Today was the first day we didn’t begin our lessons with a preliminary phone call to give her instructions on how to call me on Skype. Mom and I had made a date; she would call via Skype at a specified time. I opened the program prior to that and left it open. On the Media Hub, I left the buttons in the “up” position so that I could hear the computer ring when she called. OK, I’m something of a newbie too, but it was very cool to hear my computer ringing. She had turned on and booted up her computer, brought up the Start menu, navigated to Skype and opened it, clicked on my name which brought up a “call” window and she phoned me. I pressed down the buttons on the Media Hub to transfer the sound to my headset and answered the call.

We said hi, what have you been up to and all that and-then got to work. First things first; email of course. I had her open Thunderbird, which Brad had installed but there was nothing in the window that should have shown her identity. So it was installed but not configured. We talked her through it and got her GMail account set up on Thunderbird. It was so easy and they work together beautifully. She opened an email I had sent and we practised replying to emails, back and forth a few times. I asked if she had any email addresses for friends. She replied that she did but didn’t want to start trading email until she felt more comfortable with it. Onward.

Then she had questions about games. Ah ha! The PCLinuxOS repository has thousands of games, just waiting for you to go and pick them up for free. I directed her to her Package Manager icon in the taskbar and a window came up asking for the ‘root’ password.

That’s the beauty and the inherant security of Linux systems. No one can significantly change important settings or download programs without ‘root’ priveleges, meaning you are the administrator, with complete control of the system. As administrator, you can even protect files on your system from other users by controlling the permissions on the file/folders. It’s an inherantly secure system, which helps protect against viruses and other bad stuff. So far there are no viruses that attack Linux desktop systems. There are anti-virus programs available for Linux, but but most users simply don’t bother.

She typed in her password and went to Synaptic, the Package Manager and navigated to Games. I suggested that since she had just started playing Sudoku, she might like KSudoko, so we went through the process of downloading it, then finding it on her Start menu and firing it up. What a thrill! A game she really liked, free and totally compatible with her computer. We went on to get her Frozen Bubble, a horribly addictive game, and a package of Solitaire games.

We were both yawning like crazy and beat after our three-hour lesson, time to make another date and say goodnight.

Goodnight…

New project! My husband Don Crowder (aka eldergeek) and I are so excited.

My mother is in her late 70s and has never owned or operated a computer. Over the last couple of years we’ve been encouraging her to consider learning and since she’s been a lifelong learner, she decided she’d like to. We live in Central Texas and she lives in Central Florida, a bit of a logistics challenge, but not insurmountable, as you’ll see.

For some time now Don has been refurbishing old computers, installing Linux OSs in them and giving them to people who want a computer but have limited resources. This was the perfect opportunity to really do something tangible for my mom, get her started on the road to computer literacy. We sent her a working system, tested and tweaked in our home, last week.

Can any of you remember first placing your hands on a computer? I can, it’s only been 4+ years since I bought my first computer and it’s changed my life. I remember quite well setting it up, sitting down in front of this mysterious, expensive mechanism wondering what to do first, and what to do next, and please please please don’t let me break it. Fortunately, I learn well from books so with a couple of good ones in hand I was on my way. Things accelerated dramatically when I signed up for as many helpful ezines as possible. Don was the writer of an ezine I subscribed to and when I asked him some newbie questions he responded generously and we became friends. The rest, as they say, is another story.

Wouldn’t it be a great thing if my mother could receive real-time tutoring from the very beginning? Don installed PCLinuxOS on both computers so we’d be working with the same system. PCLOS 2007 is absolutely the prettiest, sleekest, most newbie- and intermediate- friendly OS we’ve ever seen (can you say plug-n-play?). I wrote a very basic tutorial and saved it on the desktop with the title “Hi, Mom! Double-click me!” We installed Skype on both computers and with the headsets we both have we’ll be able to talk to each other, long-distance, for free. A computer with built-in live tech support, how’s that for newbie-dream-come-true? I’d be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or plans to and how it works out.

Now-the adventure begins…