How A Frustrating Failure Might Have Saved Linux.

Its very true. Excellent article. And this is the reason it should take you a half hour or more in post install configuration for anyone like Betty, finding out what they want to do and arranging it so it just does it.

I put in Gnome rather than kde, get the desktop the color they like, usually no picture, one click opening in a browser window, application icons in the taskbar, and explain there is a whole lot more applications if they want them, get email set up either on kmail or evolution or sylpheed, depending if they want a calendar. I do always put a firefox icon in the task bar. Set up printing for them.

Do this, and your people will be fine, and will probably never go into the main menus. But, you have to do it, and it would be nice if there was a distro that came like this out of the box for when they get it themselves. And, you are basically their sysadmin. So, you have to be available to fix it when they call. My experience is, OS9 generated one or two calls every couple of years. It crashed, but it recovered on reboot. Linux generates several a year. Windows, if they are using wireless and broadband and anti virus, is basically unsupportable at a distance. I am getting several a month, sometimes a week, the errors seem to be intermittent, and yes, one's thoughts do definitely turn to PCLinux....

>"And this is the reason it should take you a half hour or more in post install configuration for anyone like Betty, finding out what they want to do and arranging it so it just does it."

Absolutely! You can get by with dumping an experienced computer user into a default, generic installation with just a pointer or two on how to begin. The average computer user (Betty seemed above average, in that article) needs _you_ to make sure they can do the things they want. Make sure you leave them a couple of ways to contact you or someone, via email and telephone.