On Sun, 2010-03-28 at 11:54 -0500, Rick Sewill wrote: > Linux is multi-user. People are expected to run as normal users. > People should be root only long enough to do system things. > > Program developers create downloads with this in mind. > People can download and compile and build programs as normal users. > Only when people need to install, do people need to become root. That is one of the great things about the Linux mindset, the system is designed properly, in the first place. Anything that tries to break that model is, rightly, shot down in flames before it gets its claws in. It's very hard to use a Windows system properly, as so many things rely on you using it badly, and there's just no convincing some programmers that they're stupid and evil for not doing things the right way. > My sister keeps bringing her Windows XP PC to me for fixing. > It takes her less than a week to get viruses on her PC. > I've reloaded from the factory partition twice already. Running with too many privileges, I'll bet. And probably not just because it's easier that way, but quite likely because some software just won't do its tricks if you don't. > The second time, she got viruses, really frustrated me. > Before giving her back her PC, I made sure all the patches were in. > I had Norton Utilities running with all updates. > I made sure her firewall was enabled. > Did me little good. > > Her PC currently has some viruses on it (this is the third time). > Again, I made sure all patches were in and all updates were in. > > Norton Utilities can detect the viruses, but not remove them. A way too familiar story to me, and I'm sure countless others. The system lets malware do what it likes, but it won't let you fix it. Why can't they learn and make it so the malware has just as hard a time trying to stuff up a system? > Even if I force her to switch to Linux, I will have problems. > She will fuss and fuss until I give her the root password. > I won't want to give her the root password...for obvious reasons. > She will take a "secure" Linux system and make it vulnerable. > She won't know what she is doing. And that is the problem. You simply cannot leave a computer illiterate person to *manage* a system. If they don't understand how it works, they will stuff it up. It's inevitable. Even letting them just *use* a system is problematic. All you can do with people like that is to lock up a system tight, and lock them out of changes. They'll find it unpleasant, it's unavoidable. They'll still manage to find some way to stuff it up, that's unavoidable, but it'll be more difficult for them to do so. I spent years dealing with that problem with one person, in particular. Finally he got the message about not running as the admin, and not just installing anything that sounds attractive. I rarely hear from him, now. Because he doesn't *need* to keep calling for help. He finally updated to XP, and that was when most of those problems went away. It was the first consumer Windows release where it was reasonably feasible to protect a user against their own stupidity. Of course it did require some education, too. But he'd, by then, acknowledged that he was the problem, and he needed to follow the advice I kept on giving him (the same advice, it wasn't going to change, just because he didn't like it). If you do get her onto Linux, you will have some advantages. It will (probably) be a release you're familiar with, and can help more than helping with Windows. You'll probably be able to remotely administer it easier than with Windows (heck that's slow, because it's all heavy graphics). And you can set up a system that lets the user graphically install new software without having to enter a root password each time (just one initial okay, and the policy is set, for the life of the release), where that system will let them install stuff from the repos. There are FAR less vectors of attack onto a Linux box, especially when the user isn't running servers. Not to mention that they're far less likely to be installing random gee-whiz toy software from some random website, simply because there's very little of that crap out there for Linux users, and there's a ton of stuff already supplied with a distro. Probably the only semi-literate Windows user that is going to survive will be the *really* clueless. The ones who're just unable to manage adding anything new to their computer, even when the malware tries to help them through the steps. > If people could find tutorials on how to be an administrator for Linux, > written for people who are not very computer literate, I would be > appreciative. Really, what's needed, long before how-to tutorials, is understanding the concepts behind how a computer system works. The first thing I used to teach people was filing. Never mind technicalities, just the basic idea that you named things sensibly (so you could find them), and you filed them away in sane locations (so you could find them, and not wreck a system). I taught the concept with the visual aids of bits of paper and boxes/folders to put them in, and the thought of "imagine trying to read something, in particular, in a library where all the books had been thrown on the floor in a pile, and with all their pages torn out, strewn around" (which is exactly how some people's computers are). If they couldn't grasp the concept of *organisation*, they were a lost cause. It's a requirement for using such a highly technical, and pedantic thing, as a computer. It breaks, very quickly, and very badly, if you mess up its organisation. Then, and only after that stage, was their any point to teaching them much more about using the computer. And, again, it's the simple non-technical concept that has to be drummed in first. Not lessons in how to install something (the steps), but *why* you do not go around installing things, *why* you do not run as the admin... It also helps to throw in the ye olde stern parenting message of "I'm not going to keep on fixing this for you." I cannot overstate the value of the word "no." A person will not learn to look after their computer until you make them. The old "cruel to be kind" approach. If you can't make them see that unless they learn more, they're going to keep having a broken system, then you're going to be doomed to forever fixing it up for them. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
