result: some additional effort to find good alternatives for apps i do not use, and some fight with an huawei modem.

initial effort was higher than with windows – but they have tons of applications now and are happy. no difference to windows in terms of usability once you know the names of your applications.

Advantage for me:
- no need to fix viruses every few months
- secure remote access (i trust in) to service them.
- less effort (longtime)

Advantages for them:
- surf the interent without bad feeling
- apps, apps and more apps
- faster than windows xp

Disadvantages for me:
-can help them remotely – and they know that
-uncle wants linux too
-i had effort to learn

Disadvatages for parents:
-had to learn new names for outlook, msn-messenger …
-a few wmf videos show artifacts

I agree that the argument is mostly unfounded in todays technological world. As you can see from my original post titled “5 Reasons your parents should use Linux”, my original stand, which I still stand by, is that setting up Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Grandpa on a Linux desktop is ideal and can save a lot of headaches. I simply wanted to present the other side of the ball in this posting.

Great article on LJ by the way. I’m a bit shocked it was done in 2003. I wonder how different an interview today would be from a Grandmother using a distribution as easy and straight forward as Ubuntu.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6562

(Yes, I did it but the grandmother is real and the comments are genuine.

>Sometimes can’t be helped. But there is usually a solution for almost any need. And you >have the same issue with Windows. Lots of stuff that worked in Windows 95 didn’t >work in XP/2000, and lots of stuff that run in those does not work in Vista.

XP has been out for 6+ years. That’s a hell of a lot of win32 software. Also, a *lot* of win95 software still works on XP.

>Look and Feel

>Every version of Windows changes its look and feel 100x more between versions than >going to Linux.

You’re joking, right?

>Support

VNC server is availiable for windows.

>Usability

>Most people can’t even install software in the first place.

It’s much easier to pop a cdrom in and have the autorun.inf launch setup.exe than to do a chmod 777 configure
./configure
make install
and deal with missing dependencies

>Learning Curve

>Most people have the same learning curve with Windows, so there is no difference.

LOL. Most people are comfortable with Windows, and don’t want to learn something new.

Which reasons, pro or contra, apply depends wholly on what type of person your parents are. Mine for example belong to the group which has technophobia and shriek in panic when they find anything has changed on their desktop. I have tried to befriend them with a Linux-desktop but even if it looked simpler, it still looked _different_ from what they were used to. So, I guess for them it’s Windows 2000 forever, to my regret.

Sometimes can’t be helped. But there is usually a solution for almost any need. And you have the same issue with Windows. Lots of stuff that worked in Windows 95 didn’t work in XP/2000, and lots of stuff that run in those does not work in Vista.

-1 Linux
-.5 Windows

>Look and Feel

Every version of Windows changes its look and feel 100x more between versions than going to Linux.

-1 for Windows
+1 for Linux

You lose

>Support

SSH/remote X. Learn it. Its far easier to provide remove support of a Linux system over the internet than a windows system.

+1 Linux
-1 Windows
You loose.

>Usability

Most people can’t even install software in the first place.

+0 Wash

>Learning Curve

Most people have the same learning curve with Windows, so there is no difference.

+0 Its a wash