My experience with the wonderful world of Linux and end users - or
normal people. My sister needed a laptop to help her start a new
business writing grant proposals. I figured I'd help by buying her
a laptop (used, but still good, a Dell Latitude PIII, 256Meg RAM,
12 Gig hard disk, CD-RW, external floppy, Xircom 10/100+56 card.
I tested Mandrake 9.1, SuSE 8.2 Personal and Knoppix installed to
harddisk. Decided to ship it with SuSE with all updates done, and
with OOo 1.1.0 and Scribus 1.0.1. Paid for Internet access, and
configured dial on demand. Also configured KMail,Evolution,
Mozilla Mail and KNode.
She called today. Had a problem with it (trouble-shooting was turn
it upside down and shake it). Brought it to computer repair shop.
He installed non-licensed Windows and MS Office. I'm discouraged.
It truely was 'point 'n click'. Everything was installed, tested
and working. Literally plug it in, turn it on, connect the
included phone cord and your online. Just click the Seagull and
you have a choice of OOo1.0.2 or OOo1.1.0.
Think I want my SuSE 8.2 Personal boxed set, SuSE Live Eval CD,
and boot floppy back! But on the good side, my 7 year old son and
14 year old son are perfectly comfortable with SuSE, Mandrake and
RedHat. Maybe Debian in a while.