Hello,

My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
willing to make the switch to Linux :-)

Next week I'll get her PC here to install Linux on it, as well
as some usefull applications.

This women is a clueless user, so mutt won't be the best choise
for mail client :-) This goes for most apps we use everyday.

Now, what shall I put on the machine for her ?

-wm: fvwm95 (this will look familiar to her) or one those
'modern' desktops like gnome or kde (in order to let her
use a graphical file manager).

-browser: she will be less understanding in the matter of
browser-incompatibility due to bad webdesigners.
What would be the best choice, Mozilla or Konqueror or .. ?

-email-client: she will be receiving html-mail (like produced
by incredimail) and probably want to compose html-mail too.
Also clicking on URL's should open them in the browser.
The email-client should be as easy to use as possible.
Yes, I know html-mail is evil (but she doesn't and will
probably never understand why).

-graphical stuff: I don't know yet, but it might be possible
that she has a digital camera. If so, a simple application
to do some simple things (like resising) with jpg's is
nessesairy.

Because she will be used to 'click on something to make things
happen', I am not sure wether open office or one of the kde/gnome
office suites would be the best choice (in terms of "integration"
with the filemanager).

I haven't use kde or gnome myself, and prefer text based
interfaces, which makes ik hard for me to predect what would
be the best solution for people like her.
So any input on that matter is appreciated :-)

Cheers,

Matto

Matto Fransen <matto@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
> willing to make the switch to Linux :-)

> This women is a clueless user, so mutt won't be the best choise
> for mail client :-) This goes for most apps we use everyday.
>
> Now, what shall I put on the machine for her ?
>
> -wm: fvwm95 (this will look familiar to her) or one those
> 'modern' desktops like gnome or kde (in order to let her
> use a graphical file manager).

I prefer Gnome myself, but in my experience most old Windows users prefer
and feel quite comfortable with KDE.

> -browser: she will be less understanding in the matter of
> browser-incompatibility due to bad webdesigners. What would be the
> best choice, Mozilla or Konqueror or .. ?

Galeon is a really nice browser.

> -email-client: she will be receiving html-mail (like produced
> by incredimail) and probably want to compose html-mail too. Also
> clicking on URL's should open them in the browser. The email-client
> should be as easy to use as possible. Yes, I know html-mail is evil
> (but she doesn't and will probably never understand why).

Sylpheed is a very nice email client, it is not included with Slackware,
but you could download it from http://sylpheed.good-day.net/
It doesn't produce html mail thogh and it doesn't do html formatting to
html mail, but the incoming html mail looks really good as text mail.

> -graphical stuff: I don't know yet, but it might be possible
> that she has a digital camera. If so, a simple application to do some
> simple things (like resising) with jpg's is nessesairy.

Maybe gimp is overkill for the resizing? To get the images from the camera
you might be able to mount it or use gphoto depending on the camera model.
To make it easy to mount the camera, add a user entry to fstab and a KDE
icon on the desktop. Then show her how to rightclick on that icon to mount
and umount the camera and explain that she should umount it before
disconnecting it.

> I am not sure wether open office or one of the kde/gnome office suites
> would be the best choice (in terms of "integration" with the
> filemanager).

For my mother which doesn't use computers much and is a bit over 60 years
I have set up an environment based on Slackware 8 with KDE, Sylpheed,
Galeon, Konqueror and Netscape. With Slack 8 Netscape was necessary to use
some web-pages. With Slackware 9.1 I have still not found any web-page
which doesn't work fine with Galeon.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc2(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
info@balticinkasso.com remove@emailpromo.biz root@localhost

Matto Fransen <matto@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Hello,

> My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
> willing to make the switch to Linux :-)

> Next week I'll get her PC here to install Linux on it, as well
> as some usefull applications.

> This women is a clueless user, so mutt won't be the best choise
> for mail client :-) This goes for most apps we use everyday.

Mutt isn't for users with clues. Mutt is for old-timers who have
never adapted to more modern and superior methods. In fact,
anybody younger than 40 who uses mutt has his head jammed so far up
his ass he can't breathe.

> Now, what shall I put on the machine for her ?

> -wm: fvwm95 (this will look familiar to her) or one those
> 'modern' desktops like gnome or kde (in order to let her
> use a graphical file manager).

