On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 07:04, Dave Phillips wrote: > I'll share a short story. <SNIP> > So I agree. The typical computer user knows next to nothing about this > device which has become so important in our daily lives, which sets them > up to become victims of their own ignorance. I can understand why you're > concerned about making the Linux experience as painless as possible, but > you've got a big task ahead of you, as I'm sure you know. > > Best regards, > > == dp Dave, Let me offer an alternative story. My 70+ year old Dad *is* the prototypical Windows user you wrote about here, and as his Silicon Valley son I've had had to help him out for 15 years with his Windows computers and mess-ups. No fun, but family. Of all people to do this, a few years ago he got interested in Linux (from a distance) and decided that he would pay me monthly to check out Linux in whatever way I wanted. He sends me a modest, but not small, check every month for me to do whatever I want in the Linux area, be it software or hardware. For about a year I didn't even use it, but after there was better than $1000 sitting around I decided I had to do something. I built a machine a few years ago and got started. Now I only use Windows to run Pro Tools & Quicken. Pretty much everything else is Linux these days for me. The money has built a few computers and bought some peripherals (including audio) and countless distributions. This last Thanksgiving I delivered a new computer to my Dad running Gentoo Linux, fluxbox, Evolution, Open Office 1.1, Crossover Office, Mozilla, mplayer, gxine and about 20 other things he hasn't touched yet. We transferred data from his Windows box on Thursday, Thanksgiving day. (WinSCP - get it!!) He told me yesterday (8 days later) that he hasn't even turned his Windows box on since, and he's now got an uptime of 5 days. The only problem that occurred was one seg_fault in Evolution and one time he hit the caps lock and couldn't log back in to xscreensaver. He's running xine with some streaming news casts I think, using his Word and Excel files under Open Office. and doing email and web development with my wife for a time share in Palm Springs. Who knows? 8-10 days ain't much, but it is interesting that he's had as few problems as he's had. I think the Linux desktop for the casual user is probably not that far away. Mark
