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1. MS-Outlook Express for email
2. MS-Internet Explorer for web browsing
3. Adobe-Flash for watching those funny links sent by the grandkids
4. MS-Wordpad or MS-Word for editing simple documents (she doesn’t have any complex editing needs)
5. MS-Windows Media Player for watching home videos
6. Some kind of image viewer – she doesn’t know the name
7. A few simple games like chess, tic-tac-toe, tetris to play with the grandkids when they visit.
8. PDF Viewer – she my have DOC, PPT, and XLS viewers too

That’s about all Grandma does. It is more about staying connected with the family and friends than running some numbers in a spreadsheet. She may have played with Skype, but it was too complicated to use unless the family nerd was there to help her.

Who does Quarterly or Annual Updates

She usually waits for a visit from the family nerd to update her computer every quarter or at Thanksgiving. The rest of the year, it is not patched because everything other than MS-Windows Update is too hard. The risks of an update failure mean she will be without a computer until the next visit.

She’s Happier Making Cookies than Patching Computers.

And she should be making cookies with love, not worrying about her PC. Sorry about the stereotype. Nothing she does on the computer is specialized. There’s no reason that she needs commercial applications or even a commercial operating system. It is a waste when there a free replacement available. She’s been using the same OS for 8+ years and wants to keep using it, because she doesn’t want a new PC or to learn a new way of doing things. When she is forced to upgrade from WindowsXP to remain supported, that is the perfect time to switch her to Linux. Linux support and security patches don’t end.

Most Linux distributions can do everything that she wants, easily, for free. Most importantly,

1. OS and application patch management becomes trivial
2. Remote support becomes trivial
3. No new hardware is needed
4. The OS never becomes stale from use (we’ve all been told to reload MS-Windows every year)
5. Her risk of viruses drops to near zero, no matter what she clicks on
6. Any visitors who borrow her PC can’t harm it or accidentally get it infected
7. It is free and so are 99% of the applications

Which Linux distribution should Grandma Use?

There are many, many ways to setup Grandma to be happy. I’d suggest Mint or PCLinux since they include video and audio codecs that other distributions don’t, while still using APT as the package manager. There are other choices and which is best will depend on the person who will end up supporting the system.

What Linux Software Should be Loaded?

1. Thunderbird or Enlightenment for email
2. FireFox for web browsing
3. Adobe-Flash for watching those funny links sent by the grandkids
4. AbiWord or OpenOffice Write for editing simple documents (she doesn’t have any complex editing needs)
5. Totem and VLC and kmplayer for watching home videos
6. Some kind of image viewer – she doesn’t know the name; gqview is nice
7. Standard Linux game pak – chess, tic-tac-toe, sudoku, blackjack to play with the grandkids when they visit.
8. KPDF as a PDF Viewer
9. WINE – be certain to load WINE and test a few easy MS-Windows programs to be certain it works. You never know when you’ll be asked to load something under WINE for her.
10. KeePassX – password management that we all need.
11. rdiff-backup – automatically backing up her HOME directory means you never need to worry that she may lose something important. Heck, she can remotely backup to your Linux PC and you can back up to hers. Keep 30-60-90 days of backups automatically. Be certain to use ssh for network encryption.

Currently there are over 25,000 packages available in the package manager for Grandma to try. You can remote in and install them for her or she can use a simplified package installer program herself.

Skype works on Linux. Printing, scanning, email, Flash, and almost any video will work with VLC as the player. There isn’t much that she can’t accomplish on Linux. Best of all, staying patched from applications all the way down to the kernel is something she can handle or you can setup to happen automatically.

If there’s a problem, just ssh in and fix it. Setup a key-only ssh login to prevent any remote hacking attempts. Also, setup a Guest login for visitors. I’d wipe the account directories every Wednesday, myself.

What Won’t Grandma’s Computer Do?

1. Many of the teenage boy shooter or Barbie computer games won’t run. They will need to wait until they get home to play them.
2. Family coming for a visit won’t usually be able to VPN into work.
3. It won’t get a virus or need antivirus updates.
4. She won’t be able to load most commercial software herself, but she will be able to find many other programs or ask you for recommendations. Some Windows programs may never work under Linux. OTOH, when was the last time Grandma purchased software that would be needed on a Linux system? She won’t need antivirus. In my experience, that is the only software purchased.
5. Soon, visitors will miss programs that only run under Linux. This is especially true of games for the kids. They will look forward to visiting Grandma because only she has the special “X-game” that doesn’t work on MS-Windows.
6. It won’t cost her money to have an operating system or update it in the future.

Are those limitations really so bad?

Letting Grandma have a computer running with little risk of viruses, cheaply, is a good thing. The best time for Grandma to upgrade to Linux is at the next OS upgrade point. The difficulty for her to jump from WinXP to Windows7 is about the same as the difficultly to jump from WinXP to Mint-Linux or PCLinux-OS.

Do Grandma a favor. Load Linux at your next visit.

She’ll thank you for it later.

A recent article on Why Linux is the Best Choice for Kids