I imagine that the measure of success for an operating system is when a non-tech user uses it on a daily basis.
Long story short – my father-in-law runs Linux now.
Some background… I built my father-in-law a computer for Christmas about three years ago. At the time it was cobbled-together from used and discarded parts and ran Windows ME, but it got him online and let him play solitaire.
A few years later, frustrated by slow modem speeds and the continual barrage of spyware and viruses, we updated the machine with a new motherboard and fresh memory. Hooking it up to broadband, I installed an old copy of Windows 2000 and loaded it with a virus scanner and some anti-spyware software. I wanted to set something up, so I could remotely access and fix any future problems he might have, but the remote desktop setup was a nightmare that never worked.
Notoriously slow-booting, it was only a matter of time before the machine again became unusable. At one point the freezes, hitches and stalls made me wonder if the hardware was faulty. We suspected the DSL line, bad memory, old video drivers and lots of other things before I got fed up and decided to try an experiment.
Ubuntu.
With a 2 gig processor and 512M of RAM, the machine had the specs to run Linux, so I installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes with Firefox, which he was used to running, and an assortment of solitaire games to put Microsoft’s offerings to shame.
Within two hours I had the operating system installed, SSH setup for remote administration, the machine booting directly to his desktop and his account permissions setup to prevent any malicious system-wide attacks or infections.
How easy was that? So easy that I’m thinking of doing it again sometime. Maybe to my dad’s machine (yeah, that’s right dad, I’m gonna fix that computer of yours once and for all).
Now, is this the perfect solution for everybody? Of course not. My father-in-law’s computer needs just happened to be simple: web-browsing, printing some pictures and playing solitaire, Linux rose to the challenge easily.
While there are almost infinite Linux options for Windows-only programs, some users find the learning curve switching to Linux too intimidating.
But it’s getting easier and easier every day.
Was the experiment a success?
Yep.