Mom Meets Linux - A Lindows 4.0 Review

JimLynch writes "We just put up the first review of Lindows 4.0, with a twist. I actually gave it to my Mom to see if she could use it. Find out if Lindows 4.0 passed the "Mom Test.""

a new slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: Nerd tested, Mom approved.

Yeah, so did I

[Nix0n]

I actually gave it to my Mom

I gave it to your mom last night, as well.

mother test

[noah_fense]

my mother can't stay awake for a whole movie, let alone try and learn a "new" OS

He failed to mention that...

[2names]

his mom is an electrical engineer, so of course she won't be able to understand Lindows...

Mom Meets Linux,

[T40 Dude]

but can I meet your Mom ??

What a coincidence!

[L. VeGas]

I actually gave it to my Mom

I gave it to your Mom, too!

I tried...

[superpulpsicle]

Me: Mom, try Lindows 4.0
Mom: what's that
Me: New OS
Mom: new what?
Me: New operating system just like wind...
Mom: ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Re:mother test

[Steve G Swine]

my mother can't stay awake for a whole movie, let alone try and learn a "new" OS

Oh, you'd be surprised what your mom can learn - she surprised me!

(This has been a generic "your mama" joke. Resemblance to any actual mom, living or dead, is purely coincidental.)

Lindows updating proceedures...

[Akardam]

Lindows.com is also focusing on lower system maintenance with a Zero Maintenance Initiative â" which makes it possible for the user to upgrade the OS, apps or drives with one click.

I see how this could be nice. Whenever I upgrade drives (hard, optical, floppy, or otherwise), it's a 5 or 6 click process... which is precicely the amount of times the screw falls off the end of the screwdriver and dissapears somewhere in the case with a metallic click, to be heard rattling around just waiting to short something.

- Akky

P.S. For the brain dead, yes, I presume that they meant drivers.

Re:a new slogan

[mikeee]

No, that would be

Mom tested, nerd approved.

What about the Dad test?

[BinaryCodedDecimal]

It passes if he hasn't managed to delete some critical files after using it for 2 hours.

Re:a new slogan

[Greedo]

Depends if he still lives at home.

For those of you too lazy to read the review

[Surak]

Here's a quick summery:

"Lindows is a good OS! My *mommy* even said so."

"Oh yeah, well MY *mommy* has a better OS than *your* mommy!"

"Does not!"

"Does to!"

"Argh! I'm telling!"

Not much different than the usual stuff you read about operating systems on Slashdot.

Re:If this guy's mom is like my mom...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell her about dmesg.

Re:Of Course....

[twstdr00t]

I don't know about your Grandma's capabilities... but mine *is* running Lindows, and she is running 2.0.

Re:I tried...

[kurosawdust]

Up until the "ZZZZ" part, I was thinking you had enlisted the emacs psychiatrist as some kind of a surrogate mom. Now I realize that you probably just have a really buggy version of emacs.

Re:Umm...

[Realistic_Dragon]

My mother used to run VMS 'for fun'. I don't think I would dare show her Lindows and ask her what she thinks, she might cut my head off and feed it to the dog before catapulting my decapitated body into Michael Robertson's back garden.

Debian Does Dallas?

[heironymouscoward]

Designed by Gurus, built by hackers, crashed by mothers?

Domesticated Pengiuns?

"The OS Your Mother Would Have Made You"

"Linux and Apple Pie"

"Linux, with extra chicken soup"

sorry... the idea of a 'mom test' blew my mind. my mom (at 65) has been using computers for more than 20 years, and i don't think there is any proof that age is a barrier to using linux. how about 'tried lindows on people with a measured IQ of one hundred'.

Trouble brewing

[Proaxiom]

I hope there aren't too many tools that adopt this approach to testing.

I can foresee shortly after the first "Mom-Approved Nmap" version hits the market, any web site containing pornography, Barney, or Martha Stewart will find itself under constant attack by a wave of vigilante 'Script Mommiez'.

Re:Of Course....

[Gothmolly]

Your Grandma is running Lindows? What is she, some kind of cyborg?

Your mom liked my Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

She enjoyed every part of how I installed the Red One, version nein. She loved every minute of the hour long process, especially when I decided to use every package I could. Once I got her GUI going, she was ecstatic -- how could the blue curve disappoint her? She didn't want me to leave, but she had what she wanted.

P.S. OpenOffice crashed miserably on a simple memo right after I left.

'Mom' as a resource - for how much longer?

[Chordonblue]

How many times do you think they'll be able to use 'mom' as a resource?

"Hey?! Where's my big 'L'? I want to play Frozen Bubble!"

