Fedora for seniors

[linearfish]

My grandmother (81-years-old) has decided to purchase her first computer Being the techie of the family I'm in charge of purchasing, setting up, and teaching her the computer. She really wanted a laptop, so I settled on a basic Dell Inspiron B-series laptop with internal wireless. She'll hopefully have DSL soon so I can set up a wireless network inside the house.

I'm also going to remove win xp from the laptop and install FC 5. Though she won't know the difference because she's never used either, I want her computer experience to be as simple and as hassle free as possible. That means no virus scanning and worrying about spyware. Plus, I don't want her to "accidentally" screw up the computer as seems to be so easy to do on windows, at least for my family. So I'll have the root password and take care of updating the machine when I see her.

What I'd like to know is whether there are any suggestions for configuring FC 5 to make it user-friendly for seniors, or really anyone with limited to no computer experience. I'd welcome any and all suggestions/concerns. I appreciate it.

[pete_1967]

Install and enable accessibility features (I don't know how advanced they're on Gnome, but KDE at least has quite comprehensive set of tools), they provide text-to-speech, screen magnifier and other useful tools.

[bob]

Might want to consider KDE; it's a bit easier to navigate. I'd look at alternatives to Open Office, since it's a bit feature-rich for simple letter-writing, etc. Otherwise, plan to spend an afternoon with her and discuss what she wants to use it for and have her try out various programs. Please consider typing out and printing various instructions; don't expect everything you talk about to be retained immediately.

Finally, for the first weeks, expect constant calls... and probably being written out of the Will until the frustration level eases!

[gthill]

I have set up a couple of cheap 700mhz celerons for some youngsters as their first computer. Their ages from 4-8.
At the time fc4 was just released. I didnt bother to update , just installed default wokstation, loaded some games from extras and showed them how to get started. They are still in use today and the only 2 service calls to this day have been for unplugged cables and a dodgy keyboard connection, despite the 4 year old always turning it off at the power point. The other box was connected to the www so that got a default workstation, Stanton Finleys installation set up and 1 yum update.
I dont see any point to update again unless the users want to learn Linux, maybe in a few more years. They use the games, openoffice (they call it 'word') , firefox, play cd's and make pretty desktops.
I also edited the menus so they dont get confused by too many options.
Overall its a great setup and I am sure I would have been fixing things a lot more if I had spent money on some other operating system.

[jcwinnie]

Large fonts, larger than you might think suitable, eg. 20 px. with minimum font set to 14.

[ccrvic]

What I'd like to know is whether there are any suggestions for configuring FC 5 to make it user-friendly for seniors, or really anyone with limited to no computer experience.

Not exactly FC5, but here (http://hantslug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LinuxHints/DesktopAdaptedDad)'s a description of how one of the guys in our LUG built a Linux box for his dad. He later gave a talk on it, which can be found here (http://hantslug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TechTalks/1stApril2006)

Vic.

[Iron_Mike]

Not a bad idea since she hasn't used the 'doze or Linux. BUT I would go with a ethernet connection if possible for the simple reason of reliablity and maintainability, especially with a person that is not network savvy and to avoid getting calls to come over and fix it. Again it might not be a option for ethernet, and it is just my .02 pesos worth.

[Dan]

Large fonts, larger than you might think suitable, eg. 20 px. with minimum font set to 14.

*Sigh* Gettin' there myself. Varilux lenses ain't foolin' anybody anymore. Better make it 24 nominal, 20 minimum.

Dan

[glussier]

If it's a brand new Dell laptop you should leave winxp in place. As soon as you will replace winxp with another o/s, not only linux but even another version of windows, the Dell support will end there. You might think that you'll do all her software support, but if there is an hardware problem you won't be able to get support for that either.