Increased Visibility

HOW would a casual computer user take to Ubuntu? I put it on my mom’s computer to find out!

My mother is a casual computer user. She started using a computer when I went to college to help keep in touch. I have helped every step of the way from “how do you turn it on?” Today, her use consists mostly of Internet surfing. She uses two webmail accounts to communication with friends and family. Her home page is that of her service provider, Comcast, as is her main email address. She browses the web to learn new things, to read news, to find funny articles and clips to send friends, and to keep in touch with those friends. She does download cute screen savers and will click on anything that looks interesting.

Despite giving her the safe internet use 101 speech countless times, setting Windows to auto-update, turning on the firewall, and installing antivirus from the big guns (I’m looking at you Symantec and McAfee, you failed to keep my mom secure) I have to clean her machine of viruses and spyware every 6 months. About a quarter of those result in the system being so ingrained with malware that a complete system rebuild is in order.

The experiment – Day 0:
This rebuild, I’ve installed Ubuntu 9.04. As a novice computer user who has only been exposed to Microsoft Windows, how will my mom take to it?

I installed Ubuntu with mostly all of the default settings. I told it to use the entire disk and let the installer partition it as it wanted. I asked my mom about what applications she uses: the Internet and email! I configured Ubuntu’s default email application to work with Comcast’s POP and SMTP services. I installed Flash so things on the Internet work as expected. I also configured updates to automatically install without user intervention.

I did configure VNC or “Remote Desktop” to allow me to log in remotely and help her through things or install and configure applications as needed.

I typed a quick tutorial to show my mom how to use what she is likely to use. View it here: http://www.intellavis.com/docs/ubuntu.pdf

Being a nice guy, I put some music I thought she might like in her home directory. I also put pictures of my brother, mom, and myself from the last few holidays and a family vacation from two years ago in her home directory. I set up the screen saver to display the family photos.

Day 1:
My mom called to thank me. The first words on the phone were “wow, this is the fastest this computer has ever run.”

Mom was able to hook up the machine and turn on the power. It booted quicker than she expected. She followed my instructions and was able to open Firefox and to browse the web and check her email.

She called me 10 minutes later playing music to tell me that she could not find the volume control. I told her it should be on the upper right hand corner of the screen, and she found it.

I used that opportunity to log in with VNC and show her a few things. Instead of opening a shell and running any commands, I had her surf to whatismyip.com. I signed in, and showed her how to open and use the email client. I explained the parallel’s between the start bar and the applications drop down menu. I also explained the home directory and the parallel between “My Documents” in Windows. I showed her where I put all of her saved files, and how she could open the documents them with Open Office.

Overall, my mom seems quite pleased. She is most surprised and happy about how much faster the machine is running. As expected with the volume control, there will be a slight learning curve with the different interface. I was surprised she made it as long as she did without asking me how to use things.

Day 2:
Mom sent me an email. She still seems quite happy with the switch.

“I can’t thank you enough for fixing this computer. This is soooooo….much faster!!!! I especially like the photo show you put on as my screen saver. I have such a beautiful family… especially my boys!!!!”

In Microsoft’s defense, this is not a statement of Linux’s speed over Windows. Her machine had A LOT of malware that managed to slow it down to an unusable pace.

Day 4:
My mom left a voice mail message about burning CDs while I was at work. I believe my brother figured it out and showed her before I had a chance to call her back.

Week 3:
During a phone call, my mom asked about downloading movies. I pointed her to www.hulu.com.

Week 5:
My mom mentioned being addicted to an on-line game. I said, “it sounds like the computer is still treating you OK?” And, it is.

Conclusion:

If my mom can do it, anyone can. Seriously. If your computer is a glorified web browsing box, switch it to Ubuntu!