[ottermaton]

Just thought I'd share my experience of installing Bodhi 0.1.7 on a Dell Mini 10, my stepson's computer. He had been asking for a week or two to have Linux on his computer, so with 0.1.7 out tonight I finally decided to hook him up, despite his mother's objections (not really sure why, but sometimes you have to pick your battles ) As a concession to her, I decided to make it a dual-boot with Win7.

I have a copy of Win7 Ultimate (oh! la la), and since he didn't have anything he wanted to save I choose to do a complete wipe and fresh install of both, starting with Win7 as we all know its propensity to stomp over any other OS / boot loader. Installed via USB (no optical drive). The installation of Win7 was uneventful, just lots of waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Wish I would have timed it, but think it was around 35-40. Finally it gets done and I'm presented with a skewed desktop, stretched horizontally. I looked around in the Display settings and could change the resolution but there was no straightforward way to change the aspect. Next looked at the network icon in the taskbar to get a connection, but nothing was available or even an indication it was activated. Checked out settings for Networks and couldn't find anything related to the wireless card, probably because it wasn't detected, at least correctly. I'm inclined to think that's the same thing that happened with the video card. I guess I could have done some driver voodoo and got them both working, but I just didn't have the will. The way Windows handles their drivers just makes no sense to me, and it seems like there are SO many hoops you have to jump through to get them working, I just didn't bother. But, really, should I have to? ... in 2011? ... with MS' flagship product? ... on a common machine?

On to Bodhi. This installation took less than 10 minutes. Again, should have timed it, but WAY WAY WAY quicker than Win7. Answered the very basic questions, he got the concept of having win7 and Bodhi on separate partitions, and he picked his Profile and Theme. There we were, on the desktop. With correct display aspect. And a working wireless connection. Out of the box. I had him read the Quickstart just a little to actually turn the connection on. I told him that in order to play Runescape - what he'll mostly be doing with it - he would need Firefox and Flash installed. I needed to nudge him in the right direction, but only a little, and for the most part he figured it out himself. This kid is 11. And he pretty much installed Bodhi Linux and got Firefox and Flash working ON HIS OWN.

Next time you hear someone complaining about Linux being difficult / hard to install / not user-friendly / whatever, point them to this post. Give them my regards.

cheers
mark

[ottermaton]

I wanted to mention this too, but forgot: There was one small snafu in the installation, when he first installed FF the message came up about unsigned repos. His indoctrination from the Windows world is such that combined with the ominous message about Untrusted Sources he adamantly declined. It took me a while to convince him it was alright (eventually had to tell him I would get Jeff to call him and tell him it was ok )

Jeff: I completely understand that the signing business is nonsense (and suspected as much when I first mentioned it in another post), but it just looks bad. Get them signed. If for no other reason, think of the market segment of 11 year old boys we could be potentially missing out on.

cheers
mark

[Jeff]

I'd just like to throw it out there that most 11 year old boys are better with computers than some adults...

I gave a Bodhi powered netbook to my girlfriend's younger cousins back when it was still our 0.1.1 release - its still running fast and stable for all the youtube and facebook they can handle.

~Jeff