should i switch my parents over to ubuntu or other distro?

[mamamia88]

right now they are running xp on a celron 2.5 with 512mb ram. all they do is surf the web and play free cell. do you think it's worth installing ubuntu for them? maybe another distro? maybe up the ram to at least 1gb? or should i just clean up xp and make them run firefox in sandbox with adblock on?

[pwnst*r]

So what's wrong with what they have right now? Just make surfing a little safer for them, make sure their AV is up to date and scheduled to run, and be done with it.

[Rasa1111]

i respectfully disagree pwnstar. lol

mamamia88~
I switched both of my parents over to Ubuntu not long ago.

both live in different homes,
So it's not like they can even teach one another or ask each other for help..
and they have been doing great with it!

My dad~ who knows allot more about computers than my mom , is absolutely loving Ubuntu!
He had XP before, and now he cant believe he didnt switch over sooner.

He is constantly talking about how great Ubuntu is now.
Now he is even switching over his friends. lol

My mom~ Who knows next to nothing about computers~
has been using it about 3 months now and she cant believe how much faster it is than the windows XP she had before.

She is also amazed by how fast it boots ans shuts down.
15-20 seconds, compared to about 5 minutes in her XP. lol

My dad is also amazed by the speed of it all.

Both of them [parents] are pretty weak when it comes to security and safe internet usage..
So Ubuntu helps a great deal there. lol

All my mom uses it for is browsing a few sites, email, and a few games.
And she has only needed to seek my help about 3 times in 3 months. (remember she is PC illiterate) lol

So if your parents know even the slightest about a computer and how to use it~
I think they will be great with Ubuntu~
and I think they will love it!

Good luck mate,
respect to ya.

[mamamia88]

It's really slow. I removed 39 pieces of spyware via spybot. cleaned out the registry. defragged the hdd. and removed all unnescessary programs. yet it's still pretty slow. i will be making sure they use firefox and have adblock enabled. you have any other reccomendations?

[Rasa1111]

and it will stay slow.
best bet is to do what I did.
help them out... do the switch. ;)

forgot to add~
both of my parents computers are rather "old" next to most today~
and were unbearably slow, no matter what fixes were made..
they would go back to a crawl within days. if not hours.

But now I switched them both~
both of their PC's seriously run better now, than they did when they were new, with windows.

:D

[mamamia88]

allright think i will give them a live usb and see how they handle it. if they like it i will install it for them.

[marcottebj]

I'm a fan of Ubuntu. I have my wife, and son both using it, and I've switched my parents over as well. I did find it ran pretty slow on a machine with very similar specs to the one you're describing. I ordered additional memory from www.memory.com (http://www.memory.com), and it helped significantly.

Yesterday, loaded Puppy Linux on a legacy machine, and found that it was relatively easy to configure and use as well. It has even lower system requirements than Ubuntu. I would recommend you give that a try. Perhaps you may want to experiment with it first using Sun's (Oracle's) VirtualBox.

Puppy Linux is more intuitive in some ways than Ubuntu, but it also adds unnecessary complexity to what should be simple tasks. I notice by default, you log in as root, and it doesn't ever prompt you for a password, however. That give me pause over security concerns. Some of your favorite apps have not been ported to run properly in Puppy either, but I found some pretty good alternatives.

[lykwydchykyn]

If truly all they do is browse and play solitaire, and the driving emphasis of a switch is to increase speed, I'd recommend looking at Lubuntu.

[philinux]

It's really slow. I removed 39 pieces of spyware via spybot. cleaned out the registry. defragged the hdd. and removed all unnescessary programs. yet it's still pretty slow. i will be making sure they use firefox and have adblock enabled. you have any other reccomendations?

I would put peppermint http://peppermintos.com/ on there, it's ubuntu/mint based so no learning curve for you there. Flash is ready to go etc. comes with firefox as default browser. Live cd is only 408 mb.

In my VM it boots up very fast. Not timed it but it's about 15 seconds.

I'm re-mastering a custom version for my daughter.

[marcottebj]

I have Ubuntu installed on a USB stick that I travel with constantly. I use it on many different machines, and it works great. You can even mount the host hard drive, and access the file system. That's a great way to go! Some older machines will not boot from a USB device, however.

[pricetech]

While I'm fond of Puppy personally (I should download a fresh copy now that you mention it) I would also recommend Ubuntu, or one of the derivatives. A RAM upgrade wouldn't hurt either.

What you might do as a precaution is to put a separate hard drive in the computer to put Ubuntu on and let them play with it for awhile. If they're happy you can take their old drive and put it back in your collection. If not, you simply have to put their old drive back and hope for the best.

That's the way I would handle it.

[mamamia88]

peppermint looks like a decent alternative to ubuntu and mint i will try that out thanks

[kaldor]

For people who only surf web and such and don't like messing with their computer, Mint/Ubuntu are perfect for that. No matter what anyone says, Ubuntu/Mint are much better for the computer illiterate than Windows because with Windows, you have to keep maintaining it.

