My son is comming onboard

dnar · #1 18th June 2005, 08:39 AM

Well my 10 (going on 20) year old son registered on the forum today, hopefully his account will be enabled shortly.

Alex had been pestering me for months about Linux so I gave him one of my old PIII systems and loaded FC3 onto it. We updated him to FC4 this week. He now prefers to hack away upstairs next to Dad rather than use the kids XP Pro machine downstairs (ata boy!). He has VNC running, he often spys on his twin-13 year old sisters!!!

Alex is really smart for his age, he designs and builds electronic circuits and is competant with the soldering iron. He has picked up Linux really quickly, just about mastered many aspects of the Gnome desktop, now venturing into HTML with his own web page running on his FC4 box (Apache). I have been teaching him how to use the command line and bash, he scares the hell out me!!!

Please make him feel at home when he shows up!

neilius · #2 18th June 2005, 09:12 AM

That's great! My little sister (well, she's 20) has just recently started using Linux after hearing me brag on about it to everyone. She's not too interested in the techy side of things and probably isn't aware of different distributions etc, all she knows is that it's Linux. She also isn't the most computer literate of human beings, but she can work her way around using Windows fine. She might get more into it in the future, and maybe even come to this forum one day but I doubt it somehow. At least she made the switch with an open mind though! She basically came to me and asked if I could install it because she was sick of virii, spyware and the like and just wanted a peaceful, stable computing existance to chat on MSN, do her emails, surf the web and download the odd piece of music with. So I installed Ubuntu for her for a while, and last night, shoved FC4 on her machine instead, enabled yum auto updating and voila. It's just an old K6-2 500 with 256mb RAM but it seems to be up to running Gnome without any problems. Good luck to your son on his journey into Linux, I'm sure he'll find it both enjoyable and stimulating, just as I think most of us here have!

Regards,

Neil.

dnar · #3 18th June 2005, 09:15 AM

Cool. My twin daughters share an XP machine, and I am sick and tired or it. As they both want their own PC soon for school, Linux will be the answer now I know their needs. They can do all they need with:

OpenOffice
Firefox
Gaim
XMMS
mplayer

Thats it, thats all they need! This will save me a lot of grief (and $$$)!

neilius · #4 18th June 2005, 09:24 AM

Yeah I know what you mean, with my sister running XP, I was always having to look after the machine, weeding out spyware, virii, etc, defragmenting and countless other maintenance tasks that don't exist for Linux, I can safely never touch this machine (except to upgrade to FC5 when it comes out, although I could do a VNC install so I still wouldn't have to touch it!!). If I did want to do something I could SSH into it from here which is great, no more running between rooms to fix stuff!

Regards,

Neil.

imdeemvp · #5 18th June 2005, 09:27 AM

Cool kid....indeed. I tried with my teens but they stuck in M$ world. Some games are not well played by wine so windows it is for the moment.

bitrain · #6 18th June 2005, 09:32 AM

Quote:

If I did want to do something I could SSH into it from here which is great, no more running between rooms to fix stuff!

SSH is great, at my school we have 5 linux boxes (freebsd, fc1, fc2, fc3, fc4t3) and I always use ssh when I can't touch the computer.

Anyway, I'm still trying to convert my sister to linux, but the wireless network card doesn't run under linux yet, so were stuck with windows

dnar · #7 18th June 2005, 09:34 AM

I trained my kids early to enjoy http://www.bonus.com games

Alex actually digs the standard FC games too.

As for maintaining MS boxes, I have gotten to the point were my standard line is "sorry, I dont know anything about Windows" when visiting friends, relatives etc... Rude I know, but I ended up avoiding people after a while, when you ended up chained to their sick M$ box for the majority of the time of your visit (cleaning spybots, virus, registry etc etc). I just hate it, really hate it! They choose Windows, they can pay for proffesional help!

dnar · #8 18th June 2005, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bitrain

SSH is great, at my school we have 5 linux boxes (freebsd, fc1, fc2, fc3, fc4t3) and I always use ssh when I can't touch the computer.

Anyway, I'm still trying to convert my sister to linux, but the wireless network card doesn't run under linux yet, so were stuck with windows

I knwo what you mean, I have a D-Link 22mbps PCMCIA card thats not supported, but did find another D-Link that is. I run a D-Link WAP connected to my switch @ 100mpbs. I need to find a good PCI card to build 2 x Linux boxes for the girls. I have been caught before (WiFi & Capture Cards) after researching supported models only to find the manufacturer changes chipsets while keeping the old model number!!!! D-Link & Pinnacle do you hear me!!!!

Shadow Skill · #9 18th June 2005, 09:48 AM

Get a netgear pcimcia card I have one [can't remember the specific model.] but it works very well for me in Fedora.

dnar · #10 18th June 2005, 09:51 AM

I have a D-Link DWL-650 (802.11b) that works well, the 650+ (802.11b+) doesnt work at all.

It's PCI 802.11g cards I need. Any recommendations?

bitrain · #11 18th June 2005, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dnar

I have a D-Link DWL-650 (802.11b) that works well, the 650+ (802.11b+) doesnt work at all.

It's PCI 802.11g cards I need. Any recommendations?

A card with a rt2500 chipset, I have a e-tech, see signature. Linksys cards (WM54g or something) have the same chipset. There are native drivers for this chipset.

VN-Frank · #12 18th June 2005, 10:01 AM

Thumbs up !

Welcome to the club....

imdeemvp · #13 18th June 2005, 10:05 AM

You can get an airlink which is a beauty for linux. All you have to do is installed the madwife drivers and you are on the go. I got mine at frys on a friday special for $9.99 super g 108mbps.

The games my kids play are like ut2003, battle field 1942, pinball, and others which I have found one for linux yet.

dnar · #14 18th June 2005, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bitrain

A card with a rt2500 chipset, I have a e-tech, see signature. Linksys cards (WM54g or something) have the same chipset. There are native drivers for this chipset.

Thanks. I'll grab a Linksys, they are readily available in Aus and I like them since Cisco bought them out.

Illuminate · #15 18th June 2005, 12:48 PM

He's cute for a little kid^^ [Most of them are a pain in the butt.*mumblemumble*]. Anyway, I hope he's entertained and fascinated by Linux and Fedora Core in general. Meanwhile, I try to get my sister into Linux...but no luck. She's 20 and stubborn. However, my brother likes it...for the 'Same GNOME' game. Losers. >.>;

Anyway, I'm sure he'll fit right in.