I actually have my niece, 17 at the time of setting her up, with a SuSE 9 box, and my mother-in-law, 66, with Unbuntu and they have had no problems, and prefer it to M$. Good luck.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Peter Bart <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:peter@petertheplumber.net">peter@petertheplumber.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Warning, I'm getting on a soapbox!!<br>
<br>
What is it with kids?? I know I sound like my Dad <groan>. I set up my<br>
old T30 Thinkpad for my step daughter. Opensuse 10.3. Pretty well loaded<br>
it up, all the ipod tools, frostwire (I wouldn't do limewire because it<br>
keeps wanting root file access), lots of cd ripping tools, all gui<br>
stuff. Several email clients, browsers, games, etc. All the stuff I hear<br>
her talk about or know that she likes. I explained about it's not<br>
windows, don't bother downloading programs. It got used now and again,<br>
very infrequently. Myspace surfing, IM, listening to music. I would find<br>
some Windows setup program for one or more programs every time. I would<br>
usually install the Linux equivalent unless it wasn't available or<br>
wanted something I wasn't willing to give. After several months it was<br>
finally used for what I intended it for; because her Dads had crashed;<br>
to do a school assignment. It was finally taken with but returned<br>
several days later, because they were unable to log on. I had tried to<br>
troubleshoot over the phone but that wasn't going to work. I toggled the<br>
caps lock key and signed on...... I kept it for several more days and<br>
let her know it was ready. There is sat. It's a good solid machine that<br>
works very well, but it's not MS so it gets treated like a red headed<br>
stepchild. The menus are almost identical, I even renamed programs so<br>
anyone would know. Put links on the desktop, etc. The other night she<br>
was here showing Mom something on the web on Moms notebook, or trying<br>
to. Something wouldn't work, I counted no less than eight reboots by the<br>
sound file. God forbid I get asked, of course it may have something to<br>
do with the fact that I get asked late at night after it's completely<br>
fubared and I simply then put it on my pile to look at later. MS has<br>
apparently not only conditioned a lot of people to simply reboot and try<br>
again, and again, and again ad nauseum. Same with downloading .exe<br>
files. The common wisdom seems to be if it doesn't look like it should;<br>
MS; then it can't work. Of course this is the same child that has an<br>
ipod, and must pray to the church of Cupertino. Any of the ipod<br>
management tools don't get used, itunes must be used. I hope they<br>
smarten/wise up because my social security depends on them <shudder><br>
<br>
Best Regards,<br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
Peter Bart <<a href="mailto:peter@petertheplumber.net">peter@petertheplumber.net</a>><br>
<a href="http://petertheplumber.net" target="_blank">http://petertheplumber.net</a><br>
<br>
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