[GLLUG] Recycling computers with Linux

[DL Neil]

Alain,


On 16/11/16 01:44, Alain Williams via GLLUG wrote:
> Interesting chat from a friend who was over for the w/end. Her laptop installed
> MS Win 10 last year; she did not ask for it, etc. She does not like it and says
> that it is crawling with virus and so will not connect it to the Internet;
> rarely uses it.
>
> I took her through installing Linux Mint (Mate desktop) on a spare laptop; a few
> questions but otherwise used it happily all w/end.
>
> Her only concern was that she has to use MS Windows boxes at work; using Linux
> at home might make that harder for her.
>
> It will be interesting to see if she uses the Mint install USB stick that I gave her.

You user-illustration shows that 'it' is not between "Linux Mint" and 
"MS Windows"!

Users' issues usually relate to coping with the differences between 
MS-Excel and LibreOffice Calc, or Thunderbird and MS-Outlook. This 
similar to the irritation of touch-typists trying to move between 
103-key keyboards and portable machines - or "Natural" keyboards, to say 
nothing of switching to other (Romance) languages... All 'muscle memory' 
and 'chunked thinking' counts for naught, and one is reduced to 
consciously implementing every function, step-by-step.


Some time back I upgraded my aged Mother (OK, her PC) from desktop to 
portable. Made it a dual-boot machine in case she needed to revert to 
her MS-Win platform for any reason. Time passed...

She enjoyed the advantages of a laptop and wanted something newer and 
replacing the HDD with solid-state. Upon configuring the new box I asked 
if she wanted to continue the existing choice or just go with one or the 
other? She had forgotten the choice, and had the habit of booting the 
box and then walking away - so she'd not seen the GRUB choice for ages.

Went round-and-around for a while, until she finally managed to remember 
that she occasionally saw the name "CentOS". I was roundly-criticised 
for demanding 'technical details' (over the phone) but now that's all 
she uses because she'd never noticed any material differences. Whenever 
any asks about using her PC, she happily warns them that it's "only for 
experts - because it runs CentOS". That's the same person who rapped my 
knuckles for struggling to ascertain if it was Linux of Windows 
underneath her application suite!
(Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, albeit admittedly 
with very little else apart from the irreplaceable (IMHO) TeamViewer!)

-- 
Regards,
=dn