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+title:  Mom wants a laptop
+date:   Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:13:43 +0200
+author: -fab- <fab@redterminal.org>
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A few years ago my mother regularly bought her clothing at HSE24, a
German TV  station which advertises  clothes and jewelry  the whole
day/night.  I  told her  how  bad  it was  but  my  mother is  very
stubborn. Now  she's on HSE24 again  and buys her clothes  there. A
lot  of them,  in my  opinion, though  I think  she needs  some new
clothing.  And as  long as  she's not  running out  of money,  that
shouldn't be  a problem. After  all my  mother is careful  with her
money.

And because  mom is always right,  I made her an  online account at
"hse.de".  But she  still  does  buy by  telephone  calls to  HSE's
service number, because  I don't want to show her  the offers on my
laptop the  whole day.  But because  I needed some clothing  too, I
myself looked at Amazon's offers and showed them to her. That was a
BIG mistake.  Now she  wants her  own laptop and  surf the  web and
especially Amazon.

The  spineless looser  I'm always  concerning my  mother (well  not
*always*), I  ordered her another  Lenovo Thinkpad T460s  with 20GB
DDR4 and  a 500GB SSD.  It's refurbished and comes with  Windows 10
preinstalled. I don't believe its Windows 11 ready and I don't want
to use  Microsofts OS anyway. It  will be delivered around  20th or
21st of August and is hopefully ok (it was the last one in stock).

So  now  my  problem  begins.  I've been  using  Artix  Linux  with
AwesomeWM (QTile before) for a very  long time now which is heavily
adjusted to  my needs and  workflow - and now  I have to  find some
very simple Linux distribution and explain everything to my 71 year
old mom.  I have  to learn it  myself again at  first! I  think I'm
going with  Linux Mint  because that's  what everybody  suggest for
being the most noob friendly  (I can't emphasize this enough "NOOB"
my mom  is 71  years old).  But if you  can suggest  something even
simpler, please drop me a line.

I don't know what comes down the  pike for me, but my mother can be
"difficult". I hope she'll be a little patient and is still able to
learn. Because on the other hand I  would be happy if my mother has
something  to do  and  find out  how things  are  working. And  I'm
cautiously optimistic. The worst thing that could happen is that my
mom looses interest and the  laptop will just lay around collecting
dust.  But that  would  be sad.  I  hope I  can  show her  FreeTube
(YouTube client without ads yet) for example. There are so many cat
videos to watch :)

So I've mixed feelings about that. On  the one hand I'm not sure if
she'll  keep at  it, and  on the  other side  I have  to teach  her
something nearly  completely new  to her.  She has  some experience
with computers when  she last worked in an office  1994. I hope for
the best.

All in all - Have fun!
-fab-