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Comment by Piskvorrr | Hacker News Reader

Yes. I have multiple "granny users" using Linux (Ubuntu+derivatives of classic Gnome), exactly the way author describes: Here's e-mail, here's web, here's (video)chat, that's it.

No user-hostile distractions of the type "the computer has decided that it WILL reboot NOW", no useless "everything is all right, update has been installed" popups, no "oh look, a new flashdisk - guess what, the computer has decided that it needs yet another product reactivation," no "new printer? lol no, insert driver glork splurk mumbo jumbo" which I've come to know and loathe in Windows.

Updates are completely under the hood, devices simply work when plugged in (which shocks me to no end, after previous experiences with Linux and W8 driver issues), no crapware, no spyware.

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It works for some two years now. Switching family to linux (laptop & desktop) two years ago have saved me tens of hours of tech support, and saved family from waiting for my free time. `It Just Works' for them. Really, everything except MS Windows games.

And given Valve's recent announcement of SteamOS, I expect that to change soon enough.

I fully agree. I gave my grandmother (born in 1941) a computer running Ubuntu 9.10 in 2009. Ever since then I've only had to fix things three times, I think, twice because of hardware failures and once because an update broke her Desktop. She's on 12.10 now, without me playing any part in the upgrading process, without her breaking her workflow.

Until you get that Ubuntu update that breaks the wireless driver.

For example, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+b...

I didn't quite say it was _perfect_, shit happens - and I've had my share of systems hosed by buggy updates everywhere: be it Windows, Linux, Mac or BSD. I still hold that in 2013, a modern Linux distro has _the fewest_ of such problems.

Or, to put it differently, of my simplified boxes for basic users, Linux generates the fewest trouble tickets.

I disagree. Ubuntu hosed our central devops MySQL completely on a 10.04 LTS update...

As with everything in IT, YMMV.

To reiterate: I'm not saying that Linux is the silver bullet, or problem-free; just that switching _a specific set of users_ to Linux has, so far, ensured the least problematic operation for them.

How does your anecdote fit into that, apart from "it both says Linux, so a single user desktop and a MySQL server is totally the same situation"?

Well I'll bite on the whole anecdote thing.

My anecdote simply states that nothing is perfect and things do go wrong.

A more pertinent question is: is that less problematic as far as you are concerned or as far as the users are concerned? Also are you fully sure that you are qualified to judge this as a success based on the metrics you set out? Perhaps things take them ten times longer but they are ignorant to that fact?

Ten times longer in the same Firefox, Skype, Libreoffice, Thunderbird combo that they already had before? Not likely. (No, I'm not an UX expert, nor do I play one on TV; but I have seen the users "in action" enough to make an educated guess)

>a modern Linux distro has _the fewest_ of such problems

Interestingly, I keep reading these claims online but every time I try it turns out to be exactly the other way around. Maybe I'm haunted by the Linux ghosts, but even though I love running Linux on servers, Linux on laptops has always been a complete disaster for me.

It runs hot, drains the battery, and updates ruin the entire installation with alarming frequency. It's not even remotely as stable as Windows or Mac (or Android, which is particularly interesting since it is Linux as well).

I've spent weeks investigating power management issues on Linux laptops down to individual drivers. I don't recommend the experience to anyone.

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