Switching over to Ubuntu/*Nix for parents questions

[VinylxScratches]

I've had another virus scare with my Mom's Vista machine and my Dad is still on the aging XP. I am thinking about switching them both over to Ubuntu. My Dad is open to trying. Currently I have it running a VM for my Dad to try and will probably to the reversal if he's ok with it. That is, run XP Home in a VBox for his old apps that he uses.

Some questions,

How well do webcams work with Skype? I currently have it install and running.

What's the best way to sync files between two Ubuntu machines? I see Rsync and Unison. Is there anything else? Rsync seems to be the best but it's CLI. I don't think that's an issue though, the only thing syncing will be photos.

Is there any other *nix OS's I should look into? I was thinking about Debian as well only because I plan on building a box and using it.

 

[Nothinman]

Is there anything else? Rsync seems to be the best but it's CLI.

I'd say that rsync has pretty much become the standard, however I haven't had much of a need for syncing apps since I keep all of my data in one place and just mount that where ever I need. But the fact that rsync is cli is a good thing, you can setup a cron job to run it every X minutes to keep everything in sync and your parents shouldn't need to worry about it.

If you want "Previous Versions"-like functionality, I see a package called backintime-gnome which is GTK+/Gnome and uses rsync for the backend work.

Is there any other *nix OS's I should look into? I was thinking about Debian as well only because I plan on building a box and using it.

I'm a Debian zealot myself, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to your parents. Mostly because sid is a moving target which is awesome for technical people because it's constantly updated, but sometimes those updates cause problems so you'd probably need to maintain that for them. And stable is too old for a workstation, IMO. Sometimes testing is a good happy medium, but you'd have to try it for a bit to see.

 

[Satyrist]

Testing generally is more recent, but I have heard on more than one occasion that it wasn't particularly intended for end users...Plus I do suppose that when Squeeze does does make the leap to stable, repositories and updates could get jumbled at that particular juncture.

But those are probably minor inconvieniences in itself.

Mepis might be one to take a look at, it is based off of Debian stable, though there are releases that get backported and put onto a repository strictly for Mepis.

Mepis tends to have worked