"Sorry ma, we need you to preview this new version of Trustix."

"But... But... There's no mouse pointer and the screen's all black!"

"Adjust ma, adjust!"

Re:mother test

[runcible]

Y'know, I only really clicked through to the comments on this article for the mom jokes...and while that one was damn good, they are otherwise quite sparse. It can't just be me who considers the mom joke to be the height of humor...Can it?...Anyone?

M0m 0wNz j00!

[ktakki]

My mother was getting fed up with BSODs and unexplained freezes and the like, so I suggested that she try Linux and brought over a Knoppix CD. She was pretty impressed with it, but she had a few questions.

"Can I play Counter Strike on Linux?" she said.

"Counter Strike? You play that?" I'd been laboring under the impression that she was a Freecell addict.

"All the time. I love fraggin' n00bs."

"Mom!"

"And what about my pr0n? Can I use Linux to view it?"

"This isn't happening." I felt an icy ball forming in my stomach, a feeling of nausea rising in my throat.

"Don't be ghey. I have needs too, you know." She opened up her browser; the home page was set to goatse.cx! I shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears.

"LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA!" I felt as if my whole world was crashing down around me.

So yeah, Linux might not be the best choice for my Mom. Also, if you play CS on a low-latency East Coast server, watch out for Mom. She likes to AWP wh0r3.

k.

Re:He failed to mention that...

[M.C. Hampster]

Hey it takes to E's to be a GEEK

And it takes a Slashdot poster to misspell the word "two".

Mom Tests Can Be Good

[LVWolfman]

A number of years ago, I had a teen customer in my computer store getting his laptop upgraded and OS/2 installed. His mother was sitting there rather bored with our "geek" talk and asked was was the difference between OS/2 and Windows.

I simply handed her my laptop, loaded with OS/2 and the normal office apps, games, etc. and told her to try it herself. (Though she was a computer novice, she never asked any other questions.)

A couple of hours later when we were finished with the upgrades, we asked her what she thought. Her summary was... "It's just like Windows, only easier." And then proceeded to show us the things that she found better/different and that she'd done.

When any version of *nix can get that kind of reaction, it'll be a good home user competition for Windows.

BTW, she and I eventually got married (perhaps she was tired of paying for her son's upgrades!) and every time her Windows machine crashes ("get's stupid" as she puts it)asks why she can't have her OS/2 back.

Re:What about the Dad test?

[ceswiedler]

The Kid Test. I remember when we got PC-Shell installed on our 286 DOS machine. It showed previously hidden files in c:\ like IO.SYS and IBMIO.SYS. I helpfully moved those into another folder.

I'm wondering if there are any kids out there who do similar things with /boot/vmlinuz. Of course, they'd have to have root privileges...

Re:a new slogan

[macdaddy357]

"This sucks! Linux is supposed to be complicated and user hostile so that only the techno-elite can even approach it! Any distro that doesn't confuse 999 of every 1000 who attempt to use it isn't the real thing! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! This is an OS for idiots." Does that rant sound stupid? It's the same one dosheads used when Apple introduced Macintosh in 1984. Now, every OS uses a mac-like GUI. Will Lindows be the next big thing?

Re:If this guy's mom is like my mom...

[Jagasian]

Someone needs to write a virus that DOS attacks people like the ones you mentioned. The attack would consist of opening up dialog boxes with long paragraphs with Ok, Cancel or Yes, No buttons on the bottom.

Computer users that HAVE to read everything and ponder over each bit will be so overloaded their brains will crash.

Re:Trouble brewing

[Shadow Wrought]

Well Script Kiddies do have to come from somewhere...

Re:He failed to mention that...

[sonny317]

It *also* takes EE's to have:

B-E-E-R
W-E-E-D
Cowboy N-E-E-L

Doh! Too much of the first two!

Paper Towel Roll... Ewwwww!!!!

[AntiGenX]

Did anybody else notice the roll of paper towels next to the computer? [extremetech.com] And to think, he let his own mother type on that keyboard.

Re:If this guy's mom is like my mom...

[dprice]

Alas, she brought home one piece of information that is useful for pretty much anything having to do with computers, and only one such piece of information: "Read the whole screen".

My mom reads everything on the computer literally. When her Windows machine became unstable (typical Windows rot), she kept getting the requester box with "This program has performed an illegal operation.". She refused to click the "OK", and she would turn off the power. She thought clicking "OK" was an admission of breaking the law. It makes sense from my mom's non-computer-literate perspective. Why does Microsoft use such poor wording? (I ask rhetorically)

I'm always helping my mom use the computer for the most basic things. She really just wants to use email and browsing, but odd system behaviors and setup options keep spoiling her experience. She did switch to an iMac which did get rid of the system crashes, but even the Mac environment has things that are non-intuitive to my mom. She still is unclear about where windows go when they are covered with other windows. Maybe the new Mac "Expose" feature will help, but I shudder to think how a new OS environment might disrupt her understanding.

