Red Hat: Stick with Windows at home

[carls]

I think he has a valid point.
My parents have a hard time using Windows - "Why can't I install this application by just copying the .exe file? Why must I do this and that to connect a digital camera to my computer? Why is this program slow?"

They are not untechnical - my father is an engineer, has worked as a physics and chemistry teacher, and has built his own radio. He knows his way with a soldering iron and has no trouble with etching circuit boards. He's very old-school :-)

However, he doesn't see the computer as hobbyist paraphenalia at all. It is above all a tool for everyday work: Writing letters, paying the bills and comparing prices before buying a new household appliance.

Now, imagine he was running Linux. First of all, he's got to install it. Swap partition - what's that? Do I need a web server? Should I use a KDE or Gnome desktop, and what the heck IS KDE and Gnome? Why does the web browser look different from the wordprocessor? Why do I have to log in?

With Windows, he can basically just slide a CD in the drive and click "Install", and still he wants me to do it for him :-)

[carls]

@Tomas

Yes, and the he encounters a problem like the one I have just solved. Flash Player just crashed all the time. I had to go through my syslog to see that there was some problem with the audio (all my other apps using audio worked fine - xine, xmms etc.). To solve this, I had to download and compile ALSA, rmmod the original drivers and modprobe the new ALSA drivers. I also had to edit modules.conf.

This is nothing a normal home user would want to do.

(My sound chip is a SiS 7012 - very common on cheap MoBos nowadays)

[carls]

@Tomas
Installing nvidia's own linux driver requires heavy usage of the command prompt as well as hand-editing of your XF86Config. Yes, I tried Yanc etc. but it added stuff in the wrong sections and basically behaved badly.
You also have to understand the concept of root vs. normal users to do something like this.

[carls]

@Tomas and bhogget

Well, I had to hand-edit my XF86Config to configure TwinView to use TV-Out. I also wanted the pointer shadow :-)