Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls - <AUTHOR> https://write.as/simonfrey/how-switching-my-parents-over-to-linux-saved-me-a-lot-of-headache-and-support <comment><USER2> Just to add another anecdote...

Back in 2008 or so, my relatives did the _really nice thing_ of buying my Grandma the cheapest possible Walmart computer they could find. You know the sort of Windows eMachine that comes preinstalled with spyware?

Of course, my relatives live about 6 hours away from her and all of the "on site support" fell to me. In the first 2 years of my Grandma getting this computer I must have gone over more than 10 times to fix all sorts of stupid issues that were pretty much inherent to the machine.

I grew sick of this and one day I went over, backed up the few important files on the machine and installed linux mint. That was in 2010, it is now 2019 and I have gone over to fix my Grandmas computer twice since. Once to help her set up a printer, and another time when she accidentally cleared her cookies and couldn't figure out how to log back into anything.

The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER3> So my personal anecdote also involves mint - I've set one up for someone years ago(probably around 2013-2014) and you're right, it had no issues. However, when I came over to visit last year I wanted to do some maintenance, so "apt- get update" and "apt-get upgrade" would be the start. Nope, turns out that the update servers for that version of Mint have been switched off long time ago and none of the links resolve anymore. Upgrading the apt server list just resulted in hundreds of errors when actually trying to upgrade the system. At this point I stopped, worried that I'm just going to break everything.

After that, I had a realization - yes, the system ran for 4 years without any maintenance, but it also received no updates and no patches whatsoever during that time, because linux does not do that by default(or at least Mint didn't). And then the only issues my windows-using family have is 90% of the time due to....windows updates. Things are not where they used to be, some application changed so it's now different, they had something open and the computer restarted itself....the usual. And while that is a problem....at least their machines are always patched and up to date. That Mint installation was running in the same state that it was in the day I set it up, and after just few years it couldn't even be updated any more(to my best effort). That's pretty bad too.

<comment><USER4> This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would need in order to do the upgrade were turned off in the meantime. To be fair, Linux Mint states that a complete reinstall is the recommended way, but since I do development, it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need.

Also I think Ubuntu suffers the same problem, if you wait long enough. I'm pretty sure I have an Ubuntu install that I waited too long to upgrade.

It is enough to make me serious consider switching to FreeBSD, except I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported.

<comment><USER5> _it 's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need._

        dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > ~/installed_pkgs.log
        cat installed_pkgs.log | xargs sudo apt install

<comment><USER6> Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)

<comment><USER7> Story-time:

If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working.

I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS.

"I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry."

I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.

<comment><USER5> I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I run Ubuntu on three machines and never in a million years would I set it up for my parents. I still struggle with lots of little gotchas and annoying issues like sometimes it just doesn't want to suspend. Or sometimes after resuming, the keyboard doesn't work so gotta unplug it and plug it back in. Sometimes my wifi just conks out for no apparent reason. On and on, just lots of little paper cuts.

I switched my parents over to OSX years ago and have had to do almost no tech support at all. I really like Linux, but I still would argue that the OS that "just works" the most is still OSX.

<comment><USER9> The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware. And you didn't switch to OSX, you switched them to Apple hardware with Apple software, not an OS switch.

On well supported hardware for Linux I have my parents since many years on Fedora. I even just swapped the drive from an old Lenovo netbook to a newer Fujitsu laptop without any issues in between

<comment><USER10> "The problem you describe is mostly because of hardware."

Which does not change the fact that they are still problems - no matter how unfair it is and how little the Linux-Community is to blame for it.

I used Linux on many different machines - and sadly I can confirm lots of problems with hardware. Standby/Resume, etc.

<comment><USER11> The point here is that the solution is simply to get better hardware, which is much less expensive outside the Apple ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> In my experience the same hardware when ran under Windows does not have these issues.

EDIT: also just want to say I'm not anti-Linux, I'm just being realistic. I understand Linux's history and how it has some disadvantages (and advantages). I'm just saying at the end of the day, my interest is a reliable machine, regardless of how I get there.

<comment><USER12> Of course, since that hardware is tested under Windows.

OPs point is that if you're comparing Linux to macOS, you need to also compare the hardware accordingly - just as you buy a Mac to run macOS on, you need to buy hardware that's guaranteed to work well with Linux. And such Linux hardware is still going to cost less than a MacBook or a Mac Mini.

<comment><USER13> I bought an Asus 1215B, sold with Ubuntu, a couple of years ago.

WiFi working has always been ups and downs, specially bad at the beggining when Canonical decided to exchange the closed source driver by an open source one, even thought it wasn't feature complete. I had to spend 3 months using LAN cable until the drive was actually working.

The Radeon on the Brazos APU is a DirectX 11 class GPU, but after AMD dropped fxglr, I lost video hardware acceleration, and the OpenGL feature level has been droped to a lower version.

So much for buying a laptop with Linux support out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Many years ago I idealistically tried to switch my dad over to Linux but that was a nightmare, mostly due to hardware incompatibilities. My missus also ran Linux at some point but Ubuntu upgrades kept breaking and 3G modem drivers never worked properly. But that's years ago so I am sure the desktop Linux situation has improved slightly.

Since about 2010 my entire family is on Mac and support calls have also pretty much ended. When I read some of these other threads, it seems like it's accepted that parents/grandparents do nothing else than just open up a web browser.

That hasn't been my experience at all.

They buy printers, scanners, use apps from the app store, try to connect new and strange cameras, card readers, external screens (try simply connecting an external 4K screen to a random Linux computer, I guarantee you'll get a few surprises).

My dad's recently got into 3D printing (keep in mind he's a consumer, not an expert) and Fusion 360 would not even have run on Windows. He would not have been able to figure out FreeCAD either.

<comment><USER15> Hardware incompatibilities goes both way stuff that won't work on windows or that requires some obscure/bloated driver will work plug and play on linux. Depends on the hardware and the work put on it but the opensource people.

Many people have their first linux experience with ubuntu which is a shame seeing how this distribution is riddled with problems that are not being addressed because the distro is going to be binned in 6 months anyway and devs have to work on the next release.

I agree with you, daily usage is mostly a web browser / email client but there's also all the uncommon stuff and exotic hardware except my experience is that 70-80% of time you plug it and it just works, 10% of time it requires some web searching and meddling with installing/configuring somethins and 10% of time it will not work (85% of those are apple devices).

There's also one important thing to take into account, in 2010 Mac were repairable and serviceable, since 2012 repairability of Mac is abysmal and consistently get the worst score on fixit. The long list of Apple engineering failures[1] adds to the idea that getting Mac just to be able to run OSX is not as good as it was in 2010.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)

<comment><USER16> I have had occasional issues with Ubuntu, but differences between distros feel minor in comparison to the problems that initially coloured my perception.

My first experience with Linux was in the university computer lab. I just needed to quickly send an email. I logged in, and I couldn't figure out how to do anything. Not even log out. After asking a random other student for help, a group of people came to my aid. Turns out the desktop environment was actually broken, because the IT staff had configured it wrong. One of the other students figured out how to open a shell without using any menus and he logged me out. I decided not to use those computers again.

My second experience with Linux was on a remote terminal at my job. It was awful. Nothing worked correctly. I now realize that whoever had set up my account had done a bad copy/paste/edit job from somebody else's dotfiles, but at the time I just assumed that's how Linux was. I figured the misconfigured tcsh shell with broken autocomplete that they gave me was normal, because I had never seen anything different before. The oddly configured, licenseless RHEL desktop they gave me reinforced the idea that everything is hard on Linux.

I had an incredibly negative opinion of Linux at this point. Every interaction had shown me that Linux was a confusing mess of garbage. Then I installed Ubuntu on my desktop. It was easy and everything worked million times better. Later, I tried Fedora and CentOS and the same was true there. At that point, I realized that Linux wasn't broken and hard to use by default. It was IT staff that was ruining it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I concur with this experience. A few years before my grandmother died, I installed Ubuntu on a new laptop for her. All she wanted to do was check her email, view her bank account and play solitaire. It was easy to set up shortcuts to any of this, and she never had any problems.

Every time I came to visit, I would make sure to check the status of the packages, and run the software updater if any updates were available.

The only 'problem' I experienced was confusion from my uncles, when they tried to use her laptop, when _they_ came to visit. But I wouldn't really rate that a problem, since they just gave up and didn't ruin anything.

<comment><USER18> I set my dad up with Lubuntu just under a year ago and the only problem he's had is a system lockup that we traced to a malfunctioning mouse crashing the computer. We replaced the mouse a few weeks ago and haven't had the problem since. He's very happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My father was willing to switch, my mother was not.

So: my father is now on his third Linux machine in 16 years (two laptops and now a NUC hiding behind a 24" monitor). Normal updates are handled automatically; I do a major upgrade once a year. rsnapshot backs up to an external disk three times a day. Every so often he tells me that he wants to do something new, and asks if it's possible; the answer is always yes.

My mother is on her fifth computer in that time. She's always unhappy with it, but refuses to change, because she's afraid that Linux will be incompatible with the new service-du-jour that her friends are always adopting.

