Ubuntu For Grandma

[Neal McBurnett]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 07:49:35PM +0200, Philipp Höhn wrote:
> I hope the following is not inappropriate. I created this wiki page:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuForGrandma
> As always, it's a copy of a how to article from the Full Circle Magazine.

Nice article - thanks!  For the wiki my tendency would be to make it
shorter and more generic, though that would lose some of the charm.

I'll note for the record that in our experience at the Boulder
Community Network in 1995 when we installed some computer kiosks at
retirement homes, there were lots of pretty adventurous grannies who
became pretty savvy about how to get what they wanted.  But the men at
the same retirement homes were often more averse to the new computers.
That goes for some other couples I know (in their '80's).

So "Ubuntu for Grandpa" may be the next phase with a bit different
psychology involved....


Providing links or clarifications of a more specific nature would
allow lots of grannies to do all this themselves.

In particular:

> Step one: Automatic Login. In the settings menu you can choose the
> AUTOLOGIN feature.

I see no such options, and wonder if this has changed over time.
Do you mean 
 Select System/Administration/Login Window
 Pick Security tab
 Check "Enable Automatic Login" and choose a user.

I'd change it myself, but that is from dapper, and my feisty machine
runs xfce, and either would require other changes....

For old laptops (which still support the needs of many grannies),
instructions for xfce might be worthwhile.

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/