I don?t think that had anything to do with it. I think it had a lot more to do with making phones more water resistant. Incidences of phones ruined by a bit of damp have dramatically dropped since phone cases have been better sealed.
The batteries are still replaceable (despite what many conspiracy theorists claim), it?s just rather (or sometimes a lot) harder to do.
Tim
Perhaps, but it wasn't clear on my PC that's that what you had to do, nor which function key it was. The BIOS doesn't tell you and I don't have a manual for it.
Mine wasn't.
Installing any *operating system*, yes. But very few people ever do that, which is why we're discussing whether it's appropriate for old geezers.
Having got through the boot menu, I am now stuck on how to answer the question "Install multi-media codecs?" which apparently requires me to "configure secure boot". Do I need this? If I answer "yes", does it commit me to entering a pw every time I start up? If I answer "no", will I be able to change it if I subsequently decide I do need it?
Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@greenbee.net posted
Yes, but only if you already knew it. There's no way our old geezer could have worked that out.
Yes - 'intuitive' is marketing speak for 'like something I've used before'. If you've used XP before, Mint is quite like XP and so familiar. If all you've used is a slide rule, nothing is familiar.
I'd say all desktop OSes suffer from similar issues of assuming familiarity with other desktop OSes.
Phones and tablets have two mild advantages: one is a touch screen, so you don't need to learn how to use a mouse (multiple mouse buttons, etc). Most people get to grips with a mouse easily, but for some that removes a stumbling block. The other is a relative lack of clutter: there's much less on the screen. You don't have to do things like manipulating windows, and there's little to interact with apart from the application you're running. So there's less to distract or cause problems by interacting with the wrong thing. Although when the onscreen keyboard comes on, then things become more complicated[1].
But it's all arbitrary at the end of the day - you would think the 'green telephone'/'red telephone' buttons are an idea easily translated from traffic lights, but still some people struggle with that.
Theo
[1] I failed to get one user to grasp how the 'shift' key worked, not helped by the fact that the Apple soft keyboard would highlight the Shift key but not make the letters on the keys uppercase. If you've not used a conventional keyboard this is an unfamiliar concept. This might not be a major stumbling block apart from the rules about 'every password must have a capital letter' and the fact their password showed as stars when they typed it so they couldn't see if it was right.
The one that turns off its ringer when you hold it to your ear is ideal. With no calls ever being received, you wont have any support calls .
What?
Multi media codecs are nothing to do with secure boot
You have misunderstood something
You do want multi media codecs if you want to watcch videos but they can be installed later.
Secure boot is suppose to stop the thing from booting from random USB drives you might insert etc etc.
No
No, but it might make using a live CD to recover the thing tricky.
Probably not without a reinstall. I've never used it.
as he couldn?t work out what the undocumented paper clip on his i-phone was for.
As I said., the issue isn't what the 80 year old can understand - the answer is always "not enough to set the system up" so no matter WHAT he ends up with he will need extra support to get up and running
The issue is once set up which is easiest to use and support. And that depends on the support person
OK. I've looked through the online stuff
It seems that if secure boot is enabled in the bios, you need to either disable it, or install Mint with the secure bios option.
It should not make a great deal of difference, in practice.
Multi media codecs are installable after main installation using either the synaptic package manager, the command line, or possibly as an option in the 'sound and video' menu on at least the Cinnamon version - not sure about MATE. The package is called 'mint-meta-codecs'
They are a separate option because the licensing of them is somewhat different to other linux stuff: they rip apart and reverse engineer DRM protection on many DVDS for example, and some are decoders for proprietary video formats. The ones that Apple, for the same reason, doesn't support.
The same reason is why broadcomm wifi drivers and Nvidia video drivers are installed later - they are 'non free' and are proprietary to the companies that supply them, so cannot legally be part of a 'linux distribution' that is covered by a different licensing arrangement
I'd also ask how much experience Turnip has with an iPad.
It's what most elderly seem to get when forced to do computers (Zoom, etc) to stay in touch after Covid. In my experience.
But none is going to be simple to the elderly that had no interest before.
So it seems, and I now see why. The screen concerned has an overall heading "Multimedia codecs" and under this are two apparent tickbox options, one being "Install multimedia codecs" and the other "Configure Secure Boot". The layout of the screen clearly suggests that the second must be done if you are doing the first, and the "More information" button next to it says something about secure boot being needed if you are downloading third party drivers.
But now I know they are nothing to do with one another, I can interpret the screen correctly.
Thanks. I've now got through the installation. There was a worrying few minutes at the end, when it said "Please remove the installation medium then press ENTER". I did. Nothing happened for a while and then the screen went black and thousands of error messages scrolled down it, apparently unstoppably. Nothing would interrupt it, not even the power button, so I unplugged the machine, fearing the worst. But no; it booted OK.
LOL!
Yes, there is one bug in Linux still that no one seems to fix and that is that some machines wont shut down properly. Particularly running from a live DVD
Pressing and *holding* the power button for 10 seconds always has worked for me.
My oil laptop (cheapo new Toshiba) never wanted to shut down. The new one (old HP refurbed) is flawless. There is always a strange error message, but I looked it up and its basically meaningless so I never bothered about it
At This particular time, YOU are *my* support person to get the old fellers new system going - and a f****ng crap job you are making of it, too. :-(
Dave,
Dagenham, UK
Well you could pay me.
I told you what to do. Download the image. Burn a DVD. Stuff it in the DVD drive, set bios to boot from DVD and follow onscreen instructions
If you aren't capable of that you cant support the old geezer anyway.And will do him a disservice by trying
The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote
The problem is knowing which function key does that on that PC and plenty are fussy about just when you have to hit it to have it show you the bios menu.
That?s wrong.
Yes, but none of that is involved with an ipad.
Wrong when an ipad is used instead.
Yes.
No need for that unless there is no wifi available.
But plenty don?t know you need to do that to boot the DVD.
IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE!!!!!!! I've read the installation guide and don't know what half the terms used mean!! Your idea is a non-starter and now you're trying to blame ME for YOUR stupidity.
You are doing *me* a disservice by coming up with the daftest and most complicated solution of them all. It is NOT as easy as 1,2,3! I am not a computer scientist like you are, dummy.
Pretty clearly, zero.
And the not so elderly. Seriously, why would one wait to boot up a PC or laptop when one could be online in couple of seconds with an iPad if you?re mostly interested in looking at web content, shopping, emails etc? A laptop/PC is total overkill for such tasks.
My mother in her eighties could manage an iPad. Only really stopped using it in her nineties due to failing eyesight.
Tim
Tim+ snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com posted
You wouldn't boot the laptop or PC. You'd leave it on all day. And you'd also be able to do a lot of other things that you can't easily do on an iPad.
That wouldn't happen with a PC or laptop, on which you can make the text as big as you like.
Why consume power all day to perform simple intermittent tasks? That?s like leaving your car idling just to be ready to nip out to the local shops.
Well that?s true but this thread is about an elderly technophobe who only wants email, Facebook etc.
An iPad is a lot simpler and more intuitive than a PC for a technophobe.
You can enlarge the text on an iPad too, (and a host of other accessibility aids), but, large text is f*ck all use with advanced macular degeneration where your central field of vision is destroyed.
Tim
So it's nothing like as simple for a geriatric to setup initially as an ipad which just needs a password supplied.
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