<comment><USER20> That's the biggest problem I see to Linux adoption in these scenarios. Unless it is something super geeky, nobody makes client softwares for desktop Linux.

<comment><USER21> This has actually been one of the big perks of Electron.

<comment><USER13> I think you mean the Web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Switched my father-in-law to ubuntu 10 years ago and I basically ended all his "support" calls to me :). He was constantly getting malware from all sorts of banners and popups while playing chess and rummy online. That, coupled with some good extensions such as mining block + uBlock + Disconnect changed the whole deal in an hour.

He's 76 now so yes, linux is a very good option for them.

<comment><USER23> > He was constantly getting malware from all sorts of banners and popups while > playing chess and rummy online

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My 97 year old grandpa has a MacBook Pro and a few years back he was constantly on the phone with my mom trying to fix issues. We installed a Remote Desktop server so my mom could fix things quickly. After a visit we diagnosed the problem. Because of his poor motorskills, he was clicking and clicking-and-dragging things by accident. To mitigate this, we installed some software that locked the applications in the dock and got him a mouse with a ball you move with your thumb. The problems disappeared overnight.

<comment><USER25> You should get him an iPad or consider it. My grandpa who's 94 won't use anything else. That said he's probably used to the setup now.

<comment><USER14> My grandmother (100) just phoned me using FaceTime on her iPad. I find this insanely cool. She was born during World War 1, experienced World War 2 and is now able to enjoy modern technology to get in touch with her family. The only issue she has is accidentally touching the screen.

<comment><USER26> There is a setting for that in iOS. It's somewhere in accessibility

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I did this for my Mum about 6 years ago.

These days she doesn't buy a computer unless it will "run that minty thing".

I pretty much don't have any tech support calls from her anymore, I think a couple in 5 years and one of those was her knocking the video cable out with a hoover.

I just install Mint based on LTS and forget about it.

<comment><USER28> I did the same with my parents-in-law. The best thing with mint is it has very similar interface to windows (they were using windows XP previously). So I didn't need to explain anything, the icons just became green, chrome icon became blue and Firefox icon was the same. And nowadays they can even play some of my (even windows only) steam games like zuma or peggle deluxe. When I meet them I do an upgrade and that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to install Linux on any computer I could find 10 years ago. Friends, family, fellow students, college labs (yes!) and had almost the Linux snob but I learned the same thing. Some fairly non-technical people I introduce to Linux are still using Ubuntu to this day and they actually feel totally lost when they have to use a Windows computer. They feel like pulling their hair when they have to use a Windows computer for some reason.

I've since calmed down and don't "preach" it anymore because of the "support calls" as I don't have a ton of free time and energy I had 10 years ago but I can totally relate to OP. Once I set a laptop up with Ubuntu and install apps that people need, they go without asking for help for _years_. Only issues people used to call me for were when they had to access documents that Ubuntu wasn't able to deal with properly like MS Office docs or old CDs with auto- play apps. Better broadband speeds almost completely fixed that problem on it's own.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was going to comment why not get them an iPad, but that would be a big change all at once. I like your approach of slowly introducing them to the new software they'd be running on Ubuntu on their Windows 10 system. That way they get used to all the new programs and the final switch to Ubuntu is pretty much a non-event. Smart! So smart that I don't think transitioning them to an iPad would be that easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> The iPad way could also work quite well, but as my dad does a lot of writing he needs a keyboard :D

<comment><USER31> iPads have decent keyboard cases now. I considered getting one to replace my laptop last month but decided against it because it's not really viable for coding yet.

<comment><USER32> IMO, those keyboards are ok for some quick notes, but for anything longer, its going to give you issues (unless you have tiny hands).

<comment><USER31> I'm doubly glad I didn't go that route then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I switched my dad over to Chrome OS and never looked back. Now he tells all of this fiends to do the same thing because it's so much simpler. I really wish there was a better open source alternative because Google is evil these days but...

<comment><USER34> Yes, I think the ChromeBook idea is probably the best "computer as managed appliance" for our older relatives these days, BUT I really would prefer to get the OS from a company that didn't have so much interest in surveilling and managing society.

<comment><USER35> It's a bit of a chore, but you can switch off surveillance on Chromebooks through a series of configuration changes:

[https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/keep-google-spying- kids-c...](https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/keep-google-spying-kids- chromebook)

Combine with the usual DuckDuckGo, Apple Maps/OpenStreetMap, Posteo, uBlock Origin, and friends, and you have a pretty good maintenance-free privacy solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I also tried to.

The first thing they did on my absence was having a local PC store install XP again on it, because they couldn't use any of the software for their devices.

Nowadays they just use Windows and I am confident any local PC store will take care of their issues, instead of having me deal with them.

<comment><USER36> The article mentions that first you check how they use the computer, transition them to free software apps, after that transition to Linux. To check if their hardware works you can use a Live session, check the video, sound, network,printer.scanner etc

<comment><USER13> That doesn't work for stuff they buy on their own, which was what happened on my case.

Additionally any dude at the local PC store can help with configuration issues during warranty.

Or when their network goes tits up and the calldesk from the network provider only has support scripts for Windows or macOS.

<comment><USER36> For configuration you can help them with TeamView or something similar, usually parents don't go and buy printers or video cars without asking you if you are the one that is more technical.

But if you already ton't help them cleaning Windows and instead sending them to a store then sure let them continuing use Windows.

I am a Linux user and Free software supporter but I would never try to switch someone that is happy with his system, I am lazy and I hate taking responsibility for the system. (as an example a friend of mine fixed someone PC by reinstalling Windows but the sound would not work because of missing drivers (he did not had internet do find drivers) and he was suspecting of stealing the sound card or breaking the sound somehow... so yeah if you don't care send them to a store)

<comment><USER13> Exactly because I care to have a life outside work, and don't want them to have to depend on someone located 3000 km away, that I rather have them going to the local PC store.

Actually, yes my parents do buy stuff on their own, or by talking with friends of theirs, to whom Linux is that strange thing that some "university guys" use.

And to make it clear, it isn't a random PC store that does dirty tricks, just like many random car repair shops happen to do, rather something proper.

<comment><USER36> That is fine, I completely agree, you are not the "target" of this article, I would do the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > It is not FOSS, but I did install google chrome as it was the easiest for > watching netflix

I haven't had to do tech support for my parents on this, but I find that the best and easiest way to do streaming media is via a set-top box like Roku or Fire TV. The interface is simple and you'd probably rather be watching on your TV than your monitor anyway.

</comment><comment><USER37> When it comes to parents, a 'tech support call' is not just a tech support call, it's a chance for them to talk to their kids.

<comment><USER38> So this comes down to "After I switched my parents to Linux, they don't want to talk to me any more"...

<comment><USER39> Sometimes elimination of "technical difficulties" greatly reduces time spent together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really would like to do the same. My father is always complaining about Windows problems that just don't happen with Mint/Ubuntu, and my mom has an machine that's too weak and old to run windows properly.

The one thing that prevent me to do that is that they use their computer for work. While I'm certain that I wouldn't have any problem doing their job with Linux, they ask me "can you absolutely guarantee that I'll be able to open and edit any Word document and that it'll look the same when I send it? Or that I won't have any problem with video conferencing?"

Well... No. I'm fairly certain, but I can't take the responsability in case I'm wrong

<comment><USER41> I can guarantee you that there is no equivalent to word on Linux. All compatible office suites display word documents differently, and none come close to feature parity if we're talking about advanced macros and similar.

There is no alternative to Windows If they need Microsoft office for work... Or a VM just to run that shitty application.

Same applies to video conferencing software. If he is forced to use a specific tool, he'll probably be be plain out of luck. Most can't host the conferences from Linux.

Thankfully, most people don't need word or one specific brand of video conferencing software... So using Linux would still be an option to a lot of people

<comment><USER42> > no equivalent

...

> _that shitty application_

Pick one!

<comment><USER41> you clearly didn't understood the point i was trying to make.

I don't like Word and thankfully, don't need it myself. I'm perfectly fine with word.office.com and google docs, as I neither need nor want the advanced features. I also don't mind if the document has an occasionally entirely different layout and sometimes even an entirely broken one.

If you are forced to use the doc/docx formats and need to share these files with other people, you'll be forced to use Microsoft Office and by extension Windows. There is no viable alternative.

all alternatives only work if you only need to produce PDFs and don't need to collaboratively edit said doc/docx

and exactly the same applies to the video conferencing tools. If you can choose your own, appear.in works fine from linux for example.

If you need to use Ciscos or SAPs (for example) video conferencing tools, you'll be plain out of luck on linux, unless you're fine just joining other peoples sessions (never hosting one yourself)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This part is critical:

1) Sit down with your folks and talk trough their daily usage of their computer (Please be not so arrogant to think you already know it all)

As technologists this all comes easy to us and it is easy to forget what everyday computer usage means.

