Re: [Dfey-general-discuss] computers for elderly

[Tim Dobson]

Paul Sutton wrote:
 > This may seem slightly off topic but

Lets have it anyway! :)

> http://www.discount-age.co.uk/simplicity_computers/
> 
> seems interesting,

Yeah I did notice this hit the technology news this morning.
It's interesting, it's running Linux Mint and the UI is Edly.
I'm not familiar with Edly however from research it appears to be a
freeware ui bolted together in java.

I'm not sure how much

> It shows this can be done,  perhaps it will have some sort of knock on
> effect for the young people in dfey.  In terms of how linux is seen,
> which may result in more schools offering access to free software which
> is one of the things we all want.

Well, yes, this could be one of the first signs and precedents. The
Nokia N900 smartphone might be another.
It's frustrating though that the main user experience will be with a
non-free GUI which effectively will make it hard to support and
frustrating for techies to deal with.

> These units will clearly need some sort of support, where skills in
> something other than windows will be needed which could provide nice
> opportunities for members of groups such as dfey.

Well user training (in general I find it's basically "hand holding") is
going to be the main thing that's needed. In terms of real maintenance
they should stay ok so long as they have worked out how not to give each
computer the same default password.

As someone who's (90 year old) grandmother runs a Debian GNU/Linux with
a version of KDE4 and uses kontact (with some of the menus and buttons
removed to simplify things), I do think this is a bit condescending
perhaps for some older people.

Tim