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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Believe it or not I had a successful experience with giving my mom an Ubuntu laptop and me administering it (mostly remotely) for the last 7-8 years.

She mostly uses the browser for news and some articles, skype to talk to us, and knows basic GUI file operations enough to view picture we send her.

I would log in periodically and update her packages. When we visit or she vists and brings her laptop I'd switch her to the next LTS release.

I am just very happy with Ubuntu, it has worked really well for us.

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Kinda the same thing here. My parents wanted to buy a tablet and my father does not want an Apple product for various reasons. I bought them a Nexus 10 (it was a year ago), anyway since I am an Android dev it is easier to provide support for this product. Personally, I have found this tablet pretty meh, but they don't have the same usage than me at all and they just love this tablet for pretty much the same kind of usage you describe : surf the web, mails, hangouts, view pictures, ...

Pretty cool idea, I never thought of remotely admin into an Ubuntu laptop. I know it's easy to do, just never thought of it.

I know that's what a lot of industry does for windows systems, but hey, you got to do a lot to keep windows on line.

I just set up ssh, on a non-default port, long passphrase.

One of the worst things is if machine won't boot (happened once due to hard drive failing). Otherwise it uses a few dynamic dns sites so I can know its IP ( + a few links to the show me the IP links in her browser toolbar, just in case).

If there is a problem and need to help her with the desktop, there is x11vnc.

> I just set up ssh, on a non-default port, long passphrase.

Disallow password login, use key-based auth (using a dedicated, passphrase-protected key that you can copy around).

An alternative is to have a "shortcut" that help them fire a SSH client connecting to a server of yours, with port forwarding allowing you to connect back, so you don't have to worry about firewalls and other appliances being reset.

Nice setup. I've used vnc before, not x11vnc so I'm not sure if it's similar. But vnc seemed to require a lot of bandwidth to run. But it's definitely nice.

You could run it at really really low colour depths and enable compression, or use compression over an SSH link.

Still not perfect, but better.

x11vnc allows you to see the desktop the user is seeing. I think vnc by default creates its own sessions.

So for example, my mom would say "I am not sure where to find the pictures". I would move the folder to her Desktop from ssh, hoping the would see it. But if not I ssh in, then launch x11vnc then connect to it with a vncclient and then move around her desktop to see what the problem might be.

She would see the mouse move and buttons getting clicked.

Bandwidth is not a problem because, we have have something like 50Mpbs connections, latency is usually the issue as the signal has to go half way around the world.

ditto. +1 to x11vnc :D

> When we visit or she vists and brings her laptop I'd switch her to the next LTS release.

Best part for me was when I found out on such an occasion that mine did it on her own.

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