Virus AGAIN!
Well it’s happened again, another family member has a virus….this time it’s my parents laptop. To be honest i don’t have a problem fixing it but it’s a pain, especially as they have lots of images/docs on it that could be potentially infected….*sigh*
It’s either going to be a case of fixing it and educating them on safe web/email usage or putting on Fedora [which to be honest is my prefered method] However as they are my parents they are not really that maliable to change. I’m sure hundreds of you have come across this before, how did you persuade your parents to move to a free and secure os, knowing they don’t care about cost, freedom, microsofts shadey work ethics (insert reasons to love fedora and hate MS here)
I might have a battle on my hands……let war commence lol 
My parents are all on windows
But my wife was an easier task, I won’t support windows so she moved to linux (fedora) about 5 years ago.
The pain was she didn’t want to change, my response was fine, you have a problem go to PC world.
Now she struggles to use windows (when she has to) and when I had initial problems with an upgrade a couple of years back and she complained, I suggested she could use windows – I was surprised (and happy) when she point blank refused to go back.
Thankfully fedora updates have been painless for the last load of releases
(probably a learning curve on my part more than fedora)
But basically there is no way of persuading some people, they have to be pushed a little.
There are only so many times you can reinstall and fix someone’s PC before it becomes annoying.
I offer to install Fedora, and I won’t repair Windows or Mac OS X. I give them the number to their local Geek Squad. After they pay $150 for a virus clean-up a few times, they sometimes request a Fedora install. If not, it’s not my issue.
It may sound cruel, but it’s not really any different than a mechanic telling you you can do your own car maintenance – and you choosing to pay the local garage to do it instead. Different people assign different values to things.
Since I don’t obligate myself to do the work, I don’t take their decision personally.
I find this strange, my parents did not have any issue migrating their computer skill from Window (95/98) to Gnome desktop/Linux. Actually it resembles so much windows I mostly change it beyond recognition, but for my parents’ laptops I leave the default Fedora Desktop (Gnome) and they are fine with it, it has the menus in their native language, the default applications are well selected and usable and the network is easy to set up.
I have never had to clean a virus, nor to do anything else, the biggest problem they once called me about was that “the laptop suddenly shut down while we were watching a movie” – the reason – they forgot to plug in the power and watched the whole thing on battery (which is not great on their old laptop).
So yeah – I would definitely recommend Fedora for 55+ folks with no special computing needs.
It took me a little while to convert my family, even though I am in the process of moving some of the systems back to Windows.
I started off getting them used to Firefox and Thunderbird because that will be familiar for them if/when they move, in addition to the security benefits.
I added or included OpenOffice and Gimp to get them used to at least seeing them and the opportunity to work with them.
Then fate smiled upon me. The Windows machine BSOD and could not bootup. At the same time we were re-doing our wood floors so all of the furniture (computer included) was moved into the basement.
I brought up the laptop and had it plugged in near my wife’s “communication center” (kitchen counter next to the phone). She had an account, and Thunderbird was set to her email account. She could open most of her old files (Office 2000) in OpenOffice and even the Photoshop files in Gimp!
The convenience (and lack of options) and she was using it happily for a while.
Unfortunately now we are running across more and more things that Linux is not able to handle so the desktop is going to be dual-boot Lin-Win. Ironically, one of the reasons for the Linux side is Games!
Drew