[vox] my mother has seen the light

[Robert G. Scofield]

On Tuesday 25 November 2003 07:01, Katie wrote:
>  So here's what she's looking for:
>
> 1.  A version of linux that works well for someone who feels she has
> absolutely no programming skills.

As the most incompetent computer user on this list, I feel that I am a 
particularly good authority to answer this question.

I am very big on SuSE 9.0 right now.  And if your mother has been using 
Windows98, she'll probably find KDE.3.1.4 more full featured.  In fact I 
can't believe this version of KDE.  This is a different Linux world than 
existed five years ago.

It's true that Mandrake has oriented itself to the home desktop user, and I 
appreciate that.  But I have found Mandrake to be a little buggy.  What will 
your mom do when Mandrake won't shut down?  I couldn't get Mandrake 9.1 to 
work with X and so I threw it in the garbage.   Customer service from 
Mandrake can be very very very very aggravating.

According to the SuSE 9.0 User Guide, one can pick an install option that 
automatically repartitions Windows and installs Linux (dual boot).  I don't 
know if it's true, but that's what it says. 

As far as things like being configured so that you don't have to log in as 
root to shutdown, like some Red Hat versions I've seen, SuSE is just as good 
as Mandrake.

SuSE is not any more difficult to install than Mandrake.

Your mom should also get that little O'Reilly book on the introduction to UNIX 
commands.

Bob