Well it's been a couple of weeks now since my wife switched to 100% Linux. Her desktop is KDE and her main apps are mozilla, xine-ui for DVD playback, XMMS, typical amusements like solitaire, pogo applet games running inside mozilla, a little light text editing using KWrite, and all the cutesy stuff like kitties and dogs and penguins running amuck. We've also gotten our "old" HP C200 working with it and she'll probably use a light-weight graphics program like KPaint to add titles and such to pictures.

Once I handed it over to her I explained about the root user, gave her a few pointers, and away she went. I haven't explained much to her since then. She finds it intuitive and from a non-technical standpoint has noticed how stable it is and how smooth the multi-tasking is (eg. her dvd playback is better than under XP). She likes it better than XP and thanks to all the fun little amusements thinks it has more "personality".

She's using an HP Pavillion laptop with a wireless connection to our Linux PPP router. SuSE 8.2 installed with no problems though I'm not sure if it would have been a battle to get her WinModem working (SuSE 9.0 has specifically targetted winmodem support). I work from home and have to program in XP. However, I run a KDE session using XDMCP off of her laptop for just about everything else. I'm using Cygwin/XFree86 for my X Terminal. We've had it up for several days now.

From my perspective when there is a problem with Linux I can typically figure out what is going wrong. It has required climbing a very steep learning curve with always more to learn. With XP things do go wrong and when they do I've typically felt lost. So much is hidden from easy view and buried in the registry. The system restore stuff in XP is nice but can leave a bit of a mess. I'd probably have better luck if I'd spend more serious time learning the intricacies of XP. I guess I've been sucked into the "windoze" mentality ... it's supposed to take care of everything but it really doesn't and often just gets in the way trying to be too helpful.

The Linux community has provided me a wonderful environment and powerful productivity tools for $80 out of pocket. The value is so high I am going to start contributing small financial donations and hopefully some of my skills as a professional programmer.

Well .. just wanted to share a personal success story. Thanks for reading.

Eric

that is a great story! thanks.

wow, you paid $80. kudos to you for though for wanting to contribute. Personally, I'll keep using my money for tuition and pizza and my programming "experience" for trying to get a decent grade in my Operating Systems class. (Somebody please tell me that's harder than at least most of the rest of undergrad Computer Science classes)

It's so good to here a story like yours among so many "Linux go to hell" "bye bye linux" "i hate linux" Congratulations for you and your wife and I hope you both can become a reference among newbies.

ya that great

Props!

A review of Suse9.0.

http://madpenguin.org/modules.php?op...rder=0&thold=0

Still alive and kicking :-)

This is new to me why are there people hating linux now i thought there was more people loving it. Or is it because of that SCO thing?

of course there are people who will hate linux because it's not microsoft, or just because they are so ignorant to realize how powerfull it really is

i like it...

LOL, same for my girlfriend. I introduced her to Tux, kopete, frozen-bubble (that game even had me addicted for a few days ), the GIMP, xpenguins, and the load of games available (happypenguin.org). She only used Windoze for email, IMs, games and Shoutcast stations anyway, so KDE 3 & Enlightenment's eye-candy won her over in a heartbeat.
"Wow, this must have cost a small fortune." heh-heh
Yeah, the price was about as shocking as, "You mean it doesn't get email viruses?"

you obviously dont know much about linux, or women !!!

You Gave HER The Root Password ????? ;-)

LOL

...call it love......or stupidity....<ahem!>

naeric-
I have been trying to get the pogo.com games to work for me but I am having no luck.
When I click to play on a game, after a few seconds, it says "Java Misinstalled or Corrupt."
I can play the games at Yahoo.com with no problem, but I'm not sure what is up with the pogo games. If you can offer any help, that would be great!
I am using Mandrake 9.1, J2RE 1.4.2.02, Mozilla 1.5, and Firebird 0.7
Thanks in advance