I installed Linux (first Red Hat, then Mandrake) for my mom a few years ago. The reason: her TV card refused to work properly in Windows no matter what we tried. So she was extremely happy with Linux and hardly bugged me at all. And believe me, she's rather clueless on the computer (she does stuff like opening a doc file in word and choosing "save as.." in order to rename a file :).
Anyways, she was using linux happily, w/ a dual boot to Windows which she hardly used, and then my brother convinced her to let him install Windows instead.
Now, she keeps calling everyone every week or two with problems in her Windows and she really misses her Linux… (she misses the uptime, the multiple desktops, the fact that things didn't suddenly break and stop working for no reason, her games - Aisleriot, PySol, LBreakOut 2, and other things I can't think of right now.)
Oh, and about the command line, back then when she tried to shut down her linux, sometimes some process needed manual killing, so I gave her the set of commands she needed to type in the command line and she had no problem doing that. In fact, she preferred doing that than, say, dragging some file in Windows, because for her it's easier to give the computer some commands she doesn't really understand than to start trying to figure out "intuitive" GUI…
| Author | Netta El-Al |
| Work | Linux for One's Mother |