begin Jamin W. Collins quotation: > > And for those of you that may claim Linux is too difficult to understand > for most users. My mother made the switch a while back. She's in her > 50's and happily running Debian.
My experience is the same. And, if they're using Linux, you don't have to have them do a bunch of commands to diagnose a problem that they call you about; you just have them do one command, and read off their IP address, then you ssh in and fix it. However, I'm not suggesting that guy replace his family member's OS; I'm merely suggesting that giving a new user Outlook Express is 99% the same as just going ahead and installing the Klez virus for him. Save him the time and trouble, just go ahead and erase his files now, instead of getting him hooked on Outlook Express crack. Give your family members a fighting chance at not getting infected with the virus-of-the-week. Install Netscape and Mozilla, and strongly suggest they only use Netscape when Mozilla won't work with a particular web site. Install a better email program, and spend a few minutes teaching them how to use it. That's all it takes. My wife had to call me the other day because she couldn't figure out how to change to a directory on a different drive than C: on the Windows box she works on 8 hours a day. But she logs onto a Linux workstation at home every day, surfs the web with Mozilla, switches to Netscape when she wants to pay credit-card bills and such, and used Mutt for her mail for six months before she decided to switch to Netscape Mail. It took me five minutes of teaching her Mutt (and writing down the most common menu keys for her) before she was fine with it. Ditto for Netscape Mail, except without the writing down part. The few minutes of effort you spend teaching a family member to use, say, Agent or Pegasus or Eudora or Netscape Mail will be repaid a thousandfold in time you don't spend explaining why their files were deleted or their system is sending out tons of spam and they're getting hundreds of hate mails. Even if they stay on Windows, you're doing them and the entire Internet a favor. Besides, Outlook Express doesn't even follow the MIME standard, despite putting MIME headers in mails, so it's not even an Internet email program; it's an internal office email program with limited Internet-like functionality that, unfortunately, has some ability to inject mail into the Internet. IMNERHO. (And yes, I'm aware RFC-822 is a standard, and RFC-1521 isn't.) -- Shawn McMahon | McMahon's Laws of Linux support: http://www.eiv.com | 1) There's more than one way to do it AIM: spmcmahonfedex, smcmahoneiv | 2) Somebody thinks your way is wrong
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