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Re: [LUG] Thoughts about Older Newbies

 

On Sep 29, 2011, Neil Winchurst wrote:

> 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. 

I learned Unix at work so when I bought my first PC (before that I had
a BBC Micro with telnet) I naturally wanted Unix on it and so my first
distro was Slackware. From there to Red Hat and Debian. So I'm not
typical of your target oldies. My wife (80 and three-quarters) had not
used a computer at all before we met in 1997 but took to Linux very
well (I didn't give her a choice!) and her PC now runs the same OS as
mine, viz Debian Lenny. What I find is that she lacks curiosity. "What
has it done now?" "No, the question is: what did you do? What does it
say on the screen?" etc etc. The mailer I gave her at the start was
Pine, which is very simple and has a list of things to do at the foot,
and I cannot persuade her to change; she likes Pine and is not going
to change, except to Alpine.

My conclusion: people who come to computing late tend to adopt the same
attitude, whether they are using Unix or Windows. They do not want to 
try new things or even to find out what their PC will do. 

I know several people of my generation who use Windows and I have got
only one or two to try a live distro and they won't give up Windows --
because everyone else uses it. It would be nice if OOo were compatible
with Word but it isn't. 

Tony Sumner

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