[NTLUG:Discuss] The New User Experience; a Novell'a

[Robert Pearson]

lonny dahl wrote:
> My wife is driving me crazy with her Win98 box.  So much so, I laid down
> the law yesterday when I came home from work and found that almost all the
> applications in the Start --> Programs menu was gone.  The apps are still
> there, the menu is messed up.  And the icons for AdAware and Spybot were
> gone from the desktop.  Netscape also no longer recognizes 2
> users...doesn't ask which user to start up as...it's lost my profile...only
> has hers.  So, I told her that if I have to reload her box (this would be
> the 4th time in the last 18 months or so) again, we were going to Fry's and
> get her one of their $200 specials, I'll load whatever OS she wants on it,
> but if she wants a M$ OS and she screws it up again, she's on her own.
> I've been trying to wean her over to Linux to no avail, although after
> giving her that ultimatum she actually was thinking about using the Linux
> account I have set up for her
> 
> At this point, I'm beginning to suspect a virus.  

I would suspect Win98 and the hardware it runs on. Is it a laptop?
Win98 needs about 512 MB of memory to run decently and 1 GB to run
well. It will run in less than 512 MB but when it gets very busy it
will "miss" things. The disk and bus speed are more critical without
512 MB - 1 GB memory. The processor also has to be fast enough to be
able to use the 512 MB - 1 GB memory.

The symptoms you describe will also appear when the disk is going bad.
It is hard to tell with Win98 when it is being pushed to the resource
limit.
If it is a laptop, then do an upgrade to WinXP and a dual boot with
SUSE (most user friendly Linux for ex-Win98 users, in my opinion
-YMMV). Set up the multi-boot (I prefer GRUB) to start SUSE to force
the user to learn something about Linux. Set up the Linux kernel so
the Win?? partition can be seen from Linux.

I ran Win98SE for years. When I really started to use Win98SE I had to
upgrade the memory to the MAX (512 MB in my case), remove all
unnecessary applications, run disk defrag and remove all unnecessary
files and daily.
Still no joy, so I upgraded to Win2K and there was much Joy! I now
have Fedora Core 3 running on that same hardware and it runs better
than it ever did with Win?? anything.

> ... Her computer has gotten loaded down with
> Ad/spyware several times...is that an issue with Linux?

Not yet. Since Linux does not use Microsoft ActiveX, which is the big
Security hole.
Linux uses Sun's Java and Javascript. Sun's Java and derivatives are
in use on many differentOS's and platforms around the world. Is it
foolproof? No! But neither is an IBM mainframe!

Take a look at http://www.dfwuug.org/wiki/ and select
"SOHOProtectStrategy". There are a couple of good Win?? "Protect"
Strategies documented there.

The Mac Alternative
===============
I am a big fan of Macs except for price.
The new "Mac mini" looks mighty tempting but we have no data on
Performance or Security? I'll just wait, if I can.
Macs can be dual-booted so you can have Mac OS X and the Linux of your
choice. That looks like a "Win! Win!" to me.

Thanks,

Robert