Hi! Last week my mother (supplied by me with a debian-testing system, running kde) did call me with fear in hear voice: "the computer isn't working anymore! and all my files are lost! and my emails! and the internet has vanished!"
soon i found out, that she had tried to clean up her homefolder
(organizing her files in folders, as she has learned in some
computer-course she has taken) and got confused and has clicked once or
twice too much on 'proceed','overwrite', 'copy'... (i don't know
exactly what she did, it took her a long time too... )
after much discussion ("that can't be possible, as you didn't delete
anything, the files are still there, you just can't see them,
because they are in some subfolder!") i talked her through building an
ssh-reverse tunnel to one of my machines and i could investigate and
repair the problem.
somehow she has succeeded in moving her complete homefolder
(.*-files included) into subfolders of her homefolder...
i don't know how that can happen, but apparently there are no
safeguards in place. (Or at least they are easily clicked away)
That resulted in landing in a complete new gnome-environment. and as
she is a beginner at computers and of age, she couldn't cope
with her computer anymore.
So, my question, dear reader:
Is there a way to shield her from doing smth like that again?
What are the kde-safeguards for moving the homefolder (which is easy
enough, if you are not so confident with mouse-handling)?
What are the big Do's and Don'ts if you setup a linux desktop for
senior beginners?
Sincerely,
Florian
p.s. please cc me, as i'm not on this list
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