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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

#271

Post by acqq »

grogenaut wrote: post #223
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.

Yes, recent iOS updates tried to force people like my parents to have passwords or logins that are too complex and simply unnecessary for them. If you use iPad in your own home, there's no reason to "authenticate" on every open (my parents surely don't want/can't perform the fingerprinting every time -- not to mention that if the device prompt them to enter a new complex code they might even type in twice but they will never remember it, or be prepared to write it down first, the expect the device to "just work" and not to have to maintain some other external notice book with the access codes, and I fully understand that). It's not easy to match the security "requirements" and general "common" use.

The iPad of my parents (that they use mostly at home) seems to insist on more complex security procedures for my parents to watch the pictures of the kids than the procedures which secured the launch US nuclear missiles (the later had simply the code 00000000 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-... ).

Balancing the security and usability is hard.

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

#272

Post by zapzupnz »

acqq wrote: post #271
grogenaut wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, recent iOS updates tried to force people like my parents to have passwords or logins that are too complex and simply unnecessary for them. If you use iPad in your own home, there's no reason to "authenticate" on every open (my parents surely don't want/can't perform the fingerprinting every time -- not to mention that if the device prompt them to enter a new complex code they might even type in twice but they wi…

We did think about not having pin codes or Touch ID enabled, but there are enough kids visiting my grandparents that the one thing we're afraid of is them deleting their files, mail, sending messages, etc.

Thankfully, none of them forget their PIN codes. My grandmother also has Touch ID on her iPad, even easier.

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

#273

Post by AsyncAwait »

Theodores wrote: post #219
AsyncAwait wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Linux on the Skull Canyon NUC and it works great.

But do you have the skull lid/cover or the boring black one?

Of course the skull cover :-)

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

#274

Post by tsukikage »

fro0116 wrote: post #263
bigbugbag wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually remember running into this issue a lot when building Docker images. Generally you want your docker image to be reproducible so you'd want to lock versions of your dependencies. But when doing this with apt-get install, a lot of the time I find that when a new version of a package is released, the old one gets removed and becomes no longer accessible, so locking versions actually ends up resulting in _more_…

The entire software industry has shifted to a stance of not caring when updates break user workflow, experience, functionality and habits. For basically any modern piece of software, whether/when to take each update, rather than being a no-brainer, is a very difficult decision: it is impossible for the end user to separate security/functionality fixes from workflow/functionality-breaking behaviour changes. Everything, across the board, universally, suffers from this: web browsers (few plugins survive browser updates), office software (ui rearranged every time), operating systems (packages and entire applications just vanish)...

Visible behaviour and functionality is changed or removed without user involvement, choice or recourse, turning every update into a game of Russian Roulette. Even LTS builds don't mean no breakage of behaviours users rely on.

From the developer's POV maintaining security/bugfix-only forks of every feature branch rapidly becomes intractable as a project gains complexity / matures. Meanwhile, for startups, "move fast and break things" is the creed. So as we demand more from our software overall, this situation can only get worse, not better.

The temptation for modern users to say "you know what? it's MY bloody computer, not yours; my problems are actually more important to me than whatever you think you're solving" and unplug from the update streams is overwhelming.

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

#275

Post by Unklejoe »

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…

> The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system

Same, except for my 70 year old parents. I switched them from Windows to Ubuntu MATE. All I had to do was simply rename the Firefox icon to "Internet" and they were good to go.

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

#277

Post by imtringued »

Wintereise wrote: post #233
behringer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not the point, though. The competitor (Windows) mostly has none of these problems, and that's pretty much what matters EOD. If you cannot expect a generic PC to run Linux, `$currentYear is the year of the Linux Desktop` will continue to be little more than hyperbole. That's a big problem if we're looking for widespread adoption.

>The competitor (Windows) mostly has none of these problems,

Windows tends to self destruct via forced updates over time. So far I have not had a single windows installation that didn't require a reinstall after a certain amount of time has passed. The type of failure is different but it's significantly worse.

This is coming from someone who uses Arch Linux, a bleeding edge distro that isn't known for it's stability (well it's pretty stable so far).

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

#278

Post by acct1771 »

vonseel wrote: post #246

My dad needed to play a video file sent to him by a lawyer recently. I assume it wasn’t QuickTime compatible. Well, he couldn’t get in touch with me and installed some crazy video player he paid for on the App Store. I was shocked. Literally, the first result when I search for “video player Mac” on Google is something for VLC. Why is it so hard for less technically knowledgeable users to find reliable, spam/malware/m…

Because the market's advertising is geared toward informing them about the malware.

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

#279

Post by hnnh44 »

tsukikage wrote: post #274
fro0116 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually remember running into this issue a lot when building Docker images. Generally you want your docker image to be reproducible so you'd want to lock versions of your dependencies. But when doing this with apt-get install, a lot of the time I find that when a new version of a package is released, the old one gets removed and becomes no longer accessible, so locking versions actually ends up resulting in _more_…

The entire software industry has shifted to a stance of not caring when updates break user workflow, experience, functionality and habits. For basically any modern piece of software, whether/when to take each update, rather than being a no-brainer, is a very difficult decision: it is impossible for the end user to separate security/functionality fixes from workflow/functionality-breaking behaviour changes. Everything…

Isn't this what semantic versioning tried to address?
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