[tlug] Computer "fixed" with Linux

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

Just thought y'all might enjoy this small anecdote about one more person 
converting to Linux.

My girlfriend had been complaining recently that her computer, which had 
Japanese Windows XP, had a number of problems. Most notably, it took 
ages to boot up, and if left on for too long it would crash (with a BSOD).

I mentioned off-hand that I could "fix" it for her if she wanted, though 
it would mean a slightly different interface. She said she didn't care 
about the specifics of stuff like that, just so long as she could easily 
get on the Internet (she was already using FireFox) and do things like 
watch her videos and listen to MP3s.

So one time while she was out grocery shopping, I installed Ubuntu Edgy. 
I divided her 60 GB HD in two, and so it still has the option to boot 
into XP. Didn't want to lose any data, after all.

It took longer than the time she was out grocery shopping, but that was 
only because I spent some time ensuring that all sorts of non-standard 
things like AVI codecs and Flash player were installed and working. I 
knew if she went to YouTube or opened an MP3 and it didn't play that she 
would return immediately to Windows, thinking I had just messed with her 
computer without any improvement.

Anyway, the default boot is to Ubuntu, and all I showed her was where 
her old data could be accessed so that she didn't feel like she had lost 
anything (I put a shortcut on her desktop to the "My Documents" folder 
on her Windows partition).

That was a couple of days ago. I asked her today how her computer was 
working. She said "great". No crashes, everything runs smoothly, and she 
says it's much quicker than before.

She thanked me for "fixing" her computer.

The punchline is... at no time did we talk about "Linux", or "Windows" 
or "Operating Systems" or any of that stuff. The difference was only 
between "working" and "non-working". She doesn't care that it's Linux, 
or Windows, or BeOS, or whatever. She only cares that when, for example, 
she goes to her Hotmail account and someone has sent her a link to a 
video, she has no hold ups.

And that's how it should be for the end user.

That's all. Just thought I'd mention it here on list.

ï--
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft
Kernel 2.6.17.7
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2