<comment><USER44> sometimes even double clicking has to be discussed

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I did the same thing a while back, except that I used Fedora because everything in Ubuntu crashed constantly on their old hardware and half the drivers wouldn't work. When their old Dell finally died, they decided to get a new one and asked me which they should get. I pointed them at the previous gen XPS (that still had USB-A ports) and they bought one with Ubuntu on it out of the box without asking questions and don't appear to know the difference (they did ask me if I could change the trash icon back to the old one, because they didn't like how "blue" the new one was… but that was a minor change compared to my dads work machine being upgraded to Windows 10 so I think they're okay with it for now).

So far they seem happy with it; hopefully more laptops ship with Ubuntu or similar in the future.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have sent my father (who I no longer interact with) and my mother, a laptop with ubuntu installed. I have not had to support that thing for 5 years. it just runs. no updates, no virus scan ads. Its been amazing. i installed VLC player and firefox. They are living the life being "connected"

<comment><USER47> No updates for 5 years including security updates?

<comment><USER46> No updates at all. Its not my problem and I have expressed the dangers. Family situation prevents this kind of support and they wont stop using it. No issues at all. My fiance's aunt on the other hand (using windows) has had to call me frequently for virus/slow down/connecting printers etc.Its been a pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I always thought a good line for Canonical to get into would be to release a "Granny-buntu" distro that was super-locked down that grandkids could set up for their elders once and then ideally have a few easily identified launchers on the desktop that would launch with sensible defaults, and nothing else.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could do this yourself, by setting a root account for your admin work and an unprivileged account for your parents.

With that setup is not so easy to nuke things over. (But a backup is still important :D)

<comment><USER49> An unprivileged account can still do stuff like accidentally hide the toolbar or delete some shortcut to an application. The machine still boots, but it's effectively unusable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> My nitpick is about some of the inconsistencies. You said that you got them accustomed to Firefox and LibreOffice, and then you turned around and installed Chrome and MS Office in Wine. Does that mean they didn't take well to the new apps, and your user training method wasn't entirely successful?

<comment><AUTHOR> They use firefox as main browser, but for using DRM content I found Chrome to be the easier solution.

They worked their way to LibreOffice, but regarding spell- and grammar- checking LibreOffice really sucks. As my dad does professional writing it was just not enough.

<comment><USER51> (disclaimer I never used Chrome) What's the problem with Firefox and Netflix? I never had an issue?

<comment><USER52> I don't remember details but I also had major problems there, must have been two years ago, in the summer. Updating the needed plugins stopped working for some reason. Can't comment on current state as I haven't used Netflix on Linux for quite a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The best part is when they get that call from a scammer claiming that something is wrong with their windows installation and it dawns on them how obvious the scam is.

<comment><USER54> And even if they still think it's Windows by the time they get to the 'download this remote access client' stage they won't be able to run the exe and the scammer will probably give up on them.

<comment><USER55> Unless you've installed Wine....

<comment><USER54> Depends if Wine supports the software.

And an easier solution, don't install WINE!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I switched my family to elementaryOS and Google docs. It was more than enough for their needs. I can't remember the last time anyone in my family used Windows or MacOS, and I don't think they miss either.

</comment><comment><USER57> I pushed my dad to get an 27" iMac a few years ago. I haven't heard of them since. I hope they are still alive.

</comment><comment><USER58> I too have an anecdote...

I am a family friend to a older couple, and for reasons I don't want to discus, the wife who was doing all the needed things on the computer like paying the bills, checking the bank balance, checking emails, printing, etc.; and suddenly now at the age of 72 he needed to learn to do those things.

It was not easy, especially because there is nobody who can teach you how to pay your bills, and if you want to pay a bill of say 8 EUR, you need to pay a fee of 10 EUR if you go to the bank in Sweden and do it there.

He had an old Toshiba laptop which was not usable anymore (that is why they bought a new laptop some years ago which his wife took with her), so I installed a lightweight Ubuntu version on it, installed Thunderbird and Firefox and connected the printer. It took quite many times for me to show him how to log in into the bank account and how to pay the bills, and he still struggles with it sometimes, but at least the OS itself is not hindering him in doing what he needs to do. There are basically two icons when he opens the computer and then he opens the browser and writes the bank name into the search field and then google shows him the website so he can log in and do the thing.

</comment><comment><USER59> I've solely been using Linux as a workstation at home and work for about 12 years now. I used to use Gentoo on both and then switched to Arch, mainly to save my lap from melting and speed up updating.

When we got wifey her first laptop about 10 years ago, I naturally put Windows 7 on it - it was what she expected. I've also been a Windows (and NetWare 8) sysadmin for rather a longer time than Linux. It was OK (Windows 7) but the MS updates were a pain (slow) and I had problems with the GPU drivers and I had to keep on finding updates for each package/app installed. The GPU driver thing was unusual to me but happened and this was wifeys only machine and hence it was a thing.

I binned Win 7 in a final fit of pique. I backed it up and turned it into a VM (just in case) and installed Arch on the physical machine. That was three laptops ago. Each time I back it up using Clonezilla and dump it back on the next one and extend the file system to fill the new, bigger disc.

To update her laptop I ssh into it, run the update routine (aurman -Syu) whilst she is using it and schedule a reboot late at night. Normally, she does not even notice except that I do mention I'm doing it and to save open files (OK .

The reason I use a rolling distro by choice for workstations is because it is always up to date and there are no discontinuities in the lifecycle. I do not use a rolling distro for my servers (any more) for them I generally use LTS Ubuntu releases.

All my Linux (and FreeBSD) boxes update everything when updated and they do it quickly and without much fuss. My Windows and Apples do not update everything. They need each and every add on updated separately. That takes ages and you need to know that something is actually installed.

A FOSS box updates everything on an update ... everything.

</comment><comment><USER60> I got fed up with being the family windows support guy. It was really bad when my wife's laptop could not do basic DHCP correctly at $dayjob-1 office. She and daughter had problems with printing, networking, security ... it was horrible.

I gave them a few options at the laptop replacement cycle. I said you can do either Linux or Mac, I didn't care which. Mac had always worked well in laptop format for me, though my primary machine has been a linux desktop for about 15 years. I knew both would work without problem.

I gave my wife my mac laptop for a week, and she used it. Then I had her play with the linux desktop. I asked her which one she liked better. She opted for Mac. As did my daughter.

Just replaced the first one for wife, and daughter had to buy a new one for college anyway. So far, 1 problem on wifes old mac, which turned out to be a hardware problem with the wifi card. Quickly fixed, and pretty much no problems since then.

Though I have to help them do system updates.

Either Mint or Mac. Both work very well. I even have mint working on my work Mac.

</comment><comment><USER15> Switched my whole family on Linux 15+ years ago, call for support went down dramatically maybe 95% now versus then. There was a few hiccups along the way to find a suitable distro, dropping ubuntu was a _huge_ improvement in this.

Most recent major issue is when Mozilla decided that they would remove support for ALSA with mentioning it in changelog on a ESR release and suddenly there was no sound in online videos and I had to scramble to replace firefox on a dozen of computers.

Almost all computers can be remotely administered over a secure connection, they have automated backups and most have unattended upgrade.

Issue arise when KDE releases half baked stuff and changes the way things worked, Mozilla messes firefox some more and systemd is being systemd. Once in while there is this family member who is too clueless/proud to admit he messed up who broke something or did not find way something obvious.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is a very minor nitpick, but you do have some spelling errors in there. The one I noticed however is the word:

save/saver instead of safe/safer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that info! Yes I am native german speaker, so I appreciate your help here :D

<comment><USER62> Also not a native Markdown speaker I see :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I would have switched to Chromebook, based on the usage pattern.

<comment><USER64> I switched my mother to Linux years ago and it was much better for her than Windows. These days, though, Chromebooks are even better since they are essentially Linux and much more foolproof than a general purpose Linux distro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Dad has a really shitty Toshiba laptop (previously running Windows 10), barely uses it, but it was clearly infected with something. Weird alerts at all hours of the night over its speakers saying that a virus was detected. Has had a Norton subscription for years, but hasn't really done any good. My Dad was constantly complaining about not being able to log in (though I suspect he was really forgetting his password).

Switched him over to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had to fight with some driver issues for the wireless card, but so far he's had no complaints.

</comment><comment><USER66> Related aside, what's the best way to run Microsoft Office on a Linux box? My ideal setup would be Linux for everything but Office programs, which I'd prefer to run in a Windows environment.

</comment><comment><USER67> It seems that for every Linux discussion on HN there's always user spreading some kind of FUD based on personal experiences from 2011.

Glad to read so many success comments on this discussion BTW.

<comment><USER68> Dissent and sharing opinions and experience is not a campaign of 'FUD'.

There is no cabal ganging up to share misinformation on Linux.

Please give more credit to those you disagree with and assume their intentions are like, I presume yours are: to share your opinion and experiences.

<comment><USER67> I don't want to engage with no one in particular.

And You are right, giving Your opinion does not mean it's FUD.

But if You pay attention, you'll see that for some folks here Linux it's never an option or solution they will take and are pretty vocal about it.

