On being a little old lady

[hazel]

Sorry CelticGeek, I really didn't mean to be sexist. Maybe you could think up a better name for what we are because, judging by the response to this thread, there are quite a few of us about.

I think there must also be a lot of people out there who had similar work experience to us but who are only reluctant "silver surfers" (if they are that at all) because they don't feel safe using Windows, both in terms of not really knowing what they are doing when they use it and also because of all the Windows-oriented malware you can pick up. If they have heard of Linux at all, they probably think of it as an OS for geeks and hackers because that's how it's usually presented. They don't realise that for people of our generation, Linux is probably friendlier and easier to use than Windows, because we're familiar with a lot of the concepts already.

I sometimes think I'd like to write something for them: "Linux for senior citizens" perhaps?

[celticgeek]

Hazel: I really did not mean to accuse you of sexism, just wanted to let you know that there are men out there with similar backgrounds. Also, I really like the term "silver surfers". I do keep running into people on various forums who have similar backgrounds and who have migrated to GNU/Linux because of the various Windows problems. And yes, Linux does have an "of the geeks, by the geeks, for the geeks" image.

I have persuaded several of my friends and acquaintances to at least try linux, and most of them like it. I tend to recommend one of the "desltop" distributions since that is mostly what they are interested in having. I tend to use a "full featured" distribution (CentOS 4.3 at the moment) but I have used, and recommend, ubuntu, kubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, and Kanotix. Linspire and Xandros and Linspire cost money, of course, although there is the new Freespire from Linspire (which I have not yet tried). But most of these distributions are free and operate pretty well for someone who would like to try out linux on their computer.

I also taught UNIX and GNU/Linux at a community college for a couple of years and a number of my students (mostly the geekier ones, I have to admit) liked it well enough to take it home and try it out on their home computers.

At any rate, I am trying to do some "missionary work" for linux and it is going fairly well.

Talk to you later.