[lists] Re: [NMLUG] excuse me (virus)

[qirien at icecavern.net (Andrea Landaker)]

> Here Here.  I'm actually setting up a SuSE 9.0 laptop for my parents so
> they can "surf and do email".  They are notorious for catching viruses
> and worms on their Windows XP box at home, even with McAfee running on
> it.  I'm pretty sure I can get them to switch to Linux, my dad is fed up
> with viruses and the like that windows "supports" with it's "helpful"
> embedded technologies.  Anyone else done something similar?

Yes, my husband and I (mostly my husband, Wes) set up his mom's laptop to do 
this with Mandrake 9.2.  Some things were a little tricky to get looking nice 
(like dial-up), but it's a lot easier to support than Windows, and does what 
she needs.  We made sure x0rfbserver was installed for troubleshooting help, 
and we also put on some scripts that e-mail us when she went online and what 
her IP was, so we could upgrade packages and things.  I think if we did it 
again, though, we'd probably use debian, since she doesn't need any of the 
pretty Mandrake config tools or things like that.

We also setup VMWare to run some of the specialized Windows programs she had, 
but of course, it was really slow (this wasn't helped by the fact that the 
laptop had lots of generic parts using software drivers).

Make sure you put frozen-bubble on there -- it puts minesweeper to shame with 
its beauty and charm.  :-)

-- 
Andrea Landaker
http://www.icecavern.net/~qirien/