<comment><USER69> And by the same token; in fact on this thread, there are many that feel the same way towards macOS and Windows. Plenty of anecdotes right here that could be construed as FUD. I use all 3 platforms frequently and I can tell you that they are all as "bad" as one another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> My dad needed to play a video file sent to him by a lawyer recently. I assume it wasn't QuickTime compatible.

Well, he couldn't get in touch with me and installed some crazy video player he paid for on the App Store. I was shocked.

Literally, the first result when I search for "video player Mac" on Google is something for VLC.

Why is it so hard for less technically knowledgeable users to find reliable, spam/malware/marketing-bullshit free software?

<comment><USER71> Because the market's advertising is geared toward informing them about the malware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I switched my Dad to Linux around 2012, mainly because I couldn't talk him into spending $2000 on a MacBook Pro (he needed a big screen due to vison issues). I love MacBooks for relatives because the Apple Store can and will help... Chromebooks are nice, too because they just don't have issues.

</comment><comment><USER73> I remember years ago I setup a XFCE desktop on my Arch Linux to my mom, since I was tired to fixing the problems that my PC got every time she wanted to use it.

I just explained: this is "the internet" (Firefox), this is Word (OpenOffice.org Writter), this is Excel (OpenOffice.org Calc), everything else you can come to me and ask (I lived with her).

This did reduce the number of reinstallations I had to do, and I don't remember she ever asking for some actual problem (mostly some basic questions).

Nowadays she only uses her smartphone and it is much easier to avoid problems. Since she doesn't blind install apps before asking me if they're safe too, her smartphone is clean.

</comment><comment><USER74> A NUC-like machine + Linux has worked wonders as a computer for an older family member of mine. We ran into a plethora of update and performance issues with Win10. Installed Linux and never looked back and it's been far more stable.

</comment><comment><USER75> I also switched my parents off Windows to Ubuntu for a while (when I used Linux desktop myself and before OS X). It worked pretty well and didn't cause them too much pain. Subsequently of course I got them to switch to Apple and that's even better, primarily because they don't have to feel that they're using some weird thing their child encouraged them to use. Avoids the Windows nonsense of computer getting slower and slower all the time, and malware. The only thing I've failed to help them with is the baffling Apple stuff surrounding iCloud and storage on multiple devices.

</comment><comment><USER76> I installed Ubuntu on our spare laptop for general web browsing and day to day use. My wife used it for about a year. Not a week went by when I didn't hear about something not working. Granted, it's probably because I didn't spare enough time to set things up like our network printer and installing Office via Wine (she wasn't impressed with the FOSS alternative). I finally bit the bullet, bought a Windows licence and haven't looked back since.... Some things I'd be happy to put myself through, but would avoid inflicting on my non-techy family members.

</comment><comment><USER77> I got my parents and mother-in-law to get a chromebook. Never had a question.

<comment><USER78> My mom has been on a chromebook for years and I only occasionally get easy help questions. For simple web browser usage it doesn't get much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Convinced my mom to get an iPad Pro, and a keyboard case. She has never been happier.

My dad is a tech savvy, but now that he travels 80% a year for retirement, he prefers an ipad as well (even gave me his macbook pro).

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm curious how it actually saved you headache and support calls? Your general process of switching them over was well thought out, but I can't see how this really helps either of you.

In my experience Linux requires a lot more command-line tweaking and such to get basic things working, but then again that could be for my more advanced use cases.

So the only benefit I can see is that it is more privacy focused and safer than Windows, but at the cost of a limited application selection (through the Ubuntu App Store at least).

<comment><USER51> There are tons of people using linux distros who don't even know command line exists. One time I was helping my friend to do something. She studies design and is basically computer illiterate. Somehow she was using Ubuntu, not sure how that happened but she claimed to be very happy. Anyway, the problem was super simple, but as an i3 archlinux user I literally never use GUI so I fired a command line and solved it in one line. She was perplexed and wasn't really sure what just happened. She didn't even know what command line is. Anyway, to be more helpful, I also managed to solve the problem by clicking buttons...

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I did the same with my parents. At first, it worked good enough. But soon the support calls started again, and they shifted from "my PC is slow" to "how to I connect X to my PC", being "X" anything from "printers" to "Point&shoot cameras" to "my iPhone so I can transfer my photos".

Unpopular opinion: I just switched them again, this time to Mac. 0 support calls since then.

</comment><comment><USER82> 90% of the issues when it comes to tech and my parents is dealing with accounts(aka setting up accounts and keeping track of usernames and passwords).

<comment><USER83> I can relate to this. I tried, unsuccessfully, to teach my parents to use a password manager (e.g., KeepassXC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I've done this for my parents for close to 10 years now. Been able to give them a stable gui environment over the years going from Gnome2 to MATE. Mozilla Suite to Seamonkey to combo Firefox/Seamonkey email client.

Really, the biggest issue is that websites will complain about seamonkey/firefox, saying things like "your browser not supported", "please upgrade your browser", etc.

</comment><comment><USER85> I got all my grandparents iPads. The only tech support calls I get is when they forget their Apple ID passwords. Thankfully, I know them all.

<comment><USER86> till you're on vacation and they go to the apple store and they "helpfully" set a secure password on the device. Happened to my mom. She doesn't always remember to write things down. Now I'm on a 3 way call with apple trying to get the password reset for an hour then talking her through resetting it on her several devices. They wouldn't let her set what she thought the password was.

<comment><USER87> Yes, recent iOS updates tried to force people like my parents to have passwords or logins that are too complex and simply unnecessary for them. If you use iPad in your own home, there's no reason to "authenticate" on every open (my parents surely don't want/can't perform the fingerprinting every time -- not to mention that if the device prompt them to enter a new complex code they might even type in twice but they will never remember it, or be prepared to write it down first, the expect the device to "just work" and not to have to maintain some other external notice book with the access codes, and I fully understand that). It's not easy to match the security "requirements" and general "common" use.

The iPad of my parents (that they use mostly at home) seems to insist on more complex security procedures for my parents to watch the pictures of the kids than the procedures which secured the launch US nuclear missiles (the later had simply the code 00000000 [https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/) ).

Balancing the security and usability is hard.

<comment><USER86> Having done a security review on a photos app for a company with high customer trust, and knowing what people put in their photo shares... photo and document shares are one of the highest risk areas for people. I didn't know about this until the review but when it was pointed out to me, it's obvious that for some people having their photos stolen is massively worse than credit card fraud or other recoverable things. You can't get those docs and photos back.

However that means that you are right, it's nuclear launch code level security for everyone's photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Just want to say that Xubuntu remind me a lot of win7, and they're not even trying to be windows-ish! (.. at least not officially?)

<comment><USER89> Xfce in general reminds me a lot of WinXP - the _good_ parts of WinXP, of course. There's another thread at the time I'm writing, discussing what was good about the Win98 interface - WinXP kept a lot of that interface, and Xfce, LXDE, even MATE are rather reminiscent of it. I even find the GTK3 interface quite a bit cleaner than what we got with Windows 8/10.

(As an aside, I kinda expect Xfce, LXDE and MATE to converge in the near future. Now that essentially all of them are moving to GTK3, there seems to be very little reason for them not to standardize on a uniform set of underlying components and tools.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I did the same when I was at university and couldn't help my parents with computer on daily basis anymore. Looking back now, 14 years later - it was a very good decision. They mostly use the browser, some graphic programs and libre office, it doesn't really matter which system runs under that.

The've had some version of Kubuntu installed ever since.

</comment><comment><USER91> My parents use tablets for everything. Not sure what version of Linux would run on a tablet, and what tablet they should buy.

</comment><comment><USER92> It would be great if you could install Chromeos on any hardware. I guess Chromeboxes/books/bits are cheap enough.

<comment><USER93> You kinda can. e.g. [https://www.neverware.com/freedownload](https://www.neverware.com/freedownload)

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> > Show them the app store and tell them, whatever they install from there is > safe (so no viruses or something)

Is this generally true for Ubuntu? I'm not terribly familiar with it, but i was under the impression that vetting apps is a difficult problem in general.

</comment><comment><USER95> Eh... Spotify provides dedicated app for Linux users. No need to use Google Chrome for that.

</comment><comment><USER23> The easiest way to get out of support calls with family is to tell them you work in sales.

</comment><comment><USER96> I switched my mom from Windows to Linux years ago and have not had a single issue since. Actually, the only real issue I have is her distro is now so old it's well beyond LTS and I'll have to probably re-install to do any upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER97> Would love to switch myself but with a 4k XPS had all kinds of scaling issues and gave up which was a shame. Considering typical Linux user probably has cutting edge hardware was surprised how poorly 4k was handled.

<comment><USER98> I use Ubuntu mate on a 4k xps and it works quite nicely. There is a double dpi button in the tweak app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I first tried to switch family to LibreOffice but existing Office documents kept getting corrupted (especially complex spreadsheets). That was a deal breaker. Last attempt was as recent as last year

<comment><USER40> What about Google docs? I find that it does a great job

<comment><USER100> Google Docs seriously mangles ODF documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Funny how this is not true for mobile phones.

If your parents have an iphone they won't have any problem. My dad with android has a problem with spyware, or similar, once a week.

