Our neighbors gave up on an old Lenovo laptop with Windows XP that they probably bought in about 2013. It was running absurdly slow. It may have had undetected viruses or the disk may have just gotten slow due to the crappy NTFS file system or Windows may have just gotten buggy. It doesn't matter. I decided to wipe the thing by installing Kubuntu. (I also fooled around with Lubuntu, Ubuntu, and Puppy Linux, ultimately deciding on Kubuntu.) They probably bought this thing in about 2004. It has a Celeron processor and has been upgraded to 2 GB of RAM.
It's running great. I had thought that the slowness could possibly have been because of a hard drive about to fail, but the drive is fine. The laptop is for my roommate who is close to computer illiterate. All he needs it for is to run LibreOffice Calc, Skype, CherryTree, to surf the net, and to play videos he's taken on his Kodak digital camera. That's it. There's no need to make this thing a dual boot or to install WINE or VirtualBox. This is a case where Linux-based software will take care of all his needs.
And this near computer illiterate person is using his laptop just fine. He says he likes it better than Windows. He has a Dell touchscreen desktop with Windows 7, using all the same software I've described above. He says Windows annoys him by always bugging him to update Adobe this or that. I put one of the free antivirus programs on his desktop (Security Essentials), which of course automatically updates and slows the thing down while doing so. He's enjoying not having to screw with that.
So consider the myth that Linux is only for power users busted, at least for using it once already installed. When I installed Kubuntu, I had one big tech hurdle to get over, and that was getting the wireless networking card working. I was not able to get it working just from the info I found in Google searches. I got help on the Ubuntu forum. He would not have been able to solve that problem or even to know where to look for answers. However, if this had been a Kubuntu PC bought off the shelf, he would have been fine. And certain things are easier like not having to fool with an antivirus program. The laptop has no built-in web cam. However, to my great surprise, his Logitech web cam worked as plug and play. I was sure I was going to have to hunt for a driver, but I didn't.
I don't have a problem to solve. I'm just posting this so that everyone can hear the success story of a novice Linux user. My ruling is that Linux is for beginners, at least for just using the computer. For setting it up, some expertise is often needed. Not always, but many times. On my laptop the wireless card worked straight away with no need to hunt for a driver or run any commands in the Konsole.
It's running great. I had thought that the slowness could possibly have been because of a hard drive about to fail, but the drive is fine. The laptop is for my roommate who is close to computer illiterate. All he needs it for is to run LibreOffice Calc, Skype, CherryTree, to surf the net, and to play videos he's taken on his Kodak digital camera. That's it. There's no need to make this thing a dual boot or to install WINE or VirtualBox. This is a case where Linux-based software will take care of all his needs.
And this near computer illiterate person is using his laptop just fine. He says he likes it better than Windows. He has a Dell touchscreen desktop with Windows 7, using all the same software I've described above. He says Windows annoys him by always bugging him to update Adobe this or that. I put one of the free antivirus programs on his desktop (Security Essentials), which of course automatically updates and slows the thing down while doing so. He's enjoying not having to screw with that.
So consider the myth that Linux is only for power users busted, at least for using it once already installed. When I installed Kubuntu, I had one big tech hurdle to get over, and that was getting the wireless networking card working. I was not able to get it working just from the info I found in Google searches. I got help on the Ubuntu forum. He would not have been able to solve that problem or even to know where to look for answers. However, if this had been a Kubuntu PC bought off the shelf, he would have been fine. And certain things are easier like not having to fool with an antivirus program. The laptop has no built-in web cam. However, to my great surprise, his Logitech web cam worked as plug and play. I was sure I was going to have to hunt for a driver, but I didn't.
I don't have a problem to solve. I'm just posting this so that everyone can hear the success story of a novice Linux user. My ruling is that Linux is for beginners, at least for just using the computer. For setting it up, some expertise is often needed. Not always, but many times. On my laptop the wireless card worked straight away with no need to hunt for a driver or run any commands in the Konsole.
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