I have Linux Mint on my laptop and run I run Linux on all my computers. Best menu ever cinnamon.
My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
301–310 of 356 posts
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#302Microsoft's desktop supremacy hasn't been down to "it's got a nice, easy to use interface" for at least 20 years. Rather, Microsoft is (or was, in the pre-post-PC world) everywhere because of (a) licensing stitch-ups with hardware vendors and (b) network externalities: get into Corporate IT departments with Office, then people will want (or need) to use the same OS at home, and then you can strong-arm hardware vendor…
The desktop is now irrelevant -- less than 10% of computing devices people use are desktops or laptops: it's all gone mobile frighteningly fast. It's ironic that you probably typed that with a desktop or laptop. Irrelevant? Hardly.
Laptops/desktops = producers. Mobile = consumers. It's that simple.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#303Microsoft's desktop supremacy hasn't been down to "it's got a nice, easy to use interface" for at least 20 years. Rather, Microsoft is (or was, in the pre-post-PC world) everywhere because of (a) licensing stitch-ups with hardware vendors and (b) network externalities: get into Corporate IT departments with Office, then people will want (or need) to use the same OS at home, and then you can strong-arm hardware vendor…
> desktop is now irrelevant
I disagree completely. Why don't you write all your books on an iPad? It's not the tool for the job. In my opinion 20 years from now, assuming we don't have cortical implants or similar, people are going to go to work and sit down in front of a monitor with a keyboard and a mouse. It won't be so different to how people worked 20 years ago.
MSFT completely agrees with you. The see the Zeitgeist going towards more and more devices so they are scrambling to make handsets and tablets that no one wants to buy. They totally ignored the core desktop user with Windows 8. But this has to do with being a publicly traded company I think. For some reason a slow and steady market like desktops isn't good enough. They can't go to the investors and say "We aren't the sexy new thing, but we'll continue to make boatloads of money for the foreseeable future." (Honestly I'm not sure why they can't do that, but companies have to plan on growing for some reason.)
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#304Both my parents are 60+. My mom is perfectly fine using Ubuntu on my old x61 for email, browsing, and YouTube. To be fair she could probably replace it with a tablet if it weren't for the fact that she visits a lot of flash sites (Chinese TV streaming sites). Likewise my dad is on another Ubuntu machine at home. His work needs access to some software / printers that can't be run via Wine so he's stuck with Windows th…
My mom 50+, No technical knowledge, uses ubuntu for email, youtube, and general browsing, and occasionally makes presentations. My colleagues at work, Programmers, aren't able to get out of Windows, even though they are just writing python. They would rather stick with the pain of having to use git in a crappy console, and suffer loads of pain when shell-ing into ec2 linux boxes, Than learn a new UI and file-system
Yeah, same here dude. My mom couldn't distinguish between Windows and Ubuntu and also has not seen any difference between Word and OpenOffice, except that she couldn't find the bulk letter function. She kept using it for years, luckily the most important thing to her, "The Browser" didn't change at all. Luckily Firefox is the same experience on every OS.
She was against every subtle change, so putting another OS on her machine was hard. She even resisted to use a much faster Computer, because she likes when things "just work" and really doesn't care what the name of the system is or about the specs of the system, as long as things can be done the "usual way" and she doesn't need to wait 5min. for things to happen. Her old computer was a 1GHZ, this one has 3.2GHZ and for her it's the same. To be honest, things aren't really getting faster for an average PC user, except when you install an SSD.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#305Both my parents are 60+. My mom is perfectly fine using Ubuntu on my old x61 for email, browsing, and YouTube. To be fair she could probably replace it with a tablet if it weren't for the fact that she visits a lot of flash sites (Chinese TV streaming sites). Likewise my dad is on another Ubuntu machine at home. His work needs access to some software / printers that can't be run via Wine so he's stuck with Windows th…
My Dad has been begging me to install Ubuntu on his MacBook Air. I think it's time I did.
but why? if you paid for Apple hardware, OS X is ten times nicer than ubuntu.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#306Linux Mint is actually a very easy and natural transition from Windows. A few years ago, I installed Linux on my parents' desktop (dual-boot)[0] and told them that they were "forbidden" to use any other computer for web browsing, document editing, etc. I told them that this would be more secure, and that's all it took to convince them. I figured that, this way, at least I could fix any of their computer problems remo…
The thing is Windows XP, with all its warts, will still run comfortably on a 6 or 8 year PC that was low-end when it was new. A few weeks ago, when my wife's old XP computer finally wouldn't boot anymore I got a new hard drive and tried to run Ubuntu on it. Couldn't even get through the installer without it freezing up. Lubuntu installed but wasn't stable. OpenBSD with KDE was pretty good, and I would have stayed wit…
>> few weeks ago, when my wife's old XP computer finally wouldn't boot anymore I got a new hard drive and tried to run Ubuntu on it.
>> Couldn't even get through the installer without it freezing up.
It sounds like the machine may have had additional issues. I ran Ubuntu 7.04 - 12.04 on my 2005 machine until this year and could really have made it another year or two but thought it was time to treat myself to an upgrade.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#307The moment I really realized how much things have changed was when I plugged an old printer into a 64 bit Windows machine, searched for drivers, and finally found out that Microsoft's official position was "Buy a new printer". Then I plugged the printer into my laptop running Ubuntu and it said "Please wait while we set up your printer... OK your printer is ready to use".
I used to advise novice users against Ubuntu because troubleshooting can get pretty hairy. But that's my ex-Mac user bias showing. Compared to Windows, it is at worst a toss-up, and I feel that's being very generous to Windows.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what I never got about Windows and especially Windows devs. How can you get anything done with all that clicking and no unix tools?
Vmware + linux + unity mode. Vmware Workstation has always been very seamless with things like copy/paste between the guest and host. Havent used Virtualbox for a few years but I'm sure thats ok too.
...what do you accomplish with all this? I was forced to use Windows at work once so I had a Linux Virtualbox to do specific tasks, but it's not at all an ideal setup. I'm not sure what the advantage is over just using Linux as your host OS.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#309This is one way to look at it. Here's another: I have Ubuntu on a couple of machines at home and still can't get them to talk to my Brother MFC-685CW printer. I'm a PhD in EECS.
Printers and scanners are the zit on the face of the modern linux desktop.
Your comment should be downvoted for trolling.
Re: My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work done
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Powershell, Powershell, Powershell! Seriously, people, if you have to use a windows system, put some time into learning Powershell. * Most simple grep and sed commands are entirely do-able. Bit more verbose syntax, but that comes with a hell of a lot of easy-to-access power * It's all about objects, rather than plain text. This can often be a pain, but Import-Csv and Export-Csv are utter LOVE. Adding additional new p…
I can get used to the verbosity, but the archaic block editing copy/paste makes Powershell painful to use for anything more than the basics. Copying multiline text in Powershell first requires pasting it into an intermediary text editor and fixing up the new lines. And since the commands are so verbose, more often than not a command will span multiple lines.
You should switch to using ConEmu[0] as a terminal. Completely fixes the rectangular copy blocks. Just set it up to launch PowerShell as your default shell.