[ale] Distro for Mom?

Dow Hurst Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Mon Aug 9 16:33:44 EDT 2004


Vincent Fox wrote:

>Would it be silly of me to ask what is the current fave
>Mom-friendly distro out there?
>
>I bought them a ThinkNIC years ago and Mom was okay with
>that until now. It was a minimalist black box that booted
>from CD and stored bookmarks on flash. Nice big friendly button
>that says CONNECT and a web browser and that's about it.
>It's the wrong generation to have any complex interface IMHO.
>I would get enough questions on the phone just about the NIC.
>
>Problem is now that so many sites don't like the aged
>browser that is on it, that is becoming a problem.
>The company is long out of business.
>
>I was thinking of using an old K6-2 192-meg 40-gig HD I have
>and putting on Fedora or Mandrake or something, wanted some
>feedback.  I've been monogamous with Redhat/Fedora for a while
>so I thought some of the distro sluts might have other ideas.
>
>Alternatively I guess next time I go up there I could see
>if one of the Knoppix variants would boot on the ThinkNIC.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ale mailing list
>Ale at ale.org
>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
>  
>
I would consider SUSE 9.1 extremely Mom friendly once you've done the 
basic install/setup.  Just eliminate all icons except what is needed.  
Use the large icon xpm images that are available.  Test it thoroughly 
for the stuff she'll do.  Make sure you get a notification automagically 
of the current IP when she connects.  Make sure sshd is available so you 
can remote admin.  I'd just tweak the thing enough so it is what you 
want for her.
Dow



More information about the Ale mailing list