Making Ubuntu desktop foolproof?

[sdowney717]

I have the same type problems with my 78 yr old father in law. He manages to mess up things a lot as he explores the computer. Then I get to figure out what he did.

I put cinnamon desktop on, and the hot corner caused him a lot of grief.

He would shoot the mouse to the top left and then you get the workplace selector, then he clicked the plus button on right so many times all the added workplaces receded until they become grey goo. He was unable to then use the pc for a full day as he did not know to put the mouse back to the hot corner to show a desktop.

I did find a way to disable the hot corner on a mint forum.

He also deletes a lot of stuff, then claims it was never there.

So even not involving sudo privileges, he messes up how it works.

[Time Sheep]

The advice is perfectly OK, I never questioned the value of the advice I received.
Only, I don't like to create another user account (it's a personal preference), because it will create home directory for that user, and it will also show at the login screen, etc.
Moreover, what name to give to the other account? Probably I would name it Root or Admin. You see the difficulty? I even disabled Guest access. I like to keep it simple and clean.

Don't worry about my mom, she has the other password, but I have made it so difficult that it's practically impossible to know it by hearth.

If I can only find a way to auto unlock screen after sleep, then I'm done. She will never need to use that password again.

Otherwise, I'll just activate the root account. At least it will not create any directory at users home area. I hope I'll be able to hide it from the login screen too.

Personally I'd create a user in my own name, then create a standard user for my mother.
At this point you could then set your mothers account to autologin, this is also a far more effective way of starting your computer, as you won't have to enter your password before the keyring is needed.

[blnl]

I found it, it is actually pretty easy to disable screen locking on wake up from sleep mode.
It was there all time in front of me, but I did not see it.

_> System Settings
___> Brightness and Lock
_____> Require my password when waking from suspend

Now I'm done. My mom will never need to use the password again.

I also tarred her home directory and stored it in her Dropbox. Just in case.

[Petro Dawg]

You may also consider installing TeamViewer7 on her PC (and yours) so you can remotely access her PC and "fix" problems she might encounter. That's what I've done for my mother who lives 16+ hours away.

[blnl]

You may also consider installing TeamViewer7 on her PC (and yours) so you can remotely access her PC and "fix" problems she might encounter. That's what I've done for my mother who lives 16+ hours away.

Yes, I already installed x11vnc server and configured it to start at boot.