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Just to add another anecdote... Back in 2008 or so, my relatives did the really nice thing of buying my Grandma the cheapest possible Walmart computer they cou

Just to add another anecdote... Back in 2008 or so, my relatives did the really nice thing of buying my Grandma the cheapest possible Walmart computer they could find. You know the sort of Windows eMachine that comes preinstalled with spyware? Of course, my relatives live about 6 hours away from her and all of the "on site support" fell to me. In the first 2 years of my Grandma getting this computer I must have gone over more than 10 times to fix all sorts of stupid issues that were pretty much inherent to the machine. I grew sick of this and one day I went over, backed up the few important files on the machine and installed linux mint. That was in 2010, it is now 2019 and I have gone over to fix my Grandmas computer twice since. Once to help her set up a printer, and another time when she accidentally cleared her cookies and couldn't figure out how to log back into anything. The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

gambiting 8y ago
So my personal anecdote also involves mint - I've set one up for someone years ago(probably around 2013-2014) and you're right, it had no issues. However, when I came over to visit last year I wanted to do some maintenance, so "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" would be the start. Nope, turns out that the update servers for that version of Mint have been switched off long time ago and none of the links resolve anymore. Upgrading the apt server list just resulted in hundreds of errors when actually trying to upgrade the system. At this point I stopped, worried that I'm just going to break everything. After that, I had a realization - yes, the system ran for 4 years without any maintenance, but it also received no updates and no patches whatsoever during that time, because linux does not do that by default(or at least Mint didn't). And then the only issues my windows-using family have is 90% of the time due to....windows updates. Things are not where they used to be, some application changed so it's now different, they had something open and the computer restarted itself....the usual. And while that is a problem....at least their machines are always patched and up to date. That Mint installation was running in the same state that it was in the day I set it up, and after just few years it couldn't even be updated any more(to my best effort). That's pretty bad too.
- phaedrus 8y ago
  This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would need in order to do the upgrade were turned off in the meantime. To be fair, Linux Mint states that a complete reinstall is the recommended way, but since I do development, it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. Also I think Ubuntu suffers the same problem, if you wait long enough. I'm pretty sure I have an Ubuntu install that I waited too long to upgrade. It is enough to make me serious consider switching to FreeBSD, except I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    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
    - rabidrat 8y ago
      Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)
      - johnchristopher 8y ago
        Story-time: If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working. I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS. "I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry." I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.
        rhizome 8y ago
        I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!
oever 8y ago
I've just returned from a philosophical café about algorithms and society. A 78 year old attendee in the audience was advocating Linux to avoid junk on your computer. He claimed it's easy for anyone to switch from Windows to Linux as he had done last year. He installed Linux Mint himself, which he claimed is easy because it's just a download and he's not a technical person himself.
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  What is a "philosophical Cafe"? Sounds awesome. Edit: Google sends me to https://www.cafesphilo.org/ https://www.cafesphilo.org/ which sounds great but seems to be mainly limited to France.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    You found the right thing. It's mostly French and exclusively European. They're places to discuss ideas and theories respectfully and civilly. I don't think the same thing exists in America in any form. The topics can vary from "the nature of choice" to something like what GP posted.
    - toyg 8y ago
      The map on that page has pins on Tunisia, Georgia, Brazil, US (NY i think) and the Caribbeans. But yes, most of the others are in France.
    - licebmi__at__ 8y ago
      Nice, a friend of mine runs a similar concept in Mexico, maybe he can find some resources in there.
- meddlepal 8y ago
  Something tells me a 78 year old attending a Philosophy meetup about Algorithms and Society is probably a hell of a lot smarter than your average 78 year old.
  - 8y ago
agumonkey 8y ago
I'd love to conduct a study on the perception of computers. It seems that many people from the previous generation (born before 80s) are floating in a sea of confusion and ad-hoc reflexes. Changing an OS does barely affect the noise/signal ratio to them.
- ttty 8y ago
  If all you do is to click the internet icon and browser... Then of course there is no much change.
wander_homer 8y ago
So how do you take care of updates and upgrades? There should have been at least 3 major dist upgrades required to keep her on security support since then and afaik back then Linux Mint offically didn't support major upgrades and suggested to do a clean install instead, which is defnintely not something I'd let my grandma do on her own.
forrestthewoods 8y ago
I once tried to change the color scheme in Mint. It corrupted my install and I had to wipe and start over. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- carlmr 8y ago
  That's the thing about Linux. You can shoot yourself in the foot easily if you want to change anything. However for most non-PC people they want to click a browser icon. That is easy and stable.
Unklejoe 8y ago
> The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system Same, except for my 70 year old parents. I switched them from Windows to Ubuntu MATE. All I had to do was simply rename the Firefox icon to "Internet" and they were good to go.

gambiting 8y ago

So my personal anecdote also involves mint - I've set one up for someone years ago(probably around 2013-2014) and you're right, it had no issues. However, when I came over to visit last year I wanted to do some maintenance, so "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" would be the start. Nope, turns out that the update servers for that version of Mint have been switched off long time ago and none of the links resolve anymore. Upgrading the apt server list just resulted in hundreds of errors when actually trying to upgrade the system. At this point I stopped, worried that I'm just going to break everything. After that, I had a realization - yes, the system ran for 4 years without any maintenance, but it also received no updates and no patches whatsoever during that time, because linux does not do that by default(or at least Mint didn't). And then the only issues my windows-using family have is 90% of the time due to....windows updates. Things are not where they used to be, some application changed so it's now different, they had something open and the computer restarted itself....the usual. And while that is a problem....at least their machines are always patched and up to date. That Mint installation was running in the same state that it was in the day I set it up, and after just few years it couldn't even be updated any more(to my best effort). That's pretty bad too.

phaedrus 8y ago
This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would need in order to do the upgrade were turned off in the meantime. To be fair, Linux Mint states that a complete reinstall is the recommended way, but since I do development, it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. Also I think Ubuntu suffers the same problem, if you wait long enough. I'm pretty sure I have an Ubuntu install that I waited too long to upgrade. It is enough to make me serious consider switching to FreeBSD, except I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported.
- rhizome 8y ago
  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
  - rabidrat 8y ago
    Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      Story-time: If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working. I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS. "I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry." I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.
      - rhizome 8y ago
        I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!

oever 8y ago

I've just returned from a philosophical café about algorithms and society. A 78 year old attendee in the audience was advocating Linux to avoid junk on your computer. He claimed it's easy for anyone to switch from Windows to Linux as he had done last year. He installed Linux Mint himself, which he claimed is easy because it's just a download and he's not a technical person himself.

ajmurmann 8y ago
What is a "philosophical Cafe"? Sounds awesome. Edit: Google sends me to https://www.cafesphilo.org/ https://www.cafesphilo.org/ which sounds great but seems to be mainly limited to France.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  You found the right thing. It's mostly French and exclusively European. They're places to discuss ideas and theories respectfully and civilly. I don't think the same thing exists in America in any form. The topics can vary from "the nature of choice" to something like what GP posted.
  - toyg 8y ago
    The map on that page has pins on Tunisia, Georgia, Brazil, US (NY i think) and the Caribbeans. But yes, most of the others are in France.
  - licebmi__at__ 8y ago
    Nice, a friend of mine runs a similar concept in Mexico, maybe he can find some resources in there.
meddlepal 8y ago
Something tells me a 78 year old attending a Philosophy meetup about Algorithms and Society is probably a hell of a lot smarter than your average 78 year old.
- 8y ago

agumonkey 8y ago

I'd love to conduct a study on the perception of computers. It seems that many people from the previous generation (born before 80s) are floating in a sea of confusion and ad-hoc reflexes. Changing an OS does barely affect the noise/signal ratio to them.

ttty 8y ago
If all you do is to click the internet icon and browser... Then of course there is no much change.

wander_homer 8y ago

So how do you take care of updates and upgrades? There should have been at least 3 major dist upgrades required to keep her on security support since then and afaik back then Linux Mint offically didn't support major upgrades and suggested to do a clean install instead, which is defnintely not something I'd let my grandma do on her own.

forrestthewoods 8y ago

I once tried to change the color scheme in Mint. It corrupted my install and I had to wipe and start over. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

carlmr 8y ago
That's the thing about Linux. You can shoot yourself in the foot easily if you want to change anything. However for most non-PC people they want to click a browser icon. That is easy and stable.

Unklejoe 8y ago

> The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system Same, except for my 70 year old parents. I switched them from Windows to Ubuntu MATE. All I had to do was simply rename the Firefox icon to "Internet" and they were good to go.