As a Free and Open Source Software user and lover, I often hear statements such as:

• Only geeks can use Linux
• X (Open Source Software) is too hard to use, thats why people use Y (Proprietary Equivalent)

Now I believe we can actually get philosophical or licensing issues out of the way. In fact more often than not, it seems I can end up simplifying the issue down to:

• X is not Y and thats why it sucks.

Now this seems like one very rationnal argument right? You then start trying to dig into the actual reasons they think that Y is superior, question of trying to get an healthy discussion. I’ll have to admit there have been times where I’ve agreed that the so-called solution Y was superior. I’ve also seen many occurances where the person I was discussing with arguments where just not holding together. Based on rumors, false beliefs based on lack of information, or simply the fact that product X had evolved significantly since the last time this person at looked into it.

Now this is not a discussion on how everybody should just switch to solution X tomorrow morning because it can do all that. In fact in corporate situations, projects are started at certain points in time and they have to keep going so that the organisation they are working for can see a return on investment, and this is totally fine. The real problem is when people start maintaining a “religious belief” that solution Y is better, and the only appropriate reason for this is “because it’s what I/we know”. Last time I checked, fire can still be good to prepare food, but most of us now got access to more “modern” and safe ways to do that. In fact, despite some resistance, we generally don’t fight much over many improvements in our daily lives. So why is it that being rationnal when it comes to IT seems so complicated? I don’t know yet.

What I do know is that my grand-ma and uncle recently decided to get computers and get properly introduced with the internet and what not. In fact here is what they wanted to do, more exactly:

• Browse the Internet
• Get on Facebook
• Play Facebook games (hey… They’re old… What ya think! :p)
• Maybe do a bit of text processing or office-type work once in a while
• Possibly print a thing or 2
• Learn how to use CD’s and DVD’s and USB sticks (yeah… no kidding)

Looking at that list of requirements, I told myself: “Time for an experiment!”
See, I’m very happy that they want to discover technology, but they also come to the field without much prior experience of anything computer related. This meant I was able to conduct a small experiment.

Hypothesis

With a sufficiently long time window for analysis, and given no prior experience as well as the tasks they are trying to accomplish, these folks will not express clear preference for a Windows based environment.

“Experimental protocol”:

1. Let them experiment by themselves. Obviously the environment provided them access to machines with a version of Windows installed, with antivirus and base software installed.
2. Provide them with a Linux powered solution, providing required software, taking notes of their needs and usage patterns.

Along the way, provide required assistance and take notes.

Conducting the experiment (Results)

And so the experiment began. My grand-mother was introduced very slowly to computers and eventually facebook because she wanted to play some online games. Given the rest of my familly uses Windows based solutions, she was given access to a Windows 8 powered computer, and the administration and network related issues completely abstracted from her. This is when I started to take notes:

• What the hell is a user session?
• How do they work?
• Great. My grand-son left his session opened again. How do I go to mine?
• What are all these god damn popups about updates?
• Why did the computer suddenly reboot?
• Clicking something is scary cause it might cost something!
• Viruses! Everything is viruses! That update dialog?? I think I got a virus!
• I cant find internet!
• The I can’t go on Facebook, it’s probably a virus!
• OMG this is in english, it’s probably a virus, or the computer has a problem! (Yeah, we’re french speakers)
• I just started this program and it’s saying an update is available? Is it broken? What should I do?
• Joe (fictive name) said I could do this and that this way but now nothing works (yeah… Joe is a “knowledgable” friend or some crap)
• I’d like to try XYZ but I fear I’m gonna break something (I’m gonna approve this one, you look at windows and it breaks itself :p)

Well you get the idea…

• Update prompts are scary
• “Unexpected behavior” is scary
• To much flexibility is scary
• Things not working is scary
• Not using first language is scary
• I had to fix Joe’s crap all the time (including psychological damage caused by old people inducing virus and breakage fear to each other)

Needless to say, when things are “scary” they are also frustrating. I(or one of my brothers) was also getting many calls from help.

What about my uncle? He’s not living “close” to anybody who could help him and to be honest, the problems were pretty much the same. Every prompt was scary, and I kept getting the same calls for help over and over. Now I’ve dealt with older people learning to use computers a lot in the past, and I’ve had many successes vulgarising IT jargon and bringing these folks up to speed. I also had more time on my hands and was living close to these folks to physically go help them. Now that I’m away studying, I don’t have the time to do that anymore and I’m obviously too far away to go there.

I went to my uncle’s once, and since he had his own computer, I took a bet. I said: “Hey, I could install you something different. Now it wouldn’t look at all like what you have right now, but you could stop stressing about viruses and breaking things. Want to try?” I was surprised he said yes, but I grabbed a Linux live CD and showed him around.

To be honests I made 2 different attempts

I first installed Fedora, but the projects lack of proprietary codecs and drivers showed to be a big show-stopper.

So I decided to give Kubuntu a spin.

And then, there was enlightenment

Of course, at first, I had to answer a few questions, By telling them I would be surprised if they were ever successful at rendering the machine unusable I was able to get some confidence in them. To me, being able to exclude de presence of virus or random crap application that could screw the system up would enable that to be true. Furthermore I provided the two of them with the same setup and told them to stay in touch and not fear trying new things. It is also obvious that the first few steps were kinda frustrating, as we were all adapting to these conditions, and I had to remember to install the prioprietary plugins like flash (the reason I moved away from Fedora, they are “harder” to manage there). I finally reached a point where not only do I not have to care about it anymore, but they are able to run their own updates and install new programs by themselves using the repositories. Given their level of know how and the previous scare of something stopping to work or getting a virus, this is a gigantic improvement. The other obvious point being that a Web Browser is a Web Browser and that they don’t see the difference over 50% of the time anyways.

Conclusion

This is coming to a close rather quickly since the experiment is kinda still running. However, current experimental data tends to show that in certain circumstances having the non-technical crowd use Linux can be realistic. It also tends to indicate that making the switch is not without compromises, yet there might be a range of situations where having these people use a Linux based solution could be more efficient overall than going through certain of the pains of traditionnal Windows setups.

Taking another angle of view on the experimental data also tends to show that the progress realised by FOSS Operating Systems backing communities in the last few years made said operating systems, and more precisely Linux Distributions much more accessible to the general public than was the case lets say roughly 8 years ago when I started turning to these systems myself.