Linux Desktop for Grandma (Update)

[hoppipolla]

sounds good.
It's not powerful and might struggle with certain things, but for a grandmother that might not be a problem unless she's going to be playing Nexiuz but doesn't want low graphic settings.

yeah totally man I mean we need to prepare for Nexuiz!

But what if she gets an urge to play CS: Source or Left 4 Dead?


seriously though, yeah bung in a gig of RAM

[cartisdm]

Ok, you all made me feel bad so I upped the processor to 3GHz and the RAM to 1GB and the optical drive to a DVD-ROM. Happy?

Also, I am having a technician come out to set up HughesNet satellite high speed internet. If I get her modem installed right next to where the computer will be installed, is it safe to go straight from the modem into the computer or should I still consider a router?

[MaxIBoy]

Those specs are good for basically anything a grandmother needs, but you'll want to give her a 2 Gb swap partition just in case. Also, it's very easy to just upgrade the RAM later on. As others have said, RAM is very cheap, and it's easy to add another stick or swap out a stick.

If there is only one computer in the house, then a router only has one use, which is if you want to use the firmware firewall. However, it's not hard to setup a software firewall on your Linux machine (IPtables comes with most distros, you just need to configure it.)

As others have said, once you have something, you find uses for it really quick. When I first set up my server, it was going to host printers and nothing more, now it's a game server, backup server, SOCKS proxy, and webserver as well. And I intend to make it a torrent slave in the future. Think back to when you first started driving for an even bigger example.


PS: If it's three years old, and if the hard drive doesn't come replaced out of the box, then be prepared to replace the hard drive maybe two years from now...