Back in 2002, I went for work to the US for about six months. Calling India on the telephone was quite expensive then, even with calling cards. So, I left my GNU/Linux machine at home with my parents and made it to login without password. It was running a version of KDE and had netscape mail. I used to connect to the internet using this little program called 'kppp' and there was a nice option in there to open any program of choice when a connection to the internet is made.
So, I made it to open netscape mail on connection.
My father was quite uninterested to learn to use the computer, though he took elaborate notes while I explained to him how to send and receive email. My mother who cannot write english, listened to what I was explaining. Both of them had never touched a computer before and had a tough time operating the mouse. Once they adjust the pointer to the right menu and they lift their hand up to click and the mouse pointer goes somewhere else. :)
But at the end it worked quite well. My mother used the computer to send me email. She wrote transliterated malayalam (my native language). Both of us understood what we were talking about and we exchanged emails almost every day of my six months of stay.
There were times when the internet service provider couldn't provide a connection to a ppp request and kppp printed weird error messages. I had a friend who used to visit my home and see if there are problems. Barring a couple of simple problems, it worked reasonably well.
Every time someone complains that GNU/Linux is difficult to use, I narrate this story to them. Yes, there are still rough edges, but we have come a long long way since 2002. Oh, did I say my parents were both 60+ in 2002?
