Comments on: Making My Grandparents Leet Linux Users – Part 1

By: Bobbe

Bobbe — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 02:03:47 +0000

No cmolpnaits on this end, simply a good piece.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:33:44 +0000

I’ve tried running various flavors of Linux (mostly Ubuntu derivatives)on an old Sony. For the most part, they seem to work OK except they’re a little slower than XP Pro! Also, I am unable to connect to my home router (Linksys WRT600N) A Techie friend of mine claims Ubuntu requires a lot of tweaking to make this connection. This is contrary to what I read. I can’t find any documentation to help me through this setup. Anyone have any suggestions?

By: Cam

Cam — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:28:58 +0000

Hi there !

Nice blog Tom, I discovered it yesterday and I think I’m going to read it frequently !

For Spooky (a bit late, I agree) :

I’m currently using a broadcom wifi card on ubuntu gutsy gibbon (amd64, seems like I’m looking for trouble…).
It appears that since Gutsy was released, it is detected automatically. I experienced problems in feisty, though.

Try and look about the “Bcm43xx” chipset. I solved my problems this way.

I know a “how-to” for this operation, but you probably won’t understand it : it’s in french.

I’m not sure that switching to another distribution is the solution.

Good luck !

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:26:10 +0000

Spooky,
If the wifi card works at all in Linux (it probably does), you can use it with Ubuntu but it could take some work. Use the lspci command to find the exact chipset of the card and Google search for a guide. If you want to try another distro, I think Mandriva has some tools for setting up wifi cards.

By: Spooky

Spooky — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:17:14 +0000

I am trying to do the same thing with an elderly couple who are like surrogate parents to me. (All my grandparents and both my parents and all my parent’s sibs are dead.) Actually only she uses the computer and she sends and receives email, abeit often with large image files attached (pics of the grandkids), browses a bit, occasionally makes an online purchase…

I’m testing out Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon right now, and having trouble with wifi card–Broadcom. Should I be thinking of another distro?

By: Wal-Mart’s gPC is Sold Out | Tombuntu

Wal-Mart’s gPC is Sold Out | Tombuntu — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:01:27 +0000

[...] be a official Ubuntu distribution just for this purpose. It could be similar to the Xfce desktop I set up for my Grandparents. Sure, these low-end systems will never appeal to those who want power at any cost but for people [...]

By: christian schorn » Blog Archive » links for 2007-08-20

christian schorn » Blog Archive » links for 2007-08-20 — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:23:11 +0000

[...] Making my Grandparents leet Linux users Pt. 1 KÃ¶nnte mir nÃ¤chstens auch passieren, allerdings mit meiner Schwester und ihrem Mann. (tags: linux) [...]

By: Stu

Stu — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 16:15:55 +0000

I have a friend and co-worker who is well known for his fear and loathing of all things technical, especially computers. Despite this, he enjoys using e-mail, surfing the web, and buying/selling over e-Bay. Over the past two years, he has purchased and returned four PCs because he simply could not keep them running for longer than a few days at a time even with the help of his Windows literate friends. Sensing his frustration, I offered to loan him an old Dell PIII 650 laptop with 256Mb of ram running Simply MEPIS until he found a more suitable computer for himself. During the first week he called me for support three times: Once to find out how to properly shut it down (Yes, that was his level of experience!), once to ask why it took so long to connect to the internet (after shuting down the computer, he had been turning off his cable modem as well), and once for me to guide him through a system update via the Synaptic Package Manager. After letting him use it for over a month, I finally asked him if he’d decided on purchasing a new computer, and he said “Yes, I want to buy that laptop from you. It’s the ONLY computer I’ve ever used that hasn’t given me a bit of trouble!”
I look forward your updates about your Grandparents!

By: jules

jules — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:09:25 +0000

I’m doing something similar for a 77 y.o. friend who recently retired from work. She’s comfortable enough with computers and work uses windoze. A store close by was upgrading and giving away the old computers so I grabbed one for Elaine. I gave it extra ram, 512, and put PCLinuxOS on it. I used build 93a mainly because it was what would run before I put the ram in, and I just don’t think I will have time to play with redoing it with the 2007 build. 93a is fine, I used it for the best part of a year before I redid my system. And I bought her an external modem. She really only wants email to keep up with her friends so I think dial up will be fine, and cheap, and she can always upgrade to broadband later if the speed drives her mad.

My general solution to her not knowing Linux was to make sure everything she might want is upgraded before she gets it, and put all the icons for those programs on the desktop so she doesn’t have to go into the system at all. And tested everything, ran it as my computer for a while. She hasn’t arranged to pick it up yet so I can’t say how it all works in the end….

By: Daniel Lucraft

Daniel Lucraft — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 07:38:30 +0000

Good luck with this. It’d be nice to see screenshots of how you’ve decided to set up the environment. Fortunately Linux makes taking screenshots easy