Should I?

[jbaerbock]

I would say no just because first she should be given the opportunity to backup everything she wants on windows. And second she should have the choice since it is her laptop. Maybe you could take her through the liveCD and wonders of linux tour and then let her decide?

Trust me I'd love to do this to my wife too but I won't because I respect that it is her laptop and I would hate it if she did anything without my permission to my laptop. But just my two cents worth.

[scorp123]

Is it right to "force" someone over to the good side? Behind their back? For their own good?

My wife is a total noob. I didn't even bother to ask her. Like she even knows the difference between the various operating systems? All she cares about are her files and her e-mails, and her wallpapers. So I made sure I had a backup of those things. And I made a screenshot of her desktop so I knew what way I had to arrange her desktop icons again so she won't be "lost" ...

It took her two weeks to notice the difference

Some months ago I replaced her aging SUSE 10.0 installation with Ubuntu 7.04. Same story. I just did a backup of everything, and then created all the icons again for her so she'd have the same look & feel. Her only comment: "Oh, I like that top-bar that you created .... " (Ubuntu's GNOME has two panels vs. SUSE's one KDE panel .... )

All her icons were in the same place. All her e-mails were there. All her bookmarks were there. All her movies were there. All her photographs were there. Her comment: "Hmmm ... Did you change anything? BTW, I like those new glossy orange icons you put in some places ... "

Lessons I learned here:

- a real noob doesn't care what OS he/she is working on for as long as the GUI looks familiar functionality-wise (e.g. same icon for Mozilla, same icon for Thunderbird, etc.)
- a real noob doesn't care on what desktop environment he/she is working on for as long as they perceive their stuff is still there where they left it (desktop icons, folders, etc.)
- they really don't care about anything for as long as things work the same way, e.g. clicking on a MP3 file opens a program that will play the file (whether that program happens to be Microsoft's Media Player or Amarok ... they really don't care for as long as the controls look familiar and the program doesn't look too weird)

If you should do all this with your wife ....? Depends on her knowledge I guess. My wife was a total noob and so totally depends on me and my PC support that she had little choice. In fact I never even gave her a choice. And she never even cared about it, it took her ages to even notice the difference.

If your wife is happy with XP ... fine then. Let her be. But I wouldn't give any free support any more. She's caught a virus? "Well sweetie, you see: No viruses on Linux ..." Her anti-virus program is getting on her nerves because her support subscription is running out? "Well sweetie .. I don't need any stupid software subscriptions on Linux ....". Her Windows crashed and took all her documents with her? "Well sweetie ... Linux hardly ever crashes, and the 'bluescreen of death' only exists as screensaver ..... "

If she's unhappy enough with XP she will ask you to migrate her too

[hugh]

When I put Linux on my wife's laptop I took her Windows hard drive out and put in another the same capacity to install to. And like scorp123 I used the same wallpaper and sounds she was used to.

That way if she didn't like it she could go back to Windows with no problem.


......

I formatted the Windows hard drive after a couple of days because everything was working fine for her.

I suppose the other way to do it is to dual-boot for a while.

Cheers,

Hugh

[jbaerbock]

Hehe that's funny. My wife would kill me. She isn't that knowledgable about computers but she is enough that she would notice. Not to mention until Linux FireFox has native ActiveX support she wouldn't want to since she plays a lot of online game that use it.

[scorp123]

As a somewhat computer/tech-savvy woman, I find this thread very depressing.

You don't have to. I know at least one case in my department where the opposite happened: He the noob was getting on her UNIX-guru nerves with all the viruses he caught all the time. One morning she was there with his laptop on her desk. Later she picked the phone and called him. She said: "Darling, I will now remove your stupid Windows installation and give you a better OS. You will like it, don't worry ..... Oh, and if I ever catch you again surfing to web sites with naked women on them I will cut off your balls in your sleep .... Do we have an understanding?" (and she had a really really big smile on her beautiful face when she said that!)

Whatever he mumbled into the phone, her response was "Goooood!"

Of course we were all rolling on the floor, laughing out to the sky ... But it all returned to silence when all of a sudden she said: "Oh look, I have 'root' access on our main file server .... hmmm, soo many unimportant files I could delete, so many people laughing at me ... I don't think they need their files .... ? What was the command again .... 'r' 'm' 'minus' 'r' 'f' .... "

We were all like "Uhhh, no no no no no, we're not laughing about you ... OK?". You know the saying: "SHE who laughs last laughs best". Well ... she surely had the last laugh. The rest of us just STFU and hoped she wouldn't get too angry ...

Lessons learned here: Don't ever laugh at the beautiful blonde lady on the third floor no matter how "funny" it may seem; especially not if she did a "su -" into 'root' ... she might all of a sudden decide that all your files are just a waste of disk space and not needed any more .....

Some people learned that the hard way ....

Hope you feel better?

[jbaerbock]

Lol love stories like that. I'm just waiting for the next time my wife gets a virus or spyware clog then I'll get a laugh.