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On 29/09/11 09:00, Neil Winchurst wrote:
This all started because my brother came to see my new computer the other day. He was quite impressed by it but said that, although he has a laptop, he did not do much computing. 'A bit of browsing and a few emails' was his comment. He is not really interested in anything else so all the new bells and whistles leave him indifferent.Asking around since then and thinking about it I got to wondering which distro might be the best for, shall we say, the more mature possible convert to Linux. (This could include ones who have never tried computing before.) Looking at the more than ten years of my experience with Linux I made a list of all the distros that I have tried.Mandrake/Mandriva, Suse, Kubuntu, Mint KDE, Mint Xfce, PCLinuxOS, Pardus, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy.Yes, I realise that there are plenty more. However, of those I have tried I really think that the best one for the 'older newbie' is Xubuntu. Just my personal opinion.Perhaps not for the younger ones among us but, certainly in this area, there is a high proportion of oldies, (being one myself). Since there seems to be an ongoing interest in converting people to Linux I thought to suggest that the approach to the older members of the community needs to be different from how we work with the younger ones.And we do have quite a lot of choices of distro, both a blessing and a curse!!I would be interested in any feedback on this, Neil Winchurst
Do I detect incipient ageism here? The notion that because someone is of a certain age they will find it difficult to learn?
After a long time dis-satisfaction with the Microrsoft OS I took up Linux in 2001 at the age of 59. True I did dabble with it some years earlier on and Atari Falcon. Back in 2001 Linux on the desktop was difficult ie sparse printer, video and multimedia stuff and I had to endure the shock of stuff I could no longer do. But I saw Linux's potential and there were no great insurmountable obstacles. Any little problems only needed a bit of self application reading and help from others (well nearly!). These is just the sort of things any convert to Linux is going to experience, young or old.
The barrier to conversion is not age. What's required is only application , average intelligence and a willingness to ask questions. Age doesn't come into it.
Keith -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All e-mails including their file attachments are scanned for viruses and spam using Symantec's and ClamAV's scan engines. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq