Re: [LUG] Just Curious?

[matthew.gibbons@xxxxxxxxxxx]

I didn't understand why my wife couldn't run Linux, until I watched her one day.
She switched on the computer, LILO booted linux, and she switched it off. I
asked her why, and she said it was because she didn't understand what it was
saying... :-)

Having convinced her to ignore everything until the kdm login screen appeared,
she tried again. She logged on, and then stared at the screen because she
couldn't see a start button. :-)

I showed her the K start button, pointed out the organisation of the menus, and
she carried on. She started konqueror, typed in a web address (www.next.co.uk?)
and waited. A message box appeared informing her that konqueror was unable to
establish a connection. And it was right, the modem hadn't dialed. :-)

I showed her KLLC, and explained how she needed to establish a connection. She
sighed. I later installed and configured diald. I managed to convince her to try
again. She did, and lo and behold, the firewall dialed as soon as she had
finished typing the internet address. Unfortunately, my ISP failed, and the
connection wasn't established. Not the fault of the OS, I explained. She looked
dubious, but tried again. Connection, web page, browsing - yes!

I had set the auto disconnect to 60s whilst I was testing it, and explained this
nifty feature to her, saying that she wouldn't have to disconnect; it would be
done automatically. She stopped browsing, and waited. It disconnected. She
looked impressed. It reconnected without her doing anything. She looked less
impressed. :-)

Then she said she wanted to write a letter. I started Open Office, she wrote a
letter. She asked to save it on a floppy. I explained that the path to the
floppy was /mnt/floppy and not A: - she wasn't interested why, she just wasn't
interested. :-(

Rebekah refused to use the computer after that. I can't blame her. She just
want's to use the computer to do what she wants to do, and the way she wants to
do it. She is a user, and Linux is not a user's OS. Don't get me wrong, I
advocate Linux. I think it is the best thing since - well - ever, and I wan't
other people to use it and feel the same way. But I am not a user. I am a
stubble faced geek.

I bought XP because Rebekah needed to use the computer. Now she can. And now I
can buy that dual Athlon mobo and build a new Linux box. :-)

Cheers,
Matthew





Adrian Midgley <akm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on 15/01/2002 23:56:32

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Subject:  Re: [LUG] Just Curious?



On Tuesday 15 January 2002 10:52, you wrote:

> My wife can't run Linux. I

Give her VNC on the Winbox, and an autostarting VNC session on the Linux box
for anything that is usable.  Then you could put Solitaire under WIne there
instead of locally.

--
> From one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley
http://www.defoam.net/

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