This whole "Windows is fine for the computer idiots" mentality was true 5-10 years ago when Linux was truly for the geeks. My mother doesn't complain at all when she needed to use Ubuntu on my laptop, but complains constantly when she has to use my dad's XP machine.

Windows is easy ONLY because most people grew up with it. If it's only for surfing the web, you're using the same software anyway on Linux(Firefox/Opera/Chrome, most likely) and you can make it look identical to Windows with some tweaks. It doesn't even require any degree of computer literacy to install Ubuntu either; pop in disc, reboot PC, click "Install" and press next a few times until it asks for your name etc.

Windows is fine in some cases, but I highly disagree with people who say that Windows is fine if you just want to do stuff without hassle.

By the way, I use openSUSE, not Ubuntu. I'm not a fanboy :)

[Dark Aspect]

Arch + bmpanel + Openbox + xcompmgr= Super Fast Awesomeness

or you can install the minimal install of Ubuntu and do the same thing without arch.

[chessnerd]

It's really slow. I removed 39 pieces of spyware via spybot. cleaned out the registry. defragged the hdd. and removed all unnescessary programs. yet it's still pretty slow. i will be making sure they use firefox and have adblock enabled. you have any other reccomendations?

Don't forget to take a look at msconfig to clean up start-up applications and services. Go to Start>Run and type "msconfig" without the quotes.

Also, take a look at AnalogX MaxMem. It moves cached information to the pagefile so that there is more RAM for use. It does this periodically, whenever RAM is running low, or whenever you tell the tray icon to do it.

[BigSilly]

I put Ubuntu on an old PC I gave my parents and they love it. I expected phone calls and problems, but they've been fine. I set it up with all the crazy crap they'd need like Flash etc, and all's been great. But then, they've never used a modern computer before, and have little experience of Windows, so there was no baggage to have to wade through. I showed them the basics, and off they went.

[mamamia88]

actually they where using ie8 and never really ran antispyware etc. i deleted all their spyware with spybot, cleaned registry with cc cleaner, cleaned windows with cccleaner about 5 times, defragged about 3 times after removing all unnescessary programs. i then restored ie8 to original condition and installed sandboxie for them so all there web browsing is done in sandbox. it seems to work pretty fast at least lots faster than before.

[Rasa1111]

They gave you life~
You owe them Ubuntu. lol :D

[formaldehyde_spoon]

I put Ubuntu on an old PC I gave my parents and they love it. I expected phone calls and problems, but they've been fine. I set it up with all the crazy crap they'd need like Flash etc, and all's been great. But then, they've never used a modern computer before, and have little experience of Windows, so there was no baggage to have to wade through. I showed them the basics, and off they went.

I install Ubuntu for my relatives to *stop* the phonecalls...
No matter how often or diligently I clean up Windows, or reinstall it and set it up nicely, within a couple of months they're complaining again.

[Little Bones]

Well I agree with pwnst*r about first off ensuring browsing is safe (i.e. ditch Interwebs Explorer), use Firefox or Chrome with WOT (Web of Trust) and maybe an adblocker. Then pitch the benefits of Ubuntu and give them a Live CD to try, and if they like it, install it.

[kilosan]

my parents just use firefox so it was easy to migrate them, they dont even know what is the difference since its the same firefox.

infact they noticed the computer run faster since it no longer uses heavy weight antivirus. and save some headaches for me, since i no longer need to maintain it (except for the updates) and reformat every now and then due to slow downs and malwares. just remove that panel on top and create a main menu.

[Timmer1240]

My moms computer was seriously slow she got a new laptop. She said do what you want with the old desktop computer I said Ok so I took it home.Yes it was super slow Had windows xp on it. I wiped the drive with boot and nuke Installed Ubuntu Karmic.On first boot Ubuntu told me hard drive was failing!Love ubuntu!Took out the old drive had a 10 gig from older computer I had put it in installed Ubuntu that old thing runs great now!Its like a new computer with Ubuntu!My mom got windows 7 already had to go over and fix it a few times now In hindsight I wished I just bought her a new drive and switch her to Ubuntu its awesome!All she does is surf and email so it would be great for her too I think!Win 7 is ok but Ubuntu is great thats why Im running it!Screw windows Ubuntu Power and security!I wouldn't Use it if it wasn't any good!I told my brother about it hes scared he isnt very good with windows even if they only knew!You dont have to be a genius to run Linux thats a myth a lot of people believe!Its Just an OS like windows or OSX their all different but but all similar to each other just a different GUI.I just wish a lot of people wouldn't be afraid of trying it out for a while give it an honest shot!When I first used win 98 I didn't know jacksh** I didnt just say Its no good I dont want it even though it did suck!Same thing should apply for linux its come a long way in the last ten years give it an honest shot!Your never to old to learn!