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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

#281

Post by licebmi__at__ »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #218
simion314 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a person that converts people to Linux, the entire thread was about when it is right to help a family member by installing Linux on their broken system, see above the conditions i think are the right one. The fact I could convert a random person to free software is not valuable enough to me to was 1 hour of my free time(yeah I am selfish).

That's my point. It takes an hour of time to convert someone to Linux. It takes 0 time to let them get their tech support from the local store. 1 hour is more than 0 work, even for a family member.

You also have to account for the fact that other people might think you're lazy or self centered because you don't want to spare some time to at least try to help them. Not saying that you're a bad person for refusing to provide free tech support, but your math is not entirely flawless.

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

#282

Post by excalibur »

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.

One thing to keep in mind about running Office on Wine (especially a version as old as 2007) is that the software has a number of known vulnerabilities, and the Wine installation breaks Microsoft's patching system(s). All patches have to be installed manually (unless there's a good script for this that I'm not aware of). Fortunately, most of the exploits will be designed to attack a Windows system, but it's still dangerous to leave it unpatched.

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

#283

Post by rhizome »

johnchristopher wrote: post #153
rabidrat wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Story-time: If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working. I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS. "I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry." I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.

I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!

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

#284

Post by rhizome »

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_…

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_ build flakiness than just using the latest of whatever package available at build-time, which is obviously not ideal.

I would maintain a local apt repository for that situation.

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

#285

Post by mxuribe »

mrmyers wrote: post #237

This has been my experience as well. So, background: I've maintained computers for various people close to me for maybe 6-7 years or so. A couple computers for my mom (laptop and desktop, with both replaced once or twice), two laptops for some younger cousins going through middle/highschool, a desktop for an aunt, and 2 of my girlfriend's laptops over the same period. At first, I was very pessimistic about how well i…

All of these are great suggestions and comments! But, the funniest comment...

> Configuring printers is a discount hell run by a counterfeit Satan.

Genius!

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

#286

Post by herbst »

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.

Lol. Try running Windows on non standard or even non x86 hardware. Your point here doesn't make much sense.

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

#287

Post by tlavoie »

phaedrus wrote: post #109
gambiting wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So my personal anecdote also involves mint - I've set one up for someone years ago(probably around 2013-2014) and you're right, it had no issues. However, when I came over to visit last year I wanted to do some maintenance, so "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" would be the start. Nope, turns out that the update servers for that version of Mint have been switched off long time ago and none of the links resolve an…

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…

Arch Linux is based on a rolling update, so my understanding is that you shouldn't have to jump to FreeBSD (nice as it is in some ways) to avoid a release-based upgrade.

I've only been using it for a little while on a couple systems, but seems nice enough. (Mint or regular Debian for years otherwise.)

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

#288

Post by tlavoie »

city41 wrote: post #177
bigbugbag wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mint on my Lenovo P51 has been brilliant. There were basically zero issues to get everything working like sound, sleep/resume and network (common sticky spots). Being a ThinkPad, there were also some utilities to do more specific things like power management to only charge to 80%; mine's usually plugged in, this is supposed to help battery life.

I can still dual-boot to the Win10 it came with, but it's been a month or two between typically.

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

#289

Post by tlavoie »

pbreit wrote: post #224
izacus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that longevity and resale value are necessarily their strong points any more, since everything (at least in a laptop) is glued together and essentially non-fixable for mortals.

My mid-2013 Retina MBP was a very nice system, used it lots every day. When the battery went, it's now a big deal; it's not replacing a battery, it's replacing the entire top case, trackpad, keyboard... and battery. That combination was never in stock when I visited Apple stores, and I don't live near one.

A local shop that does Apple-authorized work had to bring in that "part" - really, half a laptop, and change it out. Days later, the charging circuit failed on the main board, and it's become a doorstop with a new top case/battery. I couldn't even pay for a RAM upgrade (soldered on) when replacing the board, so I just didn't. Bought a ThinkPad that I can open and add things, and put the Mac's SSD in it.

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

#290

Post by daveFNbuck »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #281
daveFNbuck wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point. It takes an hour of time to convert someone to Linux. It takes 0 time to let them get their tech support from the local store. 1 hour is more than 0 work, even for a family member.

You also have to account for the fact that other people might think you're lazy or self centered because you don't want to spare some time to at least try to help them. Not saying that you're a bad person for refusing to provide free tech support, but your math is not entirely flawless.

Unless having a reputation for being lazy and selfless leads to more tech support calls, I think the math still works out on this being the least amount of work to get rid of tech support calls.

Whether this is a good idea or not is a separate question. Personally, I help my friends and family when I can.

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