Comment by dade_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dade_ | Hacker News Reader

I am visiting elderly relatives this week, so I get my anecdotal updates. The Windows machine was under a towel (for dust) which basically means it isn't being used anymore. The story: after clicking no every time, his Windows 7 machine auto-upgraded to Windows 10. He has figured out how load Internet Explorer to find his links, but is baffled by the rest of Windows. So he went out and upgraded his phone to a new Samsung smartphone and uses it for all of his email and web searches. He still needs a bigger device and is planning to buy an Android tablet because he thinks it will be similar to his phone and easier than figuring out Windows 10. He also wanted to know if he can still get viruses on Windows 10, which is his other reason to switch to Android. I showed him how he can use voice to interact with his device because his eyesight keeps him from using his devices for long periods of time. Saying "Ok Google" is really un-intuitive, he actually wrote it down. Also, he found new games to replace the ones he played on Windows.

So this Windows 10 auto-update could very well be pushing people to abandon their desktop/laptop altogether if they don't have a use case forcing them to keep Windows.

Linux distros becoming easier to use than Win10, I know people in their 70 that are happy Manjro users and you don't have to be tech savvy to use it. The only problem i heard there was fonts, but even that is usually still better than windoze on most distros. Ubuntu MATE is particularly good for accessibility, with magnification if your hardware handles Compiz correctly otherwise Marco (Compton GPU compositor) is great.

I haven't had any font issues with Manjaro (Deepin community release) or Antergos (MATE). Text looks great right out of the box. I can't say the same for vanilla Arch, but that's to be expected really.

I've been using The Deepin Desktop Environment for a bit over a month now, and I have to say it is easily the best desktop environment out there for Windows users right now. It looks close enough to 7 and 10 to be familiar, but it's far easier to use. Deepin OS is now my go-to recommendation for new Linux users, especially since they have an agreement with Codeweavers to include Crossover in the distro free of charge.

My wife and I have been using a chromebook as an inexpensive browser at home, with our work laptops if we need anything more intensive (we don't).

We're looking to get one for my mother in law as well, to give her a smoother computing experience.

If ChromeOS weren't a security nightmare (Google have complete access to one's system), I'd recommend it in a flash to non-technical folks.

How long will it be until organisations such as Google & Mozilla realise that people cannot trust them? And how long will it be until people realise that they cannot trust organisations such as Google & Mozilla?

Install GalliumOS[0] on a Chromebook. Security nightmare averted.

0. https://galliumos.org/

That looks pretty cool, but why GalliumOS instead of just plain Debian?

keyboard/touchpad support, mainly. the drivers for most of the chromebooks haven't landed in mainline kernel yet.

(I maintain patches for Gentoo/Calculate)

Well, you can't trust anyone 100% but as organizations go I don't have much problem with Google having access. There was a recent report of 1 in 10 people in England and Wales being victims of cybercrime last year including 2.5m incidents of bank and credit card fraud. That's what I'd worry about which Google are probably better at blocking than most.

> Well, you can't trust anyone 100% but as organizations go I don't have much problem with Google having access.

Which means you trust every Google executive, manager, employee & contractor, as well as every agency of every government Google is beholden too.

I trust myself, and myself alone.

Do you have any tin foil left so the rest of us can make hats too?

> Do you have any tin foil left so the rest of us can make hats too?

That's not an argument; it's an insult.

Do you have any actual rebuttal to my statement that trusting Google means trusting 'every Google executive, manager, employee & contractor, as well as every agency of every government Google is beholden to,' or a rebuttal to my implication that this is unwise?

Yes: Google has internal controls on information access, and government access is subject to legal processes, and governments don't automatically share all information between agencies. Your argument is hyperbole.

Because everyone that walks by the google campus is given unaudited access codes to all the servers?

Similar story here, but with iPad (good accessibility for old people eye sight). Only Apple iCloud is still baffling (my cloud storage is full? I think I forgot my password?), but many things like TouchID make it easy to use and the simplicity of the system is unkaputtbar/secure compared to a "real" computer.

iCloud storage is baffling to me too, and I work in tech!

ive tried to explain it until i was blue in the face to my girlfriend, finally gave up.

I just don't use it for iCloud backups. Plug my iDevices to iTunes for local backup once a month and it's all peace.

It's probably too late now but you can revert it back to a previous MS Windows version, eg https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/1235b5b0-....

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