Yes, that’s right; my mom is an Ubuntu user. She has been for about a year now (since Edgy). This is the story of how it all got started.
About 4 years ago, my father discovered eBay. Really discovered eBay. Selling, mostly, at first, but then, later, he started moving his purchases from brick and mortor to anywhere that accepted Paypal. One of these bargain purchases was a venerable Thinkpad T30. His excitement was fueled by the plethora of parts and accessories available at bargain basement prices. New battery? Docking station? DVDRW? No problem. So, when my mom started to make comments about needing a notebook, herself, he knew his choice.
Dad’s T30 came with no restore media, but, no need, there was a working install of Windows XP Pro already on the hard drive. This is how the T30 he purchased for mom was listed, but, instead, no media, no install. Wait… it did have a Windows key sticker on the bottom. So, naturally, dad called me to ask if I had any XP install CDs handy. I did (yes, I dual boot one computer), and I brought it over for a “quick” install. 39 minutes of copying files (well, that’s how many minutes the fancy Windows installer said were remaining, as always) and I enter the key. Oops, this key will only work with the missing restore discs. What was I thinking?
We were left with three options:
1. Find and replace the missing restore cds ($40 or so)
2. Purchase a new, oem, or student copy of Windows XP (way too much, too much, and my brother was no longer a student)
3. Why don’t I have her try out Ubuntu? (free, as in beer)
My father was always a skeptic of any of my suggestions, but my mother, she was willing to give it a shot. She had been using Windows for years, at home and work, but was in no way married to it. There were, of course, a few applications that she used regularly for work, but if she was willing to try, I was willing to help. I took the T30 home for a few hours to make it as simple as possible for my dear mother. With Ubuntu, this doesn’t take much, but I needed to find a replacement for Publisher. I set up the few codecs, a proprietary video driver, a quick EasyUbuntu, and off it went.
There was but one snag, in the beginning, and it’s understandable. Scribus is what I had found to replace publisher, and I’d never used it before. Mother was pretty upset that she couldn’t open any of those .pub files she’d been working on for her class reunion. That was the first discussion I’d had with her since her “migration” to linux. I found an online service that quickly, and free-of-charge, converted them to PDF. Simple enough to handle for any modern operation system, except windows. Oh, there’s the Adobe reader, of course, but that’s not Windows. The rest of the work she had to do, she finished with Scribus, and she was impressed. Truthfully, I was impressed (at her adaptation).
Time went on, and there were calls, here and there. “Are these updates OK to install?” “Why does this message pop up?” “I go to the hotel, I go to work, I come home, it just works. I don’t know what your dad’s problem is.” “Could you be there while I dist-upgrade, you know, just in case?” Wow. My mom actually said “dist-upgrade.” Ha, priceless.
Now, she is by no means a full on linux geek but a full blown linux user (and maybe just a bit of a geek). This became abundantly clear when we met for lunch, one day. She told me the story of her IT guy friend in Michigan and his virus problem. Apparently, a massive infection, across several locations, covering 400 Windows computers in there organization caused a bit of work for this IT friend. A few weeks of antivirus duties, actually. Then, my mother delivered the punchline.
Mom: “then I said, ‘Antivirus??? What’s that!?! Hahaha!’”
Yeah, she went there. More on my mom to come.
My parents are over 65, they use Ubuntu too. Do you do any remote support ? I’ve set them up with Vino/VNC (Remote Desktop) tunneled via SSH whenever they need explanations for new apps, for example.
