Converting a friend to Linux

My friend's computer was filled with spyware and trojans and it is pretty crappy (really old laptop and missing some keyboard keys), it barely ran at all. So he paid for some new parts and I pieced together my old computer using some new parts. Well that's what I have been doing for the past month and I ran into some trouble. First I got everything all setup and then I find out the motherboard doesn't boot of the new hardrive. So we bought a new motherboard (and a nice nVidia GeForce 6200 since we don't want crappy integrated graphics if we can easily upgrade it). Well I (stupidly) thought I had a ATX case but when I got the new motherboard it wouldn't fit because I guess it is a miniATX case. Bummer, well I figured I would just use my parents old computer (much older then my old computer). So I cleaned out my parents computer case and I put in the PSU only to find the back part of the computer that is usually all open is indeed not meaning the PSU would not fit. Wonderful, so instead of telling my friend that we need a new case I took my cheap $5 Coleman pliers and started ripping up the back till the PSU would finally fit. It looks ugly, it is probably somewhat dangerous (I couldn't fully cut off the sharp edges) but oh well it works. Then I found out the power button isn't compatible with the new motherboard. So I took the power button from my old case and put it in so it is sticking out a empty PCI slot. After all that I finally had a computer that worked. Except of course it needed an operating system.

I told my friend that he could spend the $100 or $200 and get a licensed copy of Windows or I could install Linux for free. He choose Linux (smart choice). Now my friend is still on dial-up so I could only think of one distro that has the best support for this: SuSE. SUSE was the only distro that I could graphically configure and start dial-up on when I used it a few years ago. I orginally installed SUSE 10.1 on his harddrive using my computer but I found out that it won't simply transfer over and work on the other computer. So I reinstalled it using the new computer and I ran into a bunch of problems. Instead of telling you about every single one let me just say SUSE 10.1 is very very buggy. I'm hoping/expecting SUSE 10.2 to be much better though. As far as the desktop environment I let him choose, I showed off KDE and I showed GNOME and immediately he said "I like KDE better" without me asking. After installing I added a bunch of repositories then added lots of codec support, gave him some sweet wallpapers and styles, installed a bunch of applications that he needed, gave him some of the best free linux games and the games he liked to play on my computer. Next I did was I went over to his house for a day and I showed him how to use various applications and setting up things like instant messaging. You should never just give them Linux and just say "Good luck" and leave them to figure it out themselves else they will reject it and the chances of them trying Linux again are slim. After going over basic stuff like how to browse files, what applications do what, how to rip an audio cd (I taught him how to rip audio cds using Konqueror although it seems to confuse him some so would probably be better if I told him how to do it with KAudioCreator) I let him explore it for a few hours and I would answer any questions he had (and he had a lot). Once I saw that he was comfortable using it I told him he could contact me and I could help him figure anything out of fix and problems (I set up openssh so I could connect whenever to help). He has only had one problem that he needed help with over the past week and he loves his new computer. This is how you switch people to linux, and I feel confident that this is the best way to introduce them to Linux.

Moral of the story: Old hardware and new hardware don't mix well, SUSE 10.1 needs work, provide a large walkthrough with them and let them explore some too, and Linux rules!