A successful experiment
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By: EdisonRex
Linux on the desktop continues to be perceived as a "Hobbyist's" operating system. This view is perpetuated no doubt by Microsoft marketing execs, who have long touted Windows as being the "most user friendly" desktop. Arguably, the Linux camp has not made the best and most convincing case even yet, so the myth that Linux is somehow inferior to Windows for the average user has continued. Although Apple continually weighs in on the usability issue, the perception that the premium hardware cost makes the Mac experience an "elitist" one persists as well. For users with no budget, this can be a compelling reason to avoid the Mac.
In the battle for perception, though, the occasional success can be noted in favour of Linux. When a friend brought me his computer "to see if there was anything I could do to fix it", the opportunity to put Linux to the test was too good to pass up. The experiment, such as it was, started in January, 2005. Two years on, I'd like to report on its success, and what was learned along the way.
My friend, who I'll refer to as "D", is rather a technophobe. Well educated and quick witted, he nonetheless has an aversion to modern technological gadgetry bordering on Luddite proportions. His need for a computer was only really shown to be necessary when he realised that he could do research from home, and email was cheaper than the Royal Mail. Chronically short of cash, his entry to the Computer Age was via a hand-me-down Windows 98 machine, a Pentium III, 550MHz machine with about 128MB of RAM and a 12GB hard drive. The PC was received from a relative of his, the story went, who "wanted something faster as this one had gotten too slow for him to use". D subscribed to a dialup Internet service, and used the machine for Web browsing and e-mail, primarily. The machine came with a 14" CRT monitor.
In the course of a discussion between D and my wife, she became suspicious that the machine had "issues", namely, he kept getting unwanted pornographic popup ads, and whenever he turned the machine on, it took about 10 minutes for the thing to boot, and even then, the disk never stopped grinding. She convinced D to bring the system by, so I could have a look at the patient. Transporting a PC box from South London to North London via public transport is no small feat, and he duly arrived one weekend, with the box strapped to his rucksack. I got my first good look at the patient, and the prognosis was not good.
Windows 98 isn't the easiest operating system to get information out of, on a good day. Upon powering up the machine (off net, and on a KVM switch), it was a little bit over 6 minutes to get a working mouse cursor, and constant disk activity suggested that 128MB was not near enough memory and either the system was thrashing the page file, or something was seriously wrong. Given that there was no evidence of any virus scanning software, it stood to reason that, perhaps, the machine was compromised, a little bit. Control-Alt-Delete to get a task list revealed 88 running processes, and I hadn't been able to start anything, let alone get the mouse to work. Clearly, calling the machine "infested" would be an understatement.
Removing the hard disk and examining it by attaching it to another system revealed a cornucopia (pornucopia?) of Trojans, dialers, adware, and various malware (CoolWebSearch, etc). There really wasn't much to be done for that installation, and I started looking for my old Win98 CD to do a wipe and reinstall. I thought about upgrading him to a more robust Microsoft OS, but then I thought about the PIII-550 under the hood, and the hardware capabilities, and thought better of it. It was clear to me that simply re-installing Win98 wasn't going to make D's "online experience" any better, and because I had got involved, I was looking at one of those support nightmares, the kind you eventually lose friends over. So instead, I went back downstairs and had a little chat with D over wine and cheese.
As I said earlier, D's computer requirements are not very heavy. A browser, some email, a word processor, and that's about it. No need for a spreadsheet, no real need for calendar, no iTunes. Indeed, a very light weight set of requirements made me think even more. During the conversation it became clear that he had no real familiarity, or affinity for Windows. He didn't identify with Windows. His mail was on Outlook Express, though, and he was familiar with that, but he really didn't care what he used, as long as it worked. So I made a bold suggestion: Why not set the machine up with a Linux configuration, and let's see how he gets on with that.
One point which occurred to me, and I see a lot of evidence for, is that email and browsing are the two most active vectors for system infections. It should be fairly obvious that the nature of their interactivity, the fact that they are thoroughly dependent on trust of the sender of the message, or the security of the website, makes them the two most "dangerous" activities on the Internet. I suppose a case can be made for other interactive activities, such as chat, Usenet, or maybe interactive gaming. But those are the major vectors there. Editing a local file isn't particularly dangerous in comparison. So making these two activities safe would be of prime importance, especially if the secondary goal, to achieve little to no external support load, was going to be met.