I gave him my old iphone 6, let's see....

</comment><comment><USER102> Awesome, I enjoyed a lot the article and found it to be the best guide on how to switch parents over to Linux :D

My fav part is cheating with SSD, made my day!

</comment><comment><USER103> Interestingly enough I just installed an ad blocker on the parents Windows 10 machine and I haven't had a support call since.

</comment><comment><USER104> This has been my experience as well.

So, background: I've maintained computers for various people close to me for maybe 6-7 years or so. A couple computers for my mom (laptop and desktop, with both replaced once or twice), two laptops for some younger cousins going through middle/highschool, a desktop for an aunt, and 2 of my girlfriend's laptops over the same period.

At first, I was very pessimistic about how well it would turn out. For my cousins, the thing that drove me to it was observing how overrun their computers were with viruses, adware, and spyware from all the .exe files they randomly downloaded which claimed to be games, to the point where their computers were more or less unusable (their fans would be blowing full speed and the whole thing overheating from the moment they started, it was kind of surreal). My mom had similar issues, though not quite as bad, mostly from email stuff. Over time, I grew a bit more confident in being able to manage this sort of thing, and now it's my default for this sort of situation.

So, some of the benefits I've noticed:

1\. It's a lot easier to dictate terminal commands over the phone or through email than to walk someone through gui operations. If the person struggles enough with computer stuff that they can't even manage with the help of 'user friendly' interfaces, optimizing for the ease with which you can trouble-shoot and fix things over the phone is a lot more practical than chasing after the lost cause of finding a friendly enough interface for them to manage on their own. You can write an important terminal command on a post-it-note next to their compute. You can attach a shell script to an email. Or, with a little bit of setup, you can just ssh into their machine remotely whenever they're having troubles to fix it from the comfort of your own home.

2\. It's very easy to set up a minimal, XP-ish interface where all of their needed programs are just right there in the start menu, and such that it's very hard for them to mess up their system such that that base level of functionality is impared.

3\. Runs well on fairly limited hardware.

Some general advice if you're considering doing the same:

1\. Keep a text-file with all the stuff you installed/changed on the persons computer so you can reproduce it easily in the future.

2\. This is more general advice, but have separate / and /home partitions, so you don't need to move their data back and forth if something happens to the OS.

3\. Look up issues with their machine and linux ahead of time before trying. It's not always a simple "you can't", sometimes you'll find out there's some firmware you need to install for their wifi to work properly etc.

4\. Figure out how much autonomy they should have over their machine. If you're sort of hoping for them to be able to choose and download software on their own, and be able to try to figure out menus to configure stuff, Ubuntu or Linux Mint might be a good choice. Otherwise, surprisingly, Debian might actually be easier for both of you. I've generally found Debian stable just has fewer surprises once it's set up, and you can for the most part just ignore it for years in a way that always seems to go badly when I try it with Ubuntu or Mint, thus lowering the burden on _you_ in maintaining it quite a bit (versus figuring out wtf happened with some random Ubuntu update, or troubleshoot for the umpteenth time how Mint screwed up apt). Decide whether they should actually have sudo privileges or not.

5\. Only do it if you're prepared to be their first contact when something happens, and conversely, make absolutely sure they know to contact you first whenever there's a problem. There's nothing more frustrating than a neighbor who thinks they're tech-savy poking in, only to 'fix' things by reinstalling windows, or convincing them they must have a 'virus' because they don't understand what they're looking at.

6\. MAKE SURE THE DEFAULT SAVE FORMAT FOR LIBREOFFICE IS doc NOT odf!

7\. It'll feel kind of icky, but make sure you have their root password written down on a piece of paper somewhere safe. They will never remember it, and if you give them a piece of paper with it on it and tell them "absolutely do not lose this", they will lose it. Also, more general, but pwqgen is a pretty great program for generating random passwords that are fairly easy to remember.

8\. Configure it to work with any home printers they need, and just set their expectations that they will not be able to figure out how to make other people's printers work with their computer. Configuring printers is a discount hell run by a counterfeit Satan.

9\. Make sure they have adblock on their browser.

<comment><USER105> All of these are great suggestions and comments! But, the funniest comment...

> Configuring printers is a discount hell run by a counterfeit Satan.

Genius!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> l1am0, did you consider abiword for a simpler word processor?

<comment><AUTHOR> I never worked with it, but will give it a try for my daily work (y)

Currently I use following setup for myself: LibreOffice + languagetool for spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'd probably install Google Chrome over Firefox by default.

Usually slightly better with compatibility as most developers target Chrome first and has Flash support for even the oldest of sites.

</comment><comment><USER106> My parents were on Human OS, never tried to switch them to Linux. Have I missed something?

</comment><comment><USER107> Obligatory read: [https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my- girlfr...](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends- grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero)

<comment><USER108> Not especially relevant, but funny!

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Gnu/Linux

</comment><comment><USER110> Skype is not mentioned on the page.

I guess, we live in different realities.

<comment><USER111> The only people I know that uses Skype are people working for large companies and they only use it because their employers tell them to.

I think it has to do with how your countries telcos developed. If phone calls a cheap, why would you care about Skype? WhatsApp, Telegram and other messaging services seem to be popular around the world, but, perhaps because SMS quickly became basically free here, everyone just use that.

<comment><USER112> Not in the US where I suspect a majority of HN readers come from.

<comment><USER113> I'd be interested to see numbers. I'd guess plurality, but not majority.

<comment><USER112> That would be interesting to a poll on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> > Do yourself a favor and use standard Ubuntu.

Do yourself a favor and use standard Debian. Honestly, I don't know why anyone bothers with Ubuntu anymore. It doesn't really add much over Debian except for it's shitty release cycle.

<comment><USER115> Ubuntu has non-free software enabled out of the box unlike Debian. To me this is a negative, but to some it could be the difference between their wifi working or not. It's not that this is hard to change, but if you're already planning to make changes right away, maybe it's not the best distro for your parents. I've taken a liking to some pretty niche distros in the last few years. GuixSD and Void in particular. I used Arch for a long time as well. I love these distros, but I'm not sure they're right for my parents. Maybe if I learned how to make a customized installer that would ship my configs and certain software out of the box I could go that route.

<comment><USER104> Eh, I think generally if you want to set up linux for a non-technical person, regardless you're going to need to personally spend a couple hours configuring and setting everything up for them initially, so the difference of editing sources.list and adding "main contrib non-free" to a couple lines is pretty minimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Years ago I suggested my bosses wife switch to a Mac after having to do endless tech support for her fucking the system up. She still managed to fuck up the Mac and ask for help. But I don't know Macs so I couldn't help.

After the 100th or so malware they got I told them very emphatically they should change their bank account info, knowing full well it would be a huge pain in the ass for them. Yes I was a dick, but they were stupid. And they stole 600k from the federal government.

</comment><comment><USER117> All of my tech support calls from family are about smartphones (both Android and iOS, but more for iOS, "what do you mean I can't do that?").

Well, and getting the email server switched to something more reliable than Gmail, but that's a business tech support call, technically.</comment>


An Android User's Take On Yesterday's iPhone News - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/an-android-users-take-on-yesterdays-iphone-news/

<comment><USER2>
      But I expected to walk out of San Francisco's Moscone
      Center yesterday longing for the next iPhone despite my
      current allegiance to Android. That didn't happen.

It did not happen, because it simply couldn't. After reading the article I cannot imagine _what_ could Apple offer to satisfy him it apart from shipping iPhone 4 with Android OS.

Really, if you dismiss all the good points as not so important, what's left? Rainbows and ponies?

He prefers Android, that's OK but Apple just cannot satisfy him then, no matter what they do. That's OK too, that's why we have a choice.

<comment><USER3> Apple saying their going to stop ruling the AppStore like a dictatorship and introducing an open-protocol voice chat that they could champion? It would definitely get a second look from me.

A higher density screen that is only slightly better than current Android phones, a lack luster multitasking architechture, video chat that ONLY works with other iPhone 4 users... not "game changing" in my opinion.

Facetime is the one that just bugs me. What is Jobs thinking? Why would you not call it iChat and allow it to work with desktop-iChat? Even then it would still be a joke. With Qik, any Android phone, or more important any phone period has the ability to communicate with other Qik users regardless of their phone. How does he expect Facetime to take off? Apple spearheading an open video chat platform would be ... cool. I still am not sure I would jump to the word "revolutionary".

Or is it just a sale gimmick?

<comment><USER4> > video chat that ONLY works with other iPhone 4 users...

Built on open formats and which they clearly said they were going to submit as an open protocol.

> Why would you not call it iChat and allow it to work with desktop-iChat?

because it's apparently not an IM application, and Skype will have to take care of that part.

> With Qik, any Android phone, or more important any phone period has the > ability to communicate with other Qik users regardless of their phone.

Uh not really, unless they've fixed the 20s lag (each way). And it's not like Qik can't update their iPhone client. You know, the one which already exists.