Re:This Test seems a bit weak

[jmu1]

It's like the old coffee commercial with the nuns. "What they don't know is that Sister Methusela has switched their usual coffee with Brand Echs brand frozen, decaffenated, pre-creamed and sugared vile nastiness... let's see what happens!"

Did anyone else notice

[greechneb]

The large roll of paper towels by his monitor in the picture of his mom?

I wonder what those were for...

*cough* one handed surfing *cough*

Re:a new slogan

[jonadab]

> "This sucks! Linux is supposed to be complicated and user
> hostile so that only the techno-elite can even approach it!

No, no, that's BSD ;-)

Re:a new slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

moms are easy, why not give it a real test like have an mcse try it. If they can use it then perhaps we're getting somewhere.

Re:Trouble brewing

[ncc74656]

Well Script Kiddies do have to come from somewhere...

Do they? I thought they just appeared from nowhere, like mold on a loaf of old bread or toadstools in your lawn...

From Jane's Diary...

[fo0bar]

June 11: I have been observing Mom for quite some time. She has been facinating over the last few months. Today I decided to give her a little test. I placed a computer pre-loaded with Lindows 4.0 in her habitat to see what her reaction will be. I hope this proves to be a valuable experiment.

June 12: After ignoring the computer yesterday, she walked up to it this morning and stared vacantly at the monitor. I hope she figures out how to turn on the machine soon.

June 14: Success! The computer is on, and is currently loading Lindows. Mom seems facinated with the fsck's progress bar. The desktop is now loaded, and... what's this? A flash presentation has popped up and is explaining how to get started with using Lindows. This frightened Mom; she is currently beating the case with a large rock.

June 16: The computer has been replaced, and I took the liberty to disable the welcome presentation this time. It appears Mom is learning mouse movements fast. It took a few hours, but she managed to find and open OpenOffice.org. Her concept of written language is improving; yesterday all she could type is random garbage, but now she's at a level equivalent to an IRC user. Now that I think about it, that's a step backwards.

June 19: Like most mammals, Mom got bored of doing things like typing and playing solitaire. She found the shell and began exploring. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed to see that the first programming language she discovered was Java, and she has also been getting attached to Emacs. How unfortunate.

June 21: Oh great, now she's starting a flame war on debian-devel. Where did I go wrong?

Dad test

[Doug Neal]

Interesting that this article came up today. Tomorrow my dad's borrowing my laptop to visit some relatives and scan a load of old family photos (he's into that stuff)... thing is, he's used to Windows and the laptop only has Debian on it.

So, I set up SANE, plug the scanner into the firewire port, it all works perfectly. Nice. Set up a minimal, Windows-styled KDE desktop with a nice friendly icon, "Scan and OCR software". All he has to do is click his name on the KDM login screen. Cool. Even he can't get this wrong. I do a few test runs. It's dead simple, even more so than his Windows setup.

So I sit him down in front of the laptop to see if he can manage this. He just about figures out the login. OK. Now we've got the KDE desktop, nothing there but a few icons. Mouse is right over the "Scan and OCR" icon. He sits there for about 20 seconds in silence before saying "which one is it?"

If there's anything getting in the way of linux on the desktop, it sure isn't linux :P

Re:Trouble brewing

[taernim]

Got Root? -- It's a good thing.

Or...

Tonight we'll be discussing how you can spice up a simple little root kit and make it not only h@x0r your enemies, but also make a festive screensaver that is both malicious AND fun...

New Acronym

[weeboo0104]

MILF.

Mom
Is a
Linux
Freak.

Re:mother test

[goodhell]

The Mom Test involves nothing less than installing an OS on your mom's home desktop and seeing if she can figure out how to do all the things she would normally do with MS-Windows

If that involves calling me up asking what this blue screen means...

Re:My mom...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wala?" Jesus. No wonder people think Americans are dumb.

Re:Mom-Test

[metachimp]

Irate Mother: Johnny!! Are you running Apache as root?!?

Johnny: (looking down, grinding toe into the ground) Yes, Mom...

Re:mother test

[Eil]

It can't just be me who considers the mom joke to be the height of humor...Can it?...Anyone?

Mom jokes. Height of humor. Right, then. Now if you'll just stand there for a moment, this will be painless for the both of us.

[A gunshot strikes the damp night and its echos fade quickly.]

Move along folks, nothing to see here.