In my previous blog, I mentioned that I'd inherited around 6 computers from work with CRT monitors ranging from 15" to 19" and that these would become my little testing ground for smaller distributions. The average set of components seems to be around the 2ghz Celeron, with 40gb HDD and 256 or 512mb RAM. I have a server with a P3 board, and SCSI tape drive (I don't intend to use it, it might end up on ebay).
Also, previously, I pondered about the difference between Puppy and Xubuntu on basic computers and their relative use. I found that puppy would fly along on a 1.3ghz Celeron, whereas Xubuntu would slow a little once some packages were installed on the 2.0ghz Celeron.
I personally love Puppy. Yes, it has its little inconveniences and idiosyncrasies, but nothing I'm not prepared to live with, given its tiny footprint and super-fast operation.
So I thought "why not get a non-tech user to use puppy for a little while and review it", so I did. The observations below are from that non-tech user's point of view, and I have faithfully replicated her opinions, rather than change them into our language. Where translation into geek-speak or even normal English is needed, I have offered it, but other than that, it is pretty well a verbatim review. This review was given to me verbally, so again, replicating non-tech review as best I can.
A little about our guinea pig:
Pregnant mother of two, who suffers from what we both term "pregnancy ditz" on the odd occasion.
She still struggles with the concept of a spreadsheet, is afraid of burning a CD, is extremely impatient ("why does burning that damn CD take 5 minutes" and "that webpage took 30 seconds to load") and would have no idea about codecs.
Her computing tasks are as follows:
- Playing Solitaire and other card and puzzle games
- Browsing ebay
- Reading email
- Listening to music
- Watching stuff
- Googling anything
- Downloading torrents (this is the one task I have taught her to do)
I bought her a laptop about 1 year and 3 months ago, with Windows XP on it, and all the usual crapware, which I then periodically removed. She started off a little afraid to do anything, but by about 2 months, got so lax with it, that it was thorough infested with spyware, adware, malware et al, to the point where it was unusable. Totally unusable. She had got the the point, where she was hurling invectives at it frequently, and I had to stop her from physically throwing it out the window (I mentioned the impatience above. It is born from a very short Franco-Hungarian temper).
So I said to her "don't throw it, will you let me fix it?", to which she said "Whatever, just get the so-and-so to work!" I said to her "whatever I want?", to which she said "Yes, I want to play solitaire without taking 10 minutes to load, jump on ebay and listen to music".
It ended up an Ubuntu Machine (Dapper, only just upgraded to Feisty), which she is happy with, it does what she wants, requires no maintenance from me, and according to said Bad Tempered, Pregnant Franco-Hungarian monster "is heaps easier to use and I don't feel like I'm going to break it" (the OS, not the laptop).
Anyways, after all that, you get the picture. Our test subject is a Bad-tempered, impatient, non-tech, tech-afraid, pregnant, coconutty (blonde on the inside, brunette on the outside) crazy franco-hungarian monster.
If you are a puppy lover, stop here. Given test subject, you might not like what is said beyond this point. You have your laugh, just bugger off.
Crazy, Bad-tempered, Pregnant, franco-hungarian, monster, non-tech savvy, impatient coconut had this to say:
Icons - "they are cute" - this means that the icons are well designed. Maybe all those on Gnome-look/KDE-look could make a set of icons based on puppy.
Torrents - "I download them and can't open them up" - partially my fault. There is no default program attached to the .torrent extension. She doesn't like having to find the bittorrent client and open them up. She also dislikes the download manager, which doesn't allow you to open the file straight (like mozilla does).
Downloading - "I can't download where I want, it just keeps going to some documents place. I want to be able to put it on my desktop and open it up" - with Ubuntu that is pretty well what she does. She then periodically cleans it up. She doesn't know about (and wouldn't understand) the Linux file structure. But again, the download manager needs to allow the option to open up.
Web Browsing - "It's okay, at least I can look at Ebay and email" - Seamonkey does the right job, and allows tabbed browsing.
Bootup - "It is quick to boot up" - that means that it has passed the impatient.... person's test - on a 1.3ghz Celeron. Not bad at all.
"It's crap, I prefer my computer, I can't do stuff, it's all back to front" - I think this adds fuel to the argument, that people with basic needs don't switch because they aren't used to the new Desktop environment. My wife has only basic Windows use, so Ubuntu was ideal. It also backs up my previous post, that puppy's biggest downside is that there is no easy way to do things, there tends to be a long way around. This needs to be fixed.
Logoff/Turnoff - "You have to go to that start menu, hit logoff and then shutdown. What's with that, it isn't even the right button" - this translates roughly as "You don't click the off button and shutdown, like in Ubuntu" - she finds the puppy way, too long a way around again.
Which leads me to the biggest cracker..... (scroll down)
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"It feels too much like windows, especially the 'old one'" - the start menu, shutdown/logoff method, the "long way around", all reminds her of Windows and scares her. She feels safe with Ubuntu, and stated last night, as she laid in bed after watching a downloaded version of a TV program on her laptop - "I would rather use my computer".
I may have created the first non-tech Ubuntu refugee.
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