On Sun, 2012-01-08 at 14:25 -0800, dh wrote:
On Sunday, January 08, 2012, oldcpu wrote:
I have similar experience wrt my 85+ year old mother. She has been using openSUSE for 5 or 6 years now. Originally with a dual boot, she was 90% Windows-XP and 10% openSUSE GNU/Linux. Now its the other way around, and she is 90% openSUSE and 10% Windows-XP. Like your wife, my mother is definitely non-techy and I do the updates (remotely a continent away as she is in Canada and I in Europe). I train her via vnc when I take over her desktop and talk to her on Skype at the same time. OpenSUSE with KDE4 works well for her.
She is currently still running openSUSE-11.3 with the 'stock' KDE4 and will likely remain running that until September this year, when I may visit Canada and update her PC to openSUSE-12.1's KDE.
So I believe with the appropriate level of support, and an attitude/willingness to accept support (which my my 85+ year old mother has) then openSUSE can be used by beginners.
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I believe the original comment about beginners may have been a reference to the "openSUSE Mission Statement." http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Strategy#openSUSE_Mission_Statement
To quote the paragraph "Target Users": "The project caters to users who are interested in computers and want to get work done, experiment or learn. We offer a stable and enjoyable computing experience which does not limit freedom of choice; offering sane defaults and easy configuration."
I would note, this statement does not limit our community by turning away new users, it only suggests that our target audience is one which is willing to spend a little effort in learning how to use the tools effectively..
As this thread has also discussed software which may not perform as hoped, I would also call attention to the second sentence of that same quotation.
I tried to find the original reference to new users in this thread, but the thread has covered so much teritory that perhaps it is time to put it to bed and allow each specific topic to start fresh.
Also, apologies oldcpu, somehow my "reply to" button has gone back to its default / incorrect behaviour and i responded directly to you :-( I'll look into fixing that...
see ya dh Agreed. This thread has addressed many things adequately, and much more is likely to be bikeshedding. Hence my QA team thread.
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