Thu 27 Apr 2006
Well, it turned out to be remarkably simple to switch my not very technically adept parents from Windows XP to Ubuntu (Breezy Badger). We did this on the basis that it was getting increasingly difficult to manage their computer difficulties from Melbourne, and their Windows XP installation was incredibly spamware and adware ridden.
So at the moment I have put Ubuntu on as a second boot option, just in case they ABSOLUTELY NEED TO use windows. But they tell me that they are only using Ubuntu. In Linux, I have given their user accounts the standard (low) level of access, and I have made sure that I can get ssh access externally. Now I just need to set up VNC and dynamic domain registration so that I don't have to keep getting dad to lookup his modems external IP address.
Mark that one up as another successful switch to Linux. It was a lot easier than I thought. Their main applications that they used are Firefox, Outlook and some Microsoft Word.
October 9th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Same thing here. Both my own mother and my parents in law are enough computer savy to be able to do their thing, but also to mess up their computer completely. Running ad-aware and the like after some weeks usually makes me cry. Even if you tell ‘em NOT to click OK on every pop-up, they usally do.
Maybe it’s a good thing to change their OS-es to Ubuntu. Last time I did a clean install I wasn’t too sure about it. They just worked their way through something like “windows for dummies”. Useless if you try to get them to use Ubuntu. But maybe, with the next, hard needed, clean install, I’ll give it a try.
Good to know there are more people suffering like me…
Is it still working out? Or did you have to switch back by now?