[CS-FSLUG] Home User Migration Experiment

[Don Parris]

I ran across an opportunity to help a home user migrate to GNU/Linux
this past week.  The experience seems sort of mixed.

She used to be a church office administrator, and is currently
unemployed.  She knows her way around MS Office, and is one of those
users that knows little or nothing about the system she uses.  Because
she's unemployed and couldn't afford another guy's services, she
sought me out.  Since I don't do Windows, she's just thrilled to have
a working system - whatever the software is called.  I've discovered
that I could literally relabel the menu options "Word", "Excel", etc.,
and she would be just fine - though I haven't done that because I want
her to learn the new names.

Her system (Intel 300MHz/256RAM) had mysteriously quit connecting to
the Internet, and now no longer even boots - we suspect a virus of
some sort.  I have swapped out her box for one of the ministry boxes,
and will try to recover the data from her drive using a live GNU CD
and my network.  If I can succesfully x-fer her files to my primary
box, I can burn them to CD for her, or make them available via the
'Net.

Thursday was supposed to be *THE* day, and I had installed SUSE 9.2 on
a box that has been connected to my LAN.  When I got there, I ran Yast
to setup her monitor, and configured her printer.  When SUSE boots,
there is no boot screen at all (old monitor, but recognized and
configured properly), though using the failsafe mode gives the boot
messages.  I spent a little time with this, as I had never *not* seen
a boot screen at boot time.  Her monitor looks like it's turned off
until the login prompt comes up.

Everything else went well except the Internet connection, so I had to
leave her hanging for two days..  I returned yesterday and wrestled
with SUSE and the Net, to no avail.  For some reason, the LAN card can
see the DSL modem (same modem & DSL service I use), but cannot get
beyond the modem.  I'll re-connect to the LAN to see if I can figure
out anything, and will check my own settings against this box.

Suffice it to say, she is now running Ubuntu Warty/GNOME, which I had
previously used with my BellSouth service.  DSL works fine now. 
Interestingly, I can't help her save stuff to her floppy drive. 
Ubuntu says it can't mount the drive.  I don't recall this being an
issue with this box, but I rarely use floppies anymore.  This seems to
be the only other "glitch" I've run into.  Now it's going to be tech
support for OOo, mostly (I hope).

I was really hoping to impress her socks off, but at least she's not
impatient.  I don't think she has any regrets yet, either. 
Fortunately, her attitude seems to be "I don't know anything much, so
I'll just take my time and learn".  She's very patient and
understanding.  I don't think she realizes it's supposed to be a bit
easier than this.  Even so, it's not a bad experience, and the
experience I'm getting is good.  Maybe I'll have to convince her to
join CS-FSLUG.

Blessings,
Don
-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!