GNU/Linux - newbie friendly ?

Submitted by Chandrashekar Babu on November 24, 2004 - 8:49pm.
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Its been almost two months since I had installed Mandrake CE 10.1 on my parents machine. I had to log on to their machine today to check for some Mandrake specific tools. To my surprise, I found my mom's folder filled with the following stuff:

  • Her favourite recipe cleanly organized in a folder called 'samayil' in Tamil - all of them typed by her (of course with lots of patience, I presume) using OpenOffice.Org Writer.
  • A couple of files showing off her skills on Gimp!
  • A futile (albeit persistent and determined) attempt at some Rangoli sketches (or Kolam, in Tamil) in a folder by name 'Kolam'
  • Downloaded snapshots of some good scenary
  • Some useful notes on concepts that she learnt on her own using Gimp!, Kaffeine, OpenOffice and other tools.
  • Playlists of her favourite songs

Phew... now who says GNU/Linux isn't ready for the desktop ?

As a test, I deliberately moved my scanned picture from her folder to a random location (outside her home folder infact), and asked her to search for my picture. She was quick at using the "Find Files" option and recovering the location of the picture. I'm sure she could make an excellent case study for proving that GNU/Linux is really ready for the desktop [Considering the fact that she's uneducated]. I was simply amazed and happy at her GNU/Linux skills now :-)