3 ms·
The rant is fine right up until the conclusion to install a much less user friendlier OS, especially for seniors who are not used to it
by eviks 3y ago
The rant is fine right up until the conclusion to install a much less user friendlier OS, especially for seniors who are not used to it
- ankurdhama 3y ago"User friendlier" and "used to" are 2 different things. An OS that will always show you your desktop after login is way more user friendlier then an OS that will potentially show you "lets setup few things" dialog after installing an update.
- handoflixue 3y agoWhat's unfriendly / unfamiliar about Linux? There's icons on your desktop, and you click on them to launch applications - exactly the same as on Windows. The browser works the same, and LibreOffice isn't terribly different from the old Office UI. All my computers run Windows, but I've never had any issues switching over to use my husband's Linux gaming system on the TV - I click on the big "Steam" icon and then launch the games same as I do on Windows. I get how a power-user like myself might struggle to switch (if anything goes wrong with the Linux box, it will be dear husband who has to deal with it!), but what's wrong with Linux for a super-casual user who basically just needs a browser?
- Delk 3y ago> I get how a power-user like myself might struggle to switch (if anything goes wrong with the Linux box, it will be dear husband who has to deal with it!), but what's wrong with Linux for a super-casual user who basically just needs a browser? Pretty much this. I originally installed Ubuntu for my parents when I first got them a computer separate from mine. All they needed were things like the browser, preconfigured email, instant messaging, possibly a word processor, and a way to look at their photos. They didn't need to know how to configure or install anything new. As a bit of a caveat, I think I always did the importing of photos from their camera for them. But I don't think the difficulty of that is necessarily very OS-dependent. I later switched them over to Windows at my father's request when replacing the (by then) ancient hardware with a new laptop that had Windows preinstalled. But I don't think it really made any difference because they still didn't do anything requiring more than opening existing apps. But if you're used to knowing how to install new stuff and how to configure things to your liking, yet don't want to learn how to do those things on Linux for the sake of it, I can imagine it being hard. With that said, of course a different desktop can also be and look unfamiliar even if there's little practical difference. And for some people near-exact familiarity can be rather important.
- acidburnNSA 3y agoYou should try it! I gave my mom, previously a windows user since 1993, an Ubuntu box with all the regular icons right there and as far as I can tell she doesn't know the difference. Been ~5 years now and going strong. She buys books, checks weather, reads news, emails, facebooks, prints things, scans things, video conferences, checks for ISS flybys, watches church, looks up vids explaining how to restring a weed whacker, all without any trouble at all.
- eviks 3y agointeresting, how are OS / app updates handled?
- acidburnNSA 3y agoA Linux feature called "Unattended upgrades" checks for os and app updates every day and applies them silently in the background. Because of how good the Ubuntu package management is, all os and app components can be upgraded without intervention. This is a big advantage.
- hulitu 3y agoMS Windows is not user friendly. It never was.