Old person on Linux....?

[iago]

Well, I talked to my grandpa's friend today.  His computer is really starting to annoy him, and he's totally fed up.  He is sure it's because of Microsoft, and he really hates Bill Gates (I'm not sure why, but eh?), and he said he wants to try something else.  He mentioned that an old friend of his swears by Linux, and he was curious about it. 

He uses his computer for:
- Email
- Internet
- Word Processing

And that's it.  Always has been. 

He was telling me that he misses the days of DOS, when everything was simple.  And those days only ended a few years for him, when he upgraded to Windows XP.  Since then, he's had many problems with things like viruses (I had a particularely horrible adventure trying to get rid of either Blaster or Slammer from his computer, I think I posted the story on vL's forum, or maybe here -- search my posts for Blaster or Slammer for more info). 

So on Monday, I'm going to go down there, back up his files, and install Linux for him, as an experimental thing.  I also want to keep the Apple option open, because I think he might like using a Mac. 

I think it'll be an interesting experiment, to say the least.  I have a feeling he'll have some trouble at first, then warm up to it.  After all, he's just going to be a user, not an administrator, and I can remotely connect to install programs, if I have to. 

[rabbit]

Give him Fedora!

[Newby]

Give him Fedora!

I think he'd be more comfortable in Ubuntu.

[iago]

He's not going to be installing his own packages or anything.  All I need is firefox, thunderbird, and other software like that. 

[Newby]

He's not going to be installing his own packages or anything.  All I need is firefox, thunderbird, and other software like that. 

Ubuntu. Easy to set up, has a comfortable login screen iirc, and according to people who've switched to it, is very user-friendly.

Plus, it'll make keeping stuff up-to-date easier. AND it comes with Gnome! :)

[Joe]

Ubuntu is the Mac OS X of Linux, as far as ease of use, and the Windows of Linux as far as package availablity (not that it matters).

OpenOffice, and Firefox are already installed. sudo install mozilla-thunderbird will install Thunderbird.

[Furious]

I played around on Redhat before, but got bored and reinstalled Windows 98 :/

[deadly7]

Give him KDE on Slackware and you're good to go.. assuming he knows how to read prompts.

[Newby]

Give him KDE on Slackware and you're good to go.. assuming he knows how to read prompts.

Actually, if you just changed the runtime level it enters on boot (GUI login) (check Slackware handbook for more information) he'd be fine.

Go with that. :P

[deadly7]

You can give Slack a GUI login as opposed to plaintext?  Whoa.

[iago]

You can give Slack a GUI login as opposed to plaintext?  Whoa.

Yeah, but I wouldn't for any intelligent person.  You save 6 keystrokes, but if you need to do something quick or if something goes wrong, you're wasting a lot of time.

[Ergot]

This is why you asked me how to start up in X?

[iago]

I was weighing my options about what to do with that computer.  I still haven't decided.  But in the rc scripts, I can't find any reference to starting X-windows.. are you (Newby) sure about this?

[Newby]

I was weighing my options about what to do with that computer.  I still haven't decided.  But in the rc scripts, I can't find any reference to starting X-windows.. are you (Newby) sure about this?

# These are the default runlevels in Slackware:
#   0 = halt
#   1 = single user mode
#   2 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
#   3 = multiuser mode (default Slackware runlevel)
#   4 = X11 with KDM/GDM/XDM (session managers)
#   5 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
#   6 = reboot

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:

Change that to 4.

The Gnome login manager is prettier, but eh? I dunno if it comes with latest Slackware since they removed Gnome..

Further reference, see 6.5 (xdm) of the Slackware handbook.

[iago]

Cool! 

And hmm, I just love this error for some reason:
ron@South:/etc/rc.d$ xdm
Only root wants to run xdm

Makes me laugh :)