with it's lack of configuration has been fine.

I think leaving the configuration in config files or a separate app (like tweak tool) is much better for novices and power users.

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

#226

Post by pbreit »

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…

Same. I would ===never=== burden my parents with Linux. Until recently, it would be Macs. But am starting to think ChromeOS might be superior.

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

#227

Post by tomohawk »

lgleason wrote: post #189

I switched my dad over to Chrome OS and never looked back. Now he tells all of this fiends to do the same thing because it's so much simpler. I really wish there was a better open source alternative because Google is evil these days but...

Chromebooks are a good idea, but they don't really work all that well for some simple use cases. We have a popular printer that everything else works with, but the chromebooks only work sporadically. Apple, Windoes, Linux - they all work just fine. Software from the app store is hit or miss, and when it works, there are often display issues, etc.

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

#228

Post by behringer »

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 macos on PC hardware and you'll feel the true pain of incompatibility. Buy hardware supported by your OS of choice. You dont buy an arm computer and expect to run windows. You shouldn't buy a PC for Windows and expect it to function perfectly for Linux.

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

#229

Post by ttty »

agumonkey wrote: post #141
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…

I'd love to conduct a study on the perception of computers. It seems that many people from the previous generation (born before 80s) are floating in a sea of confusion and ad-hoc reflexes. Changing an OS does barely affect the noise/signal ratio to them.

If all you do is to click the internet icon and browser... Then of course there is no much change.

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

#230

Post by zozbot123 »

hanshenrik wrote: post #215

Just want to say that Xubuntu remind me a lot of win7, and they're not even trying to be windows-ish! (.. at least not officially?)

Xfce in general reminds me a lot of WinXP - the good parts of WinXP, of course. There's another thread at the time I'm writing, discussing what was good about the Win98 interface - WinXP kept a lot of that interface, and Xfce, LXDE, even MATE are rather reminiscent of it. I even find the GTK3 interface quite a bit cleaner than what we got with Windows 8/10.

(As an aside, I kinda expect Xfce, LXDE and MATE to converge in the near future. Now that essentially all of them are moving to GTK3, there seems to be very little reason for them not to standardize on a uniform set of underlying components and tools.)

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