Hi,

Frank and me (Dimi) are the hosts of the podcast (and vidcast) named Systemtrash. Every month we take an operating system to the test and try to provide as much information about an OS as we possibly can in less than an hour.

We already covered Ubuntu 5.10, SUSE 10.0, PCLinuxOS 0.92 and Gentoo 2006.0 (aired this sunday). We will be reviewing Fedora Core 5 for the next one and Mepis 6.0 after that.

While we get a lot more feedback than we expected on the OS'ses we covered we need feedback and suggestions on distros we haven't covered yet !

It would be great if some of you (newbies, experienced linux users, raw-code-eating veterans) could just reply on this thread.

Any comment would be great ! It's from this kind of feedback Frank and I can prepare the show with real user information.

Thanks in advance.

Dimi.

Nah, they've both been dead for half a century now, so there wouldn't be much point, eh?

On the other hand, as a grandfather myself, I'm pushing my grandkids towards Linux, although the oldest is just in the third grade, and his mother thinks he needs to limit his computer usage to less than an hour a day.

That has to be the best survey I've seen on this site!

While my grandmother doesn't even own a computer, I have set up Linux boxes for several elderly people (I live in FLA). So far only one of them has had any real problems and he had far worse problems when he was using Windows.

I would be happier letting my grandmother loose on a Linux machine rather than a Windows machine, or should I say let the computer loose on my grandmother.

I wouldn't even try. She can't even work the telly or mobile phone properly.

my grandmother won't come w/in a computer w/ a 10 foot pole. Well, on one side. My other grandmother tells me the computer is my grandfather's thing. So no, I wouldn't let them near it, because I'd have to help them the entire time. No fun.

My Grandmother refuses to own a computer.

Unless your grandparents genuinely want to use a computer, there's no reason to put anybody over the age of 65 on one (not to say that all grandparents are that elderly, though). They just aren't comfortable with them, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a generational discrepancy. Personally my grandmother is just like that, so I couldn't even get her to use Windows. Even if I did buy her a computer, she would never use it.
Otherwise, if my grandmother genuinely wanted to use a computer, then I would definately put her on Linux. There's no reason not to.

Gotta be careful, when my mom died last year she was a grandmother to grown kids, and she spent lots of time on her computer. She had lots more friends in her address book than I've ever had!
My brother set her up with a Windows machine, though (which lives at my house now, for the kids to tear up )

My wife and our pet-sitter both use Linux at our house. They fit perfectly into this general category:

<<Intelligent person with no inclination to learn anything about computers except which button to push to get something done---and the phone number to get it fixed if the resident geek is not there. Usage is limited to e-mail, web-browsing, and the ocassional document typed into the word-processor but using none of its formatting tools.>>

Sound familiar??--This is describing a very large percentage of today's users--people who could be on Linux and Open Source and never know the difference. And this is where the MS de-facto monopoly has its firmest grip.

Pixellany, very true.

My grandma does not use a computer, but if she did I would definitely pick option #3. Set it up and show her how some things work, maybe not necessarily "update." Grandpa, on the other hand, uses a Commodore 64 for all his work. I would probably sooner upgrade him to DOS than Linux.

Personally, I think real men use Fortran and enter programs on a card punch machine. Waiting overnight for your results was always a nice touch, too....
Apply the old rule: If it works, it's OK.

I'd set her up with slackware, teach her how to use web e-mail and not tell her the root password.
This way she can't possibly mess up the computer and she could keep in touch with all of her distant family relatives and friends.

I wouldn't expect my granny to do anything more complicated than that.

Well, I set my Mom up with an Archlinux box. She _is_ a grandmother so...

I was just tired of cleaning up her ancient Win98 install, and figured if I was going to be taking care of her computer it might as well run Linux. So far it is all good, I just go up there once a month or so and update, and get a free home-cooked meal to boot. I could admin via ssh, but we live in the same town and it runs problem free anyway so I haven't bothered to set it up.

She is pretty happy with it too, though all she does is browse a bit, read her mail and play freecell. She complained a bit about a few websites not working but I just said to her: What do you prefer, Forking out $80 for XP and taking care of the computer yourself or doing without a few websites. I guess you can figure out her answer...