Rather than ram it down her throat you might be better off to
explain to her that she really has to be interested in using linux
if she plans to use it because linux is much more user-unfriendly
than windows.

Of course you want to be cool, you have a healthy ego, and you want
to come across as joe hacker.

The best thing you can do for this woman is to tell her that you
are too big an asshole to be of any help and she should ask
somebody else for assistance.

Do you think you can handle that? Do the linux community a favour
and stop pretending that you have a "clue." You don't. Trash like
you are the enemy of linux.

cordially, even to "the clueless,"

rm

Hey Realto, lighten up a bit. :-)

On 2004-05-08, Matto Fransen <matto@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> -wm: fvwm95 (this will look familiar to her) or one those
> 'modern' desktops like gnome or kde (in order to let her
> use a graphical file manager).

Let her use KDE, it would, I would think, be the best choice. It's a nice
interface that can be easily configured. Of course, all of the baove depends
on resources available....on my old desktop KDE run like a dog, but a light
weight wm like fluxbox works very well.

>
> -browser: she will be less understanding in the matter of
> browser-incompatibility due to bad webdesigners.
> What would be the best choice, Mozilla or Konqueror or .. ?

Just get all the browsers from linuxpackages.net, installed them with the
the pkgtool, make icons or menu items in the KDE menu and let her decide for
herself. You might want to give opera a spin, its fast, though, a touch
buggy for some reason...at least on my machine and when it comes to anything
related to java or js. You shouldn't have any problems with browser
compatability...but that's a big shouldn't.


> -email-client: she will be receiving html-mail (like produced
> by incredimail) and probably want to compose html-mail too.
> Also clicking on URL's should open them in the browser.
> The email-client should be as easy to use as possible.
> Yes, I know html-mail is evil (but she doesn't and will
> probably never understand why).

Try kmail, part of the kde setup, I'm sure it does html.

> -graphical stuff: I don't know yet, but it might be possible
> that she has a digital camera. If so, a simple application
> to do some simple things (like resising) with jpg's is
> nessesairy.

gimp is your best choice, in most cases. There's a small learning curve
involved, however, there are some exceptional docs available at the gimp web
site that should make it easier for a new user.


> Because she will be used to 'click on something to make things
> happen', I am not sure wether open office or one of the kde/gnome
> office suites would be the best choice (in terms of "integration"
> with the filemanager).
>

Download it, set it up for her and let her make her own choices, though
the OO download is a big 79megs..

Just a suggestion, redo the menus in KDE (if you use KDE), set up a variety
of WP's under their own heading, various image programs under their own
heading, browsers under their own heading etc and let the women decide for
herself...

Though I've been using linux for about five years, I just started using KDE
on the laptop and I found the KDE menus a little confusing. KDE comes with
it's own menu maker...I think....

ken

On Sat, 08 May 2004 19:53:27 +0000, Matto Fransen wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
> willing to make the switch to Linux :-)
>
> Next week I'll get her PC here to install Linux on it, as well
> as some usefull applications.

(snip)

I really suggest you stick with Windows for this woman. Here's what I
suggest you do:

Get her machine and re-install Windows (clean machine to start).

Next you buy a Linksys befsr41 router and get it set up. You can buy one
at best buy or similar for $40 bucks or so. It produces a pretty reliable
firewall. (Nat and stateful packet inspection).

Set up her desktop so that Internet Explorer is used only for downloading
the patches etc from windowsupdate.com. You first set security to maximum
for every internet site. Then you set up windowsupdate as a trusted zone
site with *minimum* security and make that site her "home page" in
internet explorer (internet explorer to load the home page on start up).
Educate her to go there about once a week to get all the updates. The
windows update site will not work without ActiveX.

Download and install an alternate browser that doesn't recognize ActiveX
controls. I suggest mozilla firebird - as an added bonus, it is faster
and allows a configuration option to automatically block popup windows.

Configure Outlook Express to automatically block html message components.
See the menu selections for "security". You have to get across to her the
dangers of opening html messages. Likely though if you set up the mail
properly she won't know how to turn html back on.

Consider using another mail program. I recommend Pegasus Mail - really
good default security against html messages and executable attachments.
Free too, go to www.pmail.com to download it.

Next, go to the following site for directions to shore up the basic
security of Windows:

www.uksecurityonline.com

Lotsa work, but you will end up with a reasonably secure and
maintainable system.

Good luck.

John

On Sat, 08 May 2004 19:53:27 +0000, Matto Fransen wrote:

<SNIP>

> -wm: fvwm95 (this will look familiar to her) or one those
> 'modern' desktops like gnome or kde (in order to let her
> use a graphical file manager).

Use Kde and theme it.. so it looks like XP, she'll not know the difference
if she's as 'clueless' as you say.

> -browser: she will be less understanding in the matter of
> browser-incompatibility due to bad webdesigners.
> What would be the best choice, Mozilla or Konqueror or .. ?

Just use mozilla and get a theme for it so that it mimic's windows
internet exploder.

> -email-client: she will be receiving html-mail (like produced
> by incredimail) and probably want to compose html-mail too.
> Also clicking on URL's should open them in the browser.
> The email-client should be as easy to use as possible.
> Yes, I know html-mail is evil (but she doesn't and will
> probably never understand why).

She would probably like Evolution: if she's used to using Outlook, it's
like an outlook clone.

> -graphical stuff: I don't know yet, but it might be possible
> that she has a digital camera. If so, a simple application
> to do some simple things (like resising) with jpg's is
> nessesairy.

Well I wouldn't inflict The Gimp on a new user, good as it is. How about
something like Kview though?. I think it has resizing options & like
another poster has already mentioned put an option in fstab to mount the
camera and a nice icon on her desktop to 'automagically' mount it and
display a nice folder with previews of each file in it.

> Because she will be used to 'click on something to make things
> happen', I am not sure wether open office or one of the kde/gnome
> office suites would be the best choice (in terms of "integration"
> with the filemanager).

Openoffice would probably be the best choice.. it is a little bulky and
slow though imo, but is the best choice for someone who's (probably) used
to using MS Word and the like from MS Office

> I haven't use kde or gnome myself, and prefer text based
> interfaces, which makes ik hard for me to predect what would
> be the best solution for people like her.
> So any input on that matter is appreciated :-)

As you can see from my above comments, I'd probably set it up to mimic XP
in every way possible, take a look on kde-look.org at some of the XP
themes on there- quite impressive stuff. One more thing, as another poster
stated, edit the kde menu (kmenuedit) - a lot of new users to kde/gnome
are very confused about the amount of programs that get installed by
default, consider removing a lot of these programs (if not from the whole
system, then just from the menu's) and changing the menu item name so for
example, rather than having 'xmms' as the name of the music player, change
it to 'play mp3's' or something...

Anyway I hope that helps =)


Paul Mc

On 2004-05-08, John <John@somewhere.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 08 May 2004 19:53:27 +0000, Matto Fransen wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
>> willing to make the switch to Linux :-)
>>
>> Next week I'll get her PC here to install Linux on it, as well
>> as some usefull applications.
>
> (snip)
>
> I really suggest you stick with Windows for this woman. Here's what I


Why?

ken

On Sat, 08 May 2004 23:09:30 +0000, Kenneth wrote:

> On 2004-05-08, John <John@somewhere.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 May 2004 19:53:27 +0000, Matto Fransen wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> My wife has a friend who experienced one worm too much and is now
>>> willing to make the switch to Linux :-)
>>>
>>> Next week I'll get her PC here to install Linux on it, as well
>>> as some usefull applications.
>>
>> (snip)
>>
>> I really suggest you stick with Windows for this woman. Here's what I
>
>
> Why?
>
> ken

I think you can't be clueless and run linux for very long. Maybe she can.
If the original poster sets her up in linux I really hope he keeps us
up to date on how it goes. Linux is probably best for one of those kiosk
type setups, so if he does a good job on the setup maybe it would work
for this woman.

I'm not dogmatic on the issue, but there's a reason why Windows has 93%
and Linux has 5% (of the desktops). I don't think it's because of the
security.

John

On Sun, 09 May 2004 02:44:11 +0000, John wrote:

> I'm not dogmatic on the issue, but there's a reason why Windows has 93%
> and Linux has 5% (of the desktops). I don't think it's because of the
> security.
>
> John

Myths, most likely...

people are gullible, and will believe anything big corporations shoves
down in their brains :P