Mom vs. Ubuntu Report

[tom-ubuntu]

Hi guys

Hope you are interested in this: I installed Ubunto on my Mothers PC, switched from FC3 to Ubuntu. Because I visit her just from time to time, i hoped, she can handle it even better then Fedora (which is a great distro by the way).

She is working now over a month with it. Usual tasks: Office (OOo), Mail (Evolution), IM (Gaim) and rarely Internet (Firefox).

The first time she saw the desktop was immediatly "Why does it look now different?". So we changed the colors to her liking. She got used to the "Places" menu pretty quick to get to her documents, browing in nautilus is fine aswell. The only problem she has from time to time is which button to use; left or right. Now I understand, why Macs just got one button ;)

Office: She knows OpenOffice for a while now and uses it regularly. Even if she is far from an export, she can do almost she needs. There is just one thing within OOo in Ubuntu where she was totally confused: The file dialog. Why is there not the one from Gnome implemented? Fedora got that for a while. I think, this would be an (hopefully simple) important step for the desktop users.

Update functionality: Almost no problem... almost. When she tried to update, there was an - for a normal office user - a cryptic message saying something about a mirror was not reachable. It was a whole dialog full of some server infos, whatever. At the end you can only click ok, and the update works fine. But I think, this error message should be a little bit more user friendly. Perhaps also some tips on what to do.

So, all in all, she is pretty happy with Ubuntu. It looks (now) nice, quite fast and userfriendly, besides the few points mentioned. Perhaps they could be fixed for the next release.

Cheers
joe

[tristan]

Well done joeuser, another (mostly) happy convert :).

I've switched a couple of non-technical people over to ubuntu, and because I did the initial setup and got things working (repositories, dialup internet, extra codecs etc), they are now perfectly happy.

[CospeFogo]

When I read the thread's title, I thought it was something like this: http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/mam/

[tom-ubuntu]

Well done joeuser, another (mostly) happy convert :).

I've switched a couple of non-technical people over to ubuntu, and because I did the initial setup and got things working (repositories, dialup internet, extra codecs etc), they are now perfectly happy.
Thanks! Yes, you have to do the initial work. These users would never install any operating system, no matter how easy it is. They are always scared to break something. Atleast for this "convert" it is the case ;)

[phen]

i installed ubuntu on my moms desktop this weekend. she was amazed how easy it is to use. she was happy, that she can now find firefox' adressbar without a problem (before, she had to close dozens of adware banner windows...).

Of course, i made the desktop very simple, i only left 4 programs: browser, email, ooffice writer and k3b. a shutdown button and a personal folder icon. thats all. i even removed the upper panel and the menu.

the ability to configure the desktop so much made the big difference to windows. Also, the menus for selecting wallpapers etc are much easier than in windows.

as long as no problems occur, it will do a very good job i think. and as it is a linux, it is highly probable that no problems occur as long as the hardware keeps running :)

[TheRealEdwin]

I too and trying to change other I know but alas the only way would be to get a theme/skin of XP or OSX. Anyone have one that I can try and use?

[benplaut]

I too and trying to change other I know but alas the only way would be to get a theme/skin of XP or OSX. Anyone have one that I can try and use?

well... for XP, you could try IceWM with Nautilus desktop (sorry... ROX just isn't good enough... yet...), there are some nice themes for IceWM that mimic WinXP

[WildTangent]

whats the apt-get name for nautilus? is it just simply nautilus?

-Wild

[TanKilleR]

Thanks for tell us this! I have been playing around with the idea of installing linux on my moms laptop also. She's aways calling me with getting help with xp. Such a boar to fix it. The networking and getting it to go online with verizon is the pits, and when I giveup on trying, I have to be on hold for an hour. I know her pc is loaded with adwere and spywere and I hope she does not have any bugs, because she just finshed wrighting a 300+ page book and saved to her hdd.

[Wolki]

(sorry... ROX just isn't good enough... yet...)

I currently use nautilus, because it integrates so nicely with gnome, but i've used the ROX Desktop for a long time before switching to Ubuntu, and especially the Filer is a very solid program. There's little it can't do and it's fast, configurable and not hard to use. What problems do you see with the Filer? (except not being spatial, but you can't have everything...)

I wish Ubuntu would include ROX wrappers for all the Prgograms like Mandrake does...

[benplaut]

I currently use nautilus, because it integrates so nicely with gnome, but i've used the ROX Desktop for a long time before switching to Ubuntu, and especially the Filer is a very solid program. There's little it can't do and it's fast, configurable and not hard to use. What problems do you see with the Filer? (except not being spatial, but you can't have everything...)

I wish Ubuntu would include ROX wrappers for all the Prgograms like Mandrake does...

mainly the layout... unnamed, fairly similar buttons at the top, no address bar, no tree view?!?!

i know that all of this can be fixed (plugins?), but i'm happy with Nautilus, so i see no need to switch

[TravisNewman]

whats the apt-get name for nautilus? is it just simply nautilus?

-Wild
if you have gnome, you already have nautius. It's the file manager and desktop of gnome

[Wolki]

mainly the layout... unnamed, fairly similar buttons at the top, no address bar, no tree view?!?!

Yeah, the Icons could use a little change... but there are only two pairs of similar icons, and you can disable them in the options menu.
The adress bar is usually hidden, but you can acess it by hitting /, and . opens the select bar. The adress bar has tab autocompletion.
It doesn't have a tree view, but they are overrated anyway. ROX is so fast it's easier to just open another window and put that where you want it anyway. Just my opinion of course.


i know that all of this can be fixed (plugins?), but i'm happy with Nautilus, so i see no need to switch

ROX Plugins are for the Panel, not for the Filer (well, the panel is part of the filer, but they feel different)

I'm not trying to make you switch, like I said I currently don't use it often either. But it does have advantages like speed (try opening a big directory like /usr/lib/ in both) and power (recursive file permission changing, yes please!). Oh, and drag and drop saving. I really miss that in Gnome and wish that basic gtk would finally offer it :-/

[allforcarrie]

make linux look like winblows.

http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=18152

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=1499

[drummer]

I too and trying to change other I know but alas the only way would be to get a theme/skin of XP or OSX. Anyone have one that I can try and use?
TheRealEdwin, I use the GlossyP theme for gtk ( http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/571 ) and the RAqua theme for metacity ( http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=15067 ) to get the OSX look. There are some other OSX-like themes here: http://www.r1ch4rd.org/aqua/ .

Have a look at my screenshot too ( http://ubuntuforums.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=409&original=1&c=2 ).

[WildTangent]

if you have gnome, you already have nautius. It's the file manager and desktop of gnome
i know that, but i want it for my IceWM computer

-Wild

[poofyhairguy]

i know that, but i want it for my IceWM computer

-Wild


sudo apt-get install nautilus

I must warn you, it might steal your desktop, and it has a tendancy to be a resource hog.

[allforcarrie]

I sent this to my mom :grin::grin::grin::grin:

[tom-ubuntu]

I sent this to my mom :grin::grin::grin::grin:
After a lot of discussions about themes, did anyone else experince this problems with an average user? How can we make sure, they could be fixed in the next release? How does this work here in Ubuntu? I think, these are small but important things. I mean, if my mom is getting confused, lots of other average users probably gets confused aswell.