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My wife is an attorney and has been happily using Ubuntu for her law practice for something like 10 years now. When it was time to replace her aging 12in TiBoo

My wife is an attorney and has been happily using Ubuntu for her law practice for something like 10 years now. When it was time to replace her aging 12in TiBook (OSX) I suggested she consider a Linux laptop. I myself had switched to a Thinkpad with Linux several years before that and she heard me rave about it and looked over my shoulder and thought it looked interesting. She was already interested in the privacy and freedom aspects of free/open-source. I started by creating a user account on my laptop, setting it up with her most-used applications in the sidebar and a background and color scheme I knew she'd like, and copied a bunch of her documents to it. We went to a coffeehouse where I bought her whatever she wanted and answered her questions as she tried it out. There was absolutely no such thing as a dumb question. I thought Gnome Shell might seem weird to her but she did fine with it. We spent most of our time with LibreOffice. She's not an Office power-user which probably made things easier. Things were in different places but the apps are similar enough she was able to make the transition. The only real sticking point was that LibreOffice had no split-screen view, but we found a workaround. She agreed to try a Linux laptop on the condition that we would order a new Macintosh if it didn't work for her, but it worked for her. Factors that helped: - She was already interested in the social-justice aspects of free/open-source software. - She was already used to switching from Windows at her old job to OSX at home. - We agreed that she could switch back to Windows or Mac, or at least run Office using CrossOver/WINE if there was ever a problem. - She had her own law practice and didn't need to collaborate with other attorneys. Lawyers make heavy use of MS Word change tracking, and that would have sunk the whole thing. - We both worked from home and I had a job that let me offer tech support for her basically whenever she needed it. - She spends almost all her time in LibreOffice, Firefox, and Chrome. She basically doesn't interact with the OS that much. - I treated her every question as a professional support request. That's just baseline adulting. She used Ubuntu and LibreOffice for her practice until she took a new job this year. They gave her a Surface laptop with Windows for work but she continues to run Linux on her personal machine.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Thank you. That was useful information to me. It seems likely that Windows will be a better choice at this time.
- jefurii 4y ago
  Yeah you can't win every battle, and it's probably best to avoid letting it turn into a battle at all. Highlighting the attractive aspects of Linux while supporting her choices works best in the long run anyway. Anyway, Linux and UNIX won the battle for the world's servers and network infrastructure and you can use it for all your home infrastructure. You can always partition your network if you want to keep Microsoft out of certain areas, and I think PiHole can filter much of Windows' telemetry. FWIW I have my wife's Windows work laptop and my kid's school chromebook on separate VLANs from our Linux stuff, just in case, and they use external services if they need to transfer files. I'm sad this post got flagged.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    << I'm sad this post got flagged. I am honestly confused about that. Was it out of topic or something?
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > Was it out of topic or something? No, a lot of people have willfully misinterpreted you as a Linux zealot, even though you suggested Mac as an option, and as someone who has no regard for the choices of women, even though you seem to be going with Windows anyway. That's not your fault, it's their fault. They're looking for straw men to punch. It's not a crime to care about privacy, or to make suggestions to less technically sophisticated family members who specifically requested help. It's also not a crime for couples to disagree and argue about stuff. It's totally normal and boring, as long as it remains civil.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

Thank you. That was useful information to me. It seems likely that Windows will be a better choice at this time.

jefurii 4y ago
Yeah you can't win every battle, and it's probably best to avoid letting it turn into a battle at all. Highlighting the attractive aspects of Linux while supporting her choices works best in the long run anyway. Anyway, Linux and UNIX won the battle for the world's servers and network infrastructure and you can use it for all your home infrastructure. You can always partition your network if you want to keep Microsoft out of certain areas, and I think PiHole can filter much of Windows' telemetry. FWIW I have my wife's Windows work laptop and my kid's school chromebook on separate VLANs from our Linux stuff, just in case, and they use external services if they need to transfer files. I'm sad this post got flagged.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  << I'm sad this post got flagged. I am honestly confused about that. Was it out of topic or something?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > Was it out of topic or something? No, a lot of people have willfully misinterpreted you as a Linux zealot, even though you suggested Mac as an option, and as someone who has no regard for the choices of women, even though you seem to be going with Windows anyway. That's not your fault, it's their fault. They're looking for straw men to punch. It's not a crime to care about privacy, or to make suggestions to less technically sophisticated family members who specifically requested help. It's also not a crime for couples to disagree and argue about stuff. It's totally normal and boring, as long as it remains civil.