Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mom's NUC has never caused any trouble running the latest Ubuntu. Network printer, scanner, wireless mouse, webcam, bluetooth headphones, USB hard drives, sleep/hibernation... not a single problem.
Which NUC model is it? I looked into NUCs a couple years ago but at the time they had a reputation of not being great with Linux.
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
#192My 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…
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#193I 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...
With a Chromebook, you put it in front of them, set it up, show them, and if it breaks, you can ship them a new one from Amazon, remind them where they have written down their password, get them to sign back in, and done.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#194I 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...
That being said, yeah, all family members in the Momputer class of usership have been upgraded to ChromeOS devices. They, to a one, love them, too.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#195Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but that hardware advantage is something Apple should be able to take advantage of, they worked hard to get it. And I take advantage of it as well. At the end of the day, I just care about my needing to do support and that a computer generally works. I run Ubuntu on a 2015 and 2017 Lenovo ThinkPad (T450 and T470s) and a desktop I built myself. Interestingly it runs the best on my custom desktop. I use Ubuntu du…
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.
It's Ideapads that have often the problems.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#197I 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...
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#198Earlier 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
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.
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#199Many 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…
Re: Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly why I switched from Xubuntu to Mac 5 years ago. I just want to do my work, not fix my system after every minor upgrade.
The reccurring issue people seem to have with linux is that they use ubuntu. Just use a decent distro instead and see if that fixes your issues.
- use LTS. You don't need every 6-mo release.
- don't install packages from random ppas, if you don't know what they are doing to your system. Of course, do not install anything not managed by repositories, that would break your system (If I had a dime for every person that installed hplip/nvidia driver/etc from HP/Nvidia/etc site and just overwritten their apt-managed system files. It worked... until upgrade).
My parents also use Ubuntu; they are using it since 6.06, on the current hardware since 12.04. Upgrading them between LTS releases is non-event, aside the UI changes.