Ubuntu: easy enough your in-laws can use it

My father-in-law phoned me up the other day. Someone had mentioned Linux to him, specifically Mandrake. This someone was a little apprehensive about it, but found it quite straightforward once he got used to it. Given that his computer was so badly infected with virus's that it couldn't even run Mozilla mail, he figured Linux might be worth a try. I recommended Ubuntu, since it is based on Debian and I would be better able to help him with it.

When I originally set up his computer, I made space for Linux and tried installing Gentoo on it, just for my own fun (the installation took a very long time and terminated with a strange error, so I gave up on Gentoo). So there was already a partition set aside for a fresh Ubuntu installation. The installation when smoothly, although I did have to install Mozilla Thunderbird, and a few unofficial non-free packages like the Flash and Java plugins. The display driver is much, much faster than the one for XP. I was really surprised about that!

I imported his mail and address book into Thunderbird, copied over his Word and Excel files (which seem to work nicely in OpenOffice.org), and finally copied his digital camera photos. I showed him that he could put an audio CD in and it would automatically play. Attaching his digital camera automatically opens and "import" dialog box, where thumbnails of the photos are visible and clicking "import" downloads the pictures into a folder named for the date of import. The photo, PowerPoint, and video attachments his friends send him seem to work fine. I also showed him how to burn a CD in using Nautilus, which is apparently easier than in Windows.

So after a short intro to Ubuntu, my father-in-law seems impressed. Since he just needs to use a word processor, spreadsheet, digital photo import, email, and browser, Ubuntu seems to work well for him. We'll see how things are after a month or two...