I'm not a stranger to Linux, and wasn't then either. I collect operating systems. Among the alternative operating systems I have run (or continue to run) I have disks for FreeBSD, Linux (Red Hat and SuSE, and Ubuntu), FreeDOS, Mac OSX, various flavours of Windows, and my beloved BeOS, which was probably my favourite of them all. Having spent time learning to configure various operating systems for not a lot of money, I thought that SuSE 9.0 with KDE as the desktop might be a good fit. It wasn't going to tax the CPU's modest capabilities, it wouldn't require too much in the way of setup, and once I completed the install, it probably would not need a lot of upkeep.
So, with the decision being made to go ahead, I copied what data there was to copy off of the original Win98 hard disk, reinstalled the disk in the PC and booted the Linux install CD. Two years ago, arguably the best install was via SuSE. I don't know if that holds now (Ubuntu has come along nicely, and SuSE has GPL issues now), but back then, it looked like a good thing to do. So I wiped out the Windows installation completely, reformatted the disk and set up Linux, configured it with basics, and sent him home with it. I noted the root password, set up automatic updates, configured the dialup PPP for him, according to the (Windows only) instructions on the ISP's website, got it to log in via the modem, and figured, well, if it was going to break, I'd hear about it quickly.
We did hear back, almost immediately. The first problem was with the mail account. From what we could tell, the ISP had broken the mail account for POP. Web mail was working, sort of, but we could only send mail, not receive on a web account, and the POP option just would not work at all. The ISP was unhelpful as soon as they heard the "L word". "That is an unsupported configuration, Sir, you need to use a Windows system to get support". (That ISP, to this day, does not support any operating system other than Windows.) The modem itself worked fine, connection to the Internet was fine, if unsupported. So we decided to move the mail off to a web based mail account on one of the free mail providers. This made one less program to run, which made it even more stable.
There were problems with Konqueror, which probably in hindsight should have been expected. I had installed Firefox but had not made it clear that D was to use Firefox and not Konqueror, and since Konqueror was the default under KDE, he kept running into problems, especially on "IE only" websites. Firefox, even 2 years ago as a relatively new product, was much more even tempered, and as soon as we pointed out the icon he started using it.
Two years on, and very few support calls have been logged. He needed a new mouse, so I had one lying around I could give him. It required no special intervention on my part, he was able to replace it. The monitor was a problem, being as small as it was, but he is managing with it. The total number of phone calls in two years has turned out to be 4. He answers his mail, and we know he uses the machine casually, so we've kept track of his progress. In fact, when asked, the only real problems he has is the slowness of downloads (he's on dialup), and the size of his CRT makes for a very cramped desktop.
In retrospect, this turned out to be a good move. He doesn't get viruses, although he says he gets popups from websites trying to download exe files, but he just cancels the downloads now. They certainly don't run, when they do download. His email is more stable now, because his system isn't in the way. He's still on dialup, but he doesn't have the money for broadband, and frankly I don't think he needs it anyway. He can answer his mail, he's been writing some documents using OpenOffice Write, and that's about it.
The myth that casual computer users use tons of software is almost as pervasive as the myth that Windows is the easiest operating system to learn. The age of the machine becomes less relevant when the operating system makes less demands on it. When the user isn't making heavy demands on the operating system as well, the whole experience will be good, so long as the system responds. In the case of a tailored KDE environment on a SuSE 9 platform, it seems to run well, and he's not complaining. If anything, the machine has had a new lease on life.
How valid is this person's experience (and my report) to other home computer users? I think, in general, that if someone doesn't require a particular Windows based program that they absolutely have to use, then there isn't a lot to keep you from migrating. If someone is a heavy surfer, the benefits of being outside the vulnerability model of Windows get even more compelling. I am thoroughly aware that you can configure a modern Windows box for automatic updates, get antivirus, anti spyware, etc, but the bandwidth and system capacity involved in running those protections detracts from the capacity of the machine to do "real work". if you are spending a lot of time fixing your mom's, or your dad's, or a friend's machine because they just don't get it, and their machine is getting polluted with viruses, and they don't want to spend money, this is an option. Free, as in beer, is a strength for adoption of Linux. Especially to the people who have insufficient funds. Free, as in free choice, figures into it too, but remember it's the needs that the individual asks for, that the computer is supposed to improve the lot of. Remember that the system being used is now at least 7 years old, and the person cannot afford a new computer.
So as much as I'd like to say this was a big deal, and I did a lot of special stuff to make it happen, actually, I didn't. I simply installed a Linux distro (now 2 years old) and left the guy on his own, mostly. The important part is that his computer hasn't been infected with anything since, although it is obvious (as we see ourselves) that infected websites will just download what they can to whatever. It's a chance game. Removing him from the malware society has helped him trust his computer again; enough to tell us when something acts up. Things do still act up, very occasionally, but not like the old, 10 minute boot days. I think the remarkable thing is that it's worked for 2 years.
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