[sandebert]

About eight years ago I reinstalled my mother's laptop with Ubuntu (was WinXP). It was a mess before and I typically spent most of my time at my mom's actually with her laptop, trying to get it to decent speed and uninstalling miscellaneous crapware.

Since I installed Ubuntu on it I actually spend my time with her, not her computer. And she's happy about that, obviously, but also that her computer just works and she doesn't have to call me to get support all the time.

[harryf]

Likewise moved my Mum to Ubuntu about 10 years ago and it dramatically improved our relationship. Hasn't all been easy e.g. photo management has been a moving target but largely it's "just worked" during that time.

[ekianjo]

Same here for photo management - there is still no perfect solution so far. What did you end up using ? I am using a combination of Rapid Photo Downloader + Shotwell - not great, but it kind of works.

[brokenmachine]

Is picasa for Linux still usable?

Picasa is/was great.

[ekianjo]

picasa was discontinued by Google I believe.

[jamiecurle]

I am curious about this. From 2005-2008 my mother ran Ubuntu from an install that I set up and I have to say, it was delightful in terms of "very little IT support". The problem however was that she always seemed to feel like an outsider with her friends. Do you experience anything similar. Granted this timeframe was pre-smartphone and tablet, but I am curious none the less.

[sandebert]

Well, sort of, but not really. My mom's best friend was really jealous of mom because her computer actually worked. The friend was running WinXP, experiencing all the typical problems. So my mom didn't feel like an outsider, more like she had the luxury situation.

A couple of years later Iphones and Android appeared, and as I'm an Android user she picked one of those (to simplify potential support situations) and was very happy about her decision. (Because she liked the phone, not that she was getting support from me all the time.)

I'm sure some of her friends have Iphones, but that's never really come up as a thing. Maybe because the people my mom associate with aren't 8 years old with the need to flaunt their stuff in the face of everybody claiming "look my phone is so cool, woop woop, your phone sucks because you have a different brand!". ;-)

[aashu_dwivedi]

That's one reason I bought stock android phones for my parents even if they don't care about stock android or not. It's easier to tell them which setting to navigate to or what to tap looking at my phone since I too have a stock android phone.