I just installed Ubuntu on my mom's laptop

[Antarctica]

Note: This is just a story about me installing Ubuntu on my mom's laptop and my experience with Linux and Ubuntu.

I finally installed Ubuntu on my mom's laptop, and it runs with almost no problems!

I used to be sick and tired of her asking me to fix her computer when she was running Windows. I was always fixing some little stupid problem such as getting the wireless Internet to work or changing a file's extension from something wrong to the right one just to get a program to run it. You know... stupid stuff. Then, yesterday I decided to install Ubuntu onto the laptop. I had been running Linux on my desktop since July 2006 and Ubuntu since November 2006, and let me tell you... Ubuntu is the best yet. I'll admit that it turned me off during the releases of Dapper and Edgy, but the Ubuntu team never gave up and fixed as many problems as they could. Since the release of Gutsy, I've had very few problems with Ubuntu.

Anyway, the installation went very well. The only problem that I have with the laptop is that Ubuntu runs a bit slow compared to my desktop. Of course, you're comparing a Gateway laptop with a 1.2 Intel Celeron processor and 256 MB RAM to a 3.0 GHz AMD Athlon64 X2 dual core processor with 3.0 GB RAM and a 500 GB SATA 3.0 Gbit/s hard drive. Of course the laptop is gonna be slow compared to the desktop. The cool thing is that I found some tweaks for the laptop, and it runs a bit faster, but I wish it would run even faster than that. It's all cool though.

I think that my mom will really like Ubuntu. She can do everything she normally does without dealing with stupid, easy to fix problems or those problems that result from poor programming and lack of administrative restrictions. I'm glad that Linux developers and programmers focused more on the GUI, user functionality, and user friendliness because regular computer users like my mom wouldn't know the first thing to do if she saw a bash prompt. It's gonna be really easy and cool for her. She'll be able to surf the Internet without any worries, check her email, listen to music, and everything will be organized. But yeah, that's my rant and I just wanted to let the world know. If you have any questions or comments, hit me up, okay?

[hhhhhx]

cool!

[freebeer]

Nice. You might want to set up remote access on that then if she has any issues, you can fix it remotely. (ninja style)

[rs3]

I've only managed to convert my parents over to Firefox and Thunderbird so far; they continue to run XP, but I'll get 'em someday.

Great work!

(and freebeer: That is absolutely a great idea. I live about 2000 miles from my parents, so that'd be a must-have to resolve issues.)

[Antarctica]

Nice. You might want to set up remote access on that then if she has any issues, you can fix it remotely. (ninja style)

How do I set up remote access on her laptop? Btw I think it would be kinda slow since her laptop is already running somewhat slow on Ubuntu. Any suggestions on how to speed it up also?

[Antarctica]

I've only managed to convert my parents over to Firefox and Thunderbird so far; they continue to run XP, but I'll get 'em someday.

Great work!

(and freebeer: That is absolutely a great idea. I live about 2000 miles from my parents, so that'd be a must-have to resolve issues.)

The next time you're on their computer, load a bunch of spyware, viruses, crap, etc. onto her computer and blame Internet Explorer and the lack of administrative access and organization. Then tell her that most of the stuff you download and install comes FREE from an online catalog (They probably wouldn't understand apt-get or Synaptic Package Manager). If they still don't want to switch to Ubuntu, tell them that they could've saved over $500 with Windows XP or Vista and Microsoft Office.

[steveneddy]

Very good post.

[MONODA]

hmmm... i would have installed xubuntu. anyway, if you have compiz enabled, turn it off, it will make it faster.

[Antarctica]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention... the only thing that would keep the laptop from running Ubuntu is some stupid poker game my mom downloaded and played on Windows. I remembered installing Ubuntu once on her other computer, the desktop. I could get WINE to run the program, but it depended on Internet Explorer, which I installed also. The program wouldn't recognize IE, so back to Windows I went (At least I put Windows 2000 on it. I think 2000 was the best since it was lightweight and was NT based, much better than 98.) Anyway I think I got Windows covered... Virtualbox.

[Antarctica]

hmmm... i would have installed xubuntu. anyway, if you have compiz enabled, turn it off, it will make it faster.

Xubuntu would run faster, but I personally don't like it and have more experience in GNOME and KDE. Also, Compiz is disabled totally and most unused services are turned off too. I also profiled GRUB to speed up boot time. Those are a few tweaks. I'm hoping there's more that'll speed up the laptop without sacrificing user friendliness and functionality.