Look, I was among the glorious warriors who installed Firefox on his parents/grandparents PC and replaced its shortcut’s image with IE’s one (because old people hate changes and won’t accept it easily)

Oh again! They keep changing my Google internet!
Yes grandma, it’s Windows… (« It wasn’t Windows » says the narrator in a deep and mysterious voice) Do you want me to install Linux? It’s free and open source and…
Keep that commie thing away from me, I like that meadow picture…
You know you can change th…
Don’t you dare!

Anyway. We did it. We killed IE hegemony. It’s up to the new generation to take the baton and fight against the tyranny of Google.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The idea of installing Linux on a grandparent's computer is just asking for trouble. I convinced my father in law to give a Chromebook a try since he mostly just uses his computer to get online and boy, was that tricky. The average person has no idea what an Operating System is and will call you the minute they can't install a new program for some reason.

[–] explodicle@local106.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had a very successful experience! My grandmother had no idea how computers worked at all, so I set up a very stripped-down Ubuntu that didn't even allow multiple windows open. I could easily remote in whenever she had an issue.

She used it to check her email, read the news, and watch Obama's weekly address until the week she died. (Unrelated to the computer)

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

I feel like there's a curve of where this could work. For the extremely technically illiterate or technically literate, you'd be ok. But for the middle chunk of the population, it'd be more confusing than it's worth.

[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

It can be very good for folk who are too tech illiterate to install any program by themselves.