<comment><USER3> Feel free to ignore my criticism's of Facetime. I feel completely ignorant.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apples_biggest_news_vid...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apples_biggest_news_video_calling_as_open_standard.php)

Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a big advantage that the iPhone has over Android is that Apple is able to synchronize hardware and software development since it exists within the same company. I imagine Google works with handset vendors but there must be inherent inefficiencies in communicating across multiple companies. Apple can maintain a yearly drumbeat of putting out a polished product where the software and hardware dovetail nicely.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why that's an advantage? It's just another of Apple's control vices. The hardware of the phone functions independently of the software and vice versa. Maybe for things like fragmentation or updates it makes sense, but I don't really see Google putting on the brakes because they don't make the hardware. Ironically that's the very thing leading to the so called "fragmentation problem".

<comment><USER6> A good example is upgrading the quality of the iPhone video recording and simultaneously releasing iMovie to go with it. So you get a hardware upgrade and a much more practical way of using the hardware. For many people syncing videos off the phone and editing them on a PC (especially Windows) is just too much of a hassle. Android phones have had video this quality of video recording for months but don't have anything like iMovie which might make the hardware capabilities less appealing to someone. Another example is the front facing camera which you can presently get in the Sprint Evo. How many Android apps support switching camera sources? They're relying on Qik for video chat which has experienced major problems since the Evo's release. Who's accountable for that? Not Google, Not HTC, not even Sprint. They just throw the stuff out there and hope it works right. Hardware has to be accessible to people via software or it's just a geek fetish.

<comment><USER7> But in the land of pure unbundledness and light, the upcoming hardware improvements would have been made known to all simultaneously, and more than one group could have been making software for it. Possibly giving you more choice on the first day the hardware was available. So the thinking goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to say that I'll be very disappointed if the iPhone 4 comes with only 256MB of RAM. You would think the iPad experience would have taught them that 256MB is not enough RAM to accommodate the significantly increased amount of RAM needed to back the higher resolution display. It's a world of difference between my 3GS and the iPad, where the iPad can't seem to keep more than one page in memory at a time. It's really annoying.

I think the author is quite wrong in thinking that Android will have hardware parity in 4 months. For one, Apple has probably consumed all available supply for the display hardware. Not to mention the disconnect the author himself pointed out between software and hardware. Vendors are finalizing now the hardware that will be shipping in 4 months. It will be months before comparable hardware is spec'ed out, and 8-12 before it starts shipping. the 900 pixel OLED screens most Android handsets have is nowhere near comparable to the 900 pixel IPS LCD display.

<comment><USER9> >I have to say that I'll be very disappointed if the iPhone 4 comes with only 256MB of RAM

Be disappointed. They built the A4 SoC with 256MB of RAM, and that's what they're delivering.

>I think the author is quite wrong in thinking that Android will have hardware parity in 4 months

I would say that there is already hardware parity. An Evo 4G and a iPhone 4 have middling differences -- is 960 vertical pixels really that much huger than 800? No -- though the former has double the RAM. The Evo doesn't have the DPI, though it's humorous how important that suddenly has become (whereas previously the iPad was "gooorrrrrgeous" with it's very low DPI).

>the 900 pixel OLED screens most Android handsets have is nowhere near comparable to the 900 pixel IPS LCD display

You know it's weird how when Apple does something, suddenly it's considered superior. I keep reading people hilariously holding up IPS as some sort of ultra-tech compared to "inexpensive" OLED. It, of course, is absolutely wrong.

The iPhone's 800:1 contrast is _terrible_ , but that's what you get with LCD. All IPS adds to the plate is better off-axis viewing (not that it really matters), but that's a non-problem with OLED.

I'll take a SuperAMOLED any day of the week. It beats LCD on virtually every metric.

Apple does make the most of what they do have though. See that Android prior to 2.2 had horrific banding in the Gallery app because it did ridiculous processing of the color bands, completely undermining the massive colour capabilities of the AMOLED screen.

<comment><USER10> Few quick notes while I'm sitting in class:

\- 960 is 20% bigger than 800, and that's not accounting for the fact that the screen is much smaller, which makes a big difference in DPI.

\- the argument that the iPad didn't have as good a DPI as an Evo and people didn't complain then is a straw man. The iPhone 4's display is clearer more impressive, numerous media outlets have said it's the best display they've ever seen.

\- Have you tried using an OLED screen? You can't read it at all in sunlight. I know LCDs aren't amazing, but I can at least see what's on the screen and interact with it. maybe I don't know enough about newer OLED technology though, I haven't had a chance to play with an Evo

\- That's the problem with Android, or maybe their development team: they simply don't have the resources or smarts to focus on specific features of the OS. They couldn't get the color band processing right on a first-party device until 6 months after launch!

<comment><USER9> >the argument that the iPad didn't have as good a DPI as an Evo and people didn't complain then is a straw man.

The iPad display was widely regarded as gorgeous, and suitable for a great eReader where DPI really matters most. It has 130DPI, and is meant to be used at the same sort of distances as a smart phone.

So why didn't a "retina" (honest - gag) display matter for the iPad? Is the iPad junk now?

In reality the 960x640 display was necessitated by the very limited adaptability of iPhone applications to varying screen densities. They couldn't just pixel double if they went to 800x480, for instance, but their hand was pretty much forced to double each axis.

All I'm pointing out is that the sudden demand for pixel density rings a bit hollow.

>Have you tried using an OLED screen? You can't read it at all in sunlight.

The Evo actually uses an LCD.

And yes, I use an AMOLED every day. It is _horrible_ in the sun, and the car dock is almost a joke because it is essentially unusable. That's why Samsung (who makes many of the parts for the iPad and iPhone, as a side note) made SuperAMOLED coming on the Galaxy S, among other models. It solves the visibility in the sun issue, although it's quite a bit more expensive of a part than going with an old school LCD.

<comment><USER8> The SuperAMOLED display is supposed to mitigate the sun factor, so it will be interesting to see how it works. I'm sure Apple has evaluated that tech, but chooses not to use it for some reason whether it's cost, availability or simply the fact that it's not yet good enough.

Personally, when I use the iPhone in bed with my glasses off and I surf or watch something, I see pixels. I can't wait to see how the new screen performs.

You characterize the fact that they went super high resolution to accommodate existing apps as a bad thing? How many other companies would have chosen the cheap and easy way out? I say most. This is one example of Apple's focus on the consumer that separates it from the competition.

<comment><USER9> >I'm sure Apple has evaluated that tech, but chooses not to use it for some reason

The reason is almost certainly limited supply. If you want to sell millions upon millions of a device, and the premium part has limited supply, you simply don't use the premium part. The less obvious reason is that OLEDs simply don't come with that high of a density, so Apple would have had to increase the screen size or go with a lower resolution which, as mentioned in the following point, they didn't want to do (and it isn't to achieve some bogus "retina" quality).

>You characterize the fact that they went super high resolution to accommodate existing apps as a bad thing?

It's bad in that its covering a mistake. The iPhone SDK should have had density-independent pixels from the outset -- geez we've known about this problem for years -- but it didn't. It was remarkably shortsighted, and still they merely duct tape it.

>How many other companies would have chosen the cheap and easy way out?

Apple chose the easy way out, so not really sure what you're saying there. They went with a basic LCD display so I doubt the cost is all that great.

<comment><USER11> > In reality the 960x640 display was necessitated by the very limited > adaptability of iPhone applications to varying screen densities. They > couldn't just pixel double if they went to 800x480, for instance, but their > hand was pretty much forced to double each axis. > It's bad in that its > covering a mistake. The iPhone SDK should have had density-independent > pixels from the outset -- geez we've known about this problem for years -- > but it didn't. It was remarkably shortsighted, and still they merely duct > tape it.

Clearly shows you know nuts about the iPhone SDK.

<comment><USER9> Sure would be mighty good of you to clear this up for us then. I look forward to it.

I know enough about the iPhone SDK to know it is very physical pixel-centric. Contrast this to the Android SDK that is very pixel agnostic (which is how it isn't a big deal that one device has 854x480 and another has 480x320. The former simply looks better. Just as it isn't a big deal if aspect ratios significantly change, whereas in iPhone world developers had to rush to make iPad specific apps, just as now they'll have to make iPhone 4 variants if they don't want simple pixel doubling.

Nonetheless, I look forward to your clarification.

<comment><USER11> iPhone SDK doc: "In iPhone OS there is a distinction between the coordinates you specify in your drawing code and the pixels of the underlying device. When using native drawing technologies such as Quartz, UIKit, and Core Animation, you specify coordinate values using a logical coordinate space, which measures distances in points. This logical coordinate system is decoupled from the device coordinate space used by the system frameworks to manage the pixels on the screen."

I am not familiar with Android SDK. Do you mean you can write one UI code that runs on all Android devices irregardless of their screen resolution? Such as on Nexus one and a tablet running Android?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This about sums up my opinion of iPhone 4. My N1 is still a wonderful phone and for the features I use, I still don't think I'd want to trade it (back) in for an iPhone just yet.

I think the key phrase there is "for the features I use," however. If I were younger and cared more about video chat, I might be wanting to seriously hop on this phone.

I still think that since Android 2.1 was released the momentum in terms of software development is still in Android's favor, while Apple's last development cycle seems to be all about making a seriously slick looking piece of hardware.

<comment><USER13> Well, in Australia we've had video chat over 3G for about 6 years now. Everyone has a 3G phone (it's standard) and everyone can use video chat. The thing is, people don't. I've never once received a video call apart from when we all first got them and there was novelty in calling a guy who was sitting 2 metres away from you.

Video chat is awkward because it means your contact is on speakerphone so everyone can hear you, and I don't really need to see who I'm talking to anyway.

<comment><USER14> > Video chat is awkward because it means your contact is on speakerphone so > everyone can hear you,

About that: You can use an earpiece.

<comment><USER13> I assume you can do this with other phones too, though I've never tried it. The video call quality you get over 3G is fairly poor too - iPhone's implementation seems to have much better quality based on the promo videos. However, it still has some major flaws - only to other iPhones (for the moment) and only when you're on Wifi - that requires quite a bit of coordination to make sure the person on the other end is ready for your call.

I honestly don't see this catching on - the trend I see is away from actual human interaction (SMS, Facebook updates and IM) rather than towards it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One pretty disappointing thing from my perspective was no-iTunes related announcements. Using iTunes as your generalized device sync hub is terrible and Apple hasn't given any hints on what it plans to do about it.

The cloud sync stuff Google showed off was impressive and that's their strength. Apple has a lot of catching up to do and they need to get to it pretty soon.

<comment><USER16> It is pretty rad. I had to swap out my Nexus One a while back and upon logging in to my new device all my contacts, applications and even wallpapers were downloaded automatically. There were a few hiccups like missing custom ringtones but overall the syncing works as advertised.

<comment><USER15> I was also pretty impressed with the upgrades. Froyo was 44mb, installed in about 5 mins and kept all settings/data.

Contrast that with the iPhone update I did from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3 - first a huge 300+ MB download, then erasing the device, then overwriting everything and finally syncing back countless gigs of data. ugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good article.

I do wish that my Droid had a video camera on the same side of the phone as the screen for video Skype, but that will probably be in a later release.

</comment><comment><USER9> A balanced read.

One surprising thing about the iPhone (and about the iPad) is that it still only comes with 256MB of RAM. They seem to accomplish a heck of a lot with that, yet still that is very constricted once you start talking about multitasking and the like.

It is a pretty major update, but really the Giz leaks among others did take some steam out of it. It isn't as big of news simply because it isn't news - we long knew about it.

<comment><USER18> I've heard this 256MB limit that you see on all the smartphones now is because the ARM A8 architecture they are based on only has 256MB of RAM on the die. I think this is the biggest limitation that these devices have right now. I love my iPad, but it kills me to have the occasional "crash to desktop" just because Safari ran out of memory.

My prediction - next year we'll see A9 based smartphones/tablets with 512MB-1GB of RAM and these memory starvation issues will be a thing of the past. It certainly doesn't bode well in the short term for early adopters though.

The post PC era is upon us - too bad the hardware (and software) is still in it's infancy.

<comment><USER3> You act as if "first movers" ever don't get screwed by Apple. I understand that technology is constantly evolving and that by time I buy a phone, a better one is being produced, but I _can't_ shake the feeling that Apple schedules their releases and features in ways that maximize their revenue. I suppose I can't really blame them for that. It just makes the whole thing seem less "magical" the way some act like Apple is just the most innovative and new company in the whole wide world.

Also, I still can't help but laugh at this moniker of the "post PC era". The rest of us are still doing real work in Windows, Mac, Linux and the smartphone/tablets are accessories.

<comment><USER18> Did you read what I wrote? I get screwed every time my iPad crashes to desktop because Safari ran out of memory. It's still a great device though and the out of memory situation is rare, so I keep using it.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why you feel that my post is in anyway attacking you or the scenario that you've repeated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's beautiful hardware and beautiful software. I'll take functionality any day though.

This is the divide. I have two geeky friends. One is OCD and well dressed. He likes things to work smoothly and look good. He is _very_ happy with his iPhone and is excited to upgrade. My other friend is like me, he loves to hack and is a fan of Google's services.

Google needs to put Matias Duarte to work. Gallery3D is beautiful, there's no reason those GUI elements couldn't be more standard/accessible to the avg dev.

<comment><USER19> > _"He likes things to work smoothly and look good. He is very happy with his > iPhone and is excited to upgrade. My other friend is like me, he loves to > hack and is a fan of Google's services."_

Can we not have both? I don't buy the dichotomy that a hacker-friendly device must be jerky and ugly. IMHO what Android lacks is integration - the odd fusion of hardware and software that Apple seems uniquely able to pull off. With the exception of the Nexus One (for probably obvious reasons), every Android phone I've used feels very discretely disconnected between software and hardware.

<comment><USER3> Oh I didn't mean to imply that we can't have both. I completely hope that Matias (the UI/UX guy from Palm that everyone juices over) can come in and beautify android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just wait until the Creative Labs Zii EGG device gets released and updated a revision or two .. this thing kicks ass and has had all the key features of iPhone 4 already - HD video, front-facing camera, etc. Okay, its not a phone (yet) but it sure does have the chance to steal a bit of thunder .. c'mon Creative, release it already!</comment>


Startup idea: testimoniac.com - <AUTHOR>

A company that gathers and beautifully presents customer testimonials. <comment><USER2> What do you want, a critique? Input? because it's hard to do anything with simply a one sentence description and a url.

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't be an issue here then: there are nine words.

<comment><USER2> Whoops! One sentence. Correcting.

<comment><USER3> now my reply is like a one sentence explanation of a nonexistent website.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


25 Billion App Countdown - Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/itunes/25-billion-app-countdown/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if I could write a bot to game this in time. Pick an app with a known size and see how much the counter changes in the time it takes to download it.</comment>


Gimli: a cross-platform permutation - <AUTHOR> https://gimli.cr.yp.to/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a crypto person, I have no idea what this is. To me "permutation" refers to the mathematical concept, an "ordered arrangement of the elements of a set". It's far from obvious to me why anyone would publish such a thing.

The disambiguation page doesn't list anything relevant either.

<comment><USER3> Also, not a crypto person so someone correct me if I'm wrong, But. The algorithm presented is essentially a way of determining the next 384bit number in a sequence given the last one. If that sequence contains every 384bit number before forming a cycle then it defines a mathematical permutation of the 384bit numbers.

This sort of process is used in e.g. pseudo-random number generators. Naively, you can for can keep 384bits internal state then at each step output the lowest 64bits as your pseudo-random number.

<comment><USER2> Funny, I've implemented such a thing before. I would call it a permutation iterator.</comment></comment></comment>


Building websites in Python with Flask - <AUTHOR> http://maximebf.com/blog/2012/10/building-websites-in-python-with-flask/#.UHc5pLTc3w4 <comment><USER2> Great tutorial, a good level of detail too.

The only other thing i'd mention for Flask newbies would be the excellent debugger facility in Werkzeug (effectively a part of Flask).

I lied, one more reference - the guy that wrote flask (bit of a genius, also has a bunch of other _excellent_ libraries) has shared slides from some talks he's given, they're really worth a read too: <http://lucumr.pocoo.org/talks/>

Bucket list 2013, attend a talk by Armin Ronacher.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the interactive debugger in Werkzeug[1] is fantastic! I couldn't tell you how many times I've deliberately put "asdf.asdf" in a method to deliberately throw an exception so that I can play around inside the debugger.

One more Flask thing: Flask-Login[2] is a popular way of managing sessions.

1\. Werkzeug is the WSGI utility library upon which Flask is built. If you do enough stuff in Flask, you'll probably end up learning something about it, which is okay, because the documentation — like Flask's — is excellent.

2\. <http://packages.python.org/Flask-Login/>

<comment><USER4> Stick this in your app and you can call the debugger however you wish by customizing the function name, and it will only throw in debugger mode (in case you forget it):

      from flask import current_app

      def asdf():
          assert current_app.debug == False, "You just called debug!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish more people would contribute information on using Flask at a larger scale. Everyone and their brother has written a basic tutorial outlining how to get up and running with Flask. This is a GREAT post and I do not want to demean it ... however I think that a lot of this can be gleaned from following along with the docs and experimenting with Flask in general.

I'd really love to see/hear some stories of others using Flask at a slightly larger scale. For example ... did your startup build their REST API in Flask? Sure, people say it's possible and outline a basic hello-world style REST app ... but in my experience it became a pain in the ass very quick. Primarily because no structure is enforced.

After being a Python dev for a long time, building quite a few big Django apps and a handful of tiny Flask apps I have finally jumped ship to Rails. I spent a week experimenting with various Pythonic combinations. Ultimately I had to ask myself ... "Why am I doing this? What the hell am I wasting my time with this lightweight framework?" I've built my current REST API in Rails and would not have it any other way. It's been tremendously efficient and performs great on my little Linode in London + PostgreSQL.

<comment><USER6> Having no structure enforced is also a good thing. It allows you to get into and work on the project faster without having to set up all your boilerplates that Django comes with.

Flask apps are supposed to be tiny. I personally use three different stacks for different things: web.py for larger projects, flask for midsized projects and bottlepy for really quick and dirty stateless projects

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good tutorial, but it was missing any mention of blueprints, which are essential to building a Flask site larger than a few endpoints. Blueprints also allow you to reuse components across multiple apps, or as releasing a set of endpoints as open source libraries that can be easily plugged into other apps.

Edit: adding a link to Blueprints in the Flask docs: <http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/>

<comment><USER8> I'm the author of the article. I plan to write another full tutorial on blueprints. I use them a lot but I already found this post long enough :)

<comment><USER7> Great, looking forward to it. I love Flask, and am working on a backend site built on top of it (<http://woventheapp.com>) -- the more people we can get knowledgeable about it, the better!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good read. I wrote a similar Flask introductory article[0] on how I moved my Wordpress site/blog over to Flask. The source code of my site can be viewed on github[1].

[0]: <http://vertstudios.com/blog/new-flask-site/> [1]: <https://github.com/joequery/Vert-Flask>

</comment><comment><USER10> Great little tutorial but I'd also like to mention that if you're creating websites using flask make sure to check out blueprints (<http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/>) it lets you modualize your website and make it a lot more manageable once your code gets a little bit larger.

<comment><USER11> Second that and would go as far as to say that if you're doing anything other than a tiny tiny micro site, you should default to using them. They're easy to use, come with no downside (that I'm aware of) and the modularity benefit is huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great tutorial.

Since you're already using backbone.js why not plug in CSRF protection with Flask-SeaSurf? (<http://flask.pocoo.org/extensions/>)

If you use this backbone.js change then CSRF is practically invisible: [https://github.com/alanhamlett/backbone/commit/91941afe693ae...](https://github.com/alanhamlett/backbone/commit/91941afe693ae85bc5303b8e61982876cd5ae415)

Also, if building an api with Flask make sure you use blueprints with a url prefix so your api routes become relative, which means less typing: <http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Flask is so damn awesome! For all those other projects Django seems too big, I use Flask. The hardest thing for me was finding a project structure that worked for me. I still haven't landed one that was "perfect". What project structure/skeletons for Flask apps work for you?

<comment><USER3> Going big? Blueprints.

<http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/>

Going small? Put everything in one folder.

app = Flask(__name__, static_folder='.', static_url_path='', template_folder='')

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Flask is awesome and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone curious about doing webdev in python.

When I was starting out, I found the source code to the Flask website itself really helpful for getting to grips with the basics: [https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/tree/website/flask_websit...](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/tree/website/flask_website)

<comment><USER4> Agreed. If you want to read some well-written Python, take a look at the Flask source code. It is the embodiment of Pythonic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just cannot thank you enough - you are a life saver. Coming from Java world I was looking for exactly like this. Maybe I'm new to Python, I was just about to give up. Setting Nginx/Apache for Flask was giving me nightmares -just could not get it right to play with gunicorn, uwsgi and so on.

I know Java is verbose but the tooling is good. Just put you war(a pre-defined structure) in Tomcat webapps dir and your good to go with a fairly scalable web site. I was so surprised it wasn't that easy for Python. I think it stems out that Python is more of systemish kinda ecosystem.

<comment><USER15> If you're experienced in Java, have you taken a look at the Play Framework?

<http://playframework.org>

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I tried Scala but got a bit scared :-) I chose Clojure as the next step from Java. But that doesn't exclude Scala by any means - it's just about time that I play with it as I've heard it isn't that complex as people think of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good stuff! Just a question, in the first session example, should the url_for('say_hello') be url_for('message')? And in the message template, 'index' maybe should be 'home'.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I'm going to fix that. I published the article too early by mistake with a few errors still left

<comment><USER16> No problem! Thanks for writing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered why people who like using these python micro frameworks don't use App Engine. Have any of you guys tried out GAE and decided it wasn't worth it?

<comment><USER18> I mostly use Flask to create handy status dashboards and debugging tools for servers that do other things. It's a nice use pattern: you want to expose some of the internals of a server over a firewalled-off port, so you whip up a few HTTP endpoints in Flask, start an HTTP server in a background thread, and declare victory. It's quick and easy, and can save huge amounts of time later when you're trying to figure out why something isn't quite working.

There are other reasons to avoid GAE -- price, datastore latency, lack of flexibility -- but my main one is that GAE just doesn't apply to most of the things I use Flask for.

<comment><USER19> Same here. I've used Flask for an internal "database cloner". It's ridiculously easy to get it up and running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those working on GAE, try this handy template: <https://github.com/kamalgill/flask-appengine-template>

</comment><comment><USER21> good read. I am working on something built in scratch using Flask and so far, it has been a breeze in understanding the document, source code and samples provided on the pocoo site.

</comment><comment><USER22> See also bottle <http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/>

Both are great but I find them very slow.

<comment><USER23> You can't just use Flask straight out of the box. You need to put it on something. I've used Gunicorn with Gevent and it runs as fast as I need it to run. Gevent with Nginx as a reverse proxy play very well together and the responsiveness is more about how you're managing your DB queries rather than rendering the site. (I shy away from ORMs for this reason but still use sqlalchemy.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> what an amazing tutorial!

</comment><comment><USER25> Nicely done. I'm a Ruby/Sintra bod myself, but now I'm keen to play with Flask a bit - thanks!

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for the tutorial. Can't wait for the next part about blueprints!

</comment><comment><USER27> what's the difference between Flask and Django?

<comment><USER28> Django's a huge, monolithic framework that you need to run a script for that generates some files and a folder strucutre.

Flask is a microframework. You can create a flask app contained entirely in one file, or on spanning several. It requires a minimum of configuration to work.

<comment><USER29> > Django's a huge, monolithic framework

I'd like that misconception to finally be dispelled. In spite of being installed as an apparently single entity, Django is modular. You can use SQLAlchemy and Jinja2 with Django, and you can use Django's ORM all by itself, or its templating system standalone. You can use Django without _manage.py_ , and while the only actual requirement is _settings.py_ , that is in the process of being done with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good tutorial. You should check out Django. It comes with most of the script you have written plus a lot more and a really active community.

<comment><USER31> I learned on Django but have turned to Flask for my smaller projects after wrestling too many times with Django's poor handling of static files during development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any opinions about Flask vs Bottle?

<comment><USER33> Watch this talk by Armin. <http://pyvideo.org/video/440/pycon-2011--opening- the-flask>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So you took flask documentation, some other sources and made it into a blog post about it?

<comment><USER35> Why is that a problem?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: The fraudulent login detection system for the SaaS providers. - <AUTHOR>

Every SaaS provider has one major problem – security concerns of its userbase.
People are worried about their data, transmission and that anyone can "guess" their password and log in to their accounts.
What I'm describing here is a product idea – we will write it for our selves but I think it can be sold separately as a byproduct of our main web app.
How would it work? 1.	Simple JS insert on the login page will be tracking who is login from where, what kind of browser, operating system etc. details (JS will not send or track user password! We should have some kind of "ok" from the web app" that user login was successful)
2.	We will track patterns of app usage (is it working day? What time is it?)
3.	If our system will find potential fraud (correct login and pass but strange usage pattern) – we will send an email with the special code to the owner of the account. User will get a popup message "Please let us know it's really you. Check your email account!" and a text input field to provide the code.
4.	System can provide badge or something so users feel safer login to web apps protected with this fraud detection system.
What do you guys think? Do I see any beta testers already? <comment><USER2> I think that I don't trust _me_ with my user's passwords and I am darn sure not going to trust _you_ with my user's passwords, and I am not exactly a high-security niche.

Also, bouncing many users in the midst of using the app is worse than a security breach in some cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> No no no - the system will not have user passwords! We will get only "ok" from the web app that the password was correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's useful, and even more impressive if it doesn't appear to be automated.

My employer sell a traditional software product, and there is an arrangement for the support desk to get notification of all errors. We called back once when we saw some rather unusual looking urls, and turns out that the customer hired a consultant to do some basic penetration testing.

Needless to say, the client was happy with our rapid response.

Another real life example is when I made a 1-dollar verification so that my kid could have an AOL account. I got a call from VISA within 5 minutes, and I was pretty happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've got pages of writing /sketches expanding upon your idea. I almost went with it but there's a lot of regulation involved and people are unlikely to want to hire out for their security. My only concept was selling it as a larger package and not a monthly fee to hopefully transfer some of the responsibility of keeping the info safe to purchasing company.

I was thinking something along the lines of usage patterns that would actually predict some fraudulent activity before it happens.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the principle of the idea, but the practise is another matter. You want me to trust a piece of external Javascript on my login page? A piece of javascript that is used _exclusively_ for authentication? If your service took off, I don't see how you won't end up with at least one major security breach :(

</comment><comment><USER6> Just some decent user-viewable logfiles of their logins (hour/date/browser/cookies) would be enough for them to be able to check when someone logged in.

I never understood that online emailsites didn't provide those...</comment>