Fw: Linux and the naive user (was Re: [seul-edu] Linux in Elementry)

[Douglas Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, owner-seul-edu@seul.org wrote:

> From: "Bob Rogers" <r_c_rogers@yahoo.com>
> To: <seul-edu@seul.org>
>
> Subject: Linux and the naive user (was Re: [seul-edu] Linux in
> Elementry)

> 
> Mr. Hart's experience with his parents echoes mine with my
> oldest son.  When
> my son went to college 3 years ago he was a Windows and Mac
> user but by no
> means "into" computers (he's a history major).  I had the
> chance to buy a
> cheap 486 midway through his first year of college.  It was a
> 50 mhz.
> machine with 16 meg. of RAM and ran Windows like a pig -
> glaciers move
> faster.  I upgraded it to a massive 32 meg of RAM and
> installed Slackware
> and fvwm95.  The machine was now usable.  He used Netscape for
> a browser,
> email client, and used Netscape composer as a word processor. 
> This served
> him very well for almost a year, when he got a faster (200
> mhz, 64 meg.)
> machine.  By now he was used to Linux and has not switched to
> Windows (he
> has switched to Mandrake with KDE) even though he now has a
> machine that
> would make a fine Win95/98 computer.
> 
> My point is that the non-techie can successfully use Linux. 
> It did take a
> fair amount of tech support on my part - Slackware is not the
> most
> user-friendly distribution - but on the other hand, Linux can
> be supported
> remotely much easier than Windows.  When my son had problems
> (very few,
> mostly the result of his early tries and downloading,
> compiling, and
> installing stuff) I was able to ssh to his machine in his dorm
> 300 miles
> away and help him out.
> 
> There were some other important Linux effects.  It gave us a
> shared
> activity, salvaging and fixing up the old PCs had the same
> bonding effects
> as fixing up an old car might do for some fathers and sons
> (and would make a
> great K-12 activity, think of high-schoolers fixing up and
> setting up old
> PCs for grade schools!).  Finally, over the last few years
> he's picked up
> some tech skills just by exploring and "playing with" his
> Linux systems that
> compare quite favorably to some of the CompSci interns I've
> seen at my
> workplace (I'm talking about admin. and UNIX-user skills here,
> not software
> development).
> 
-- 
Doug Loss           Advertisements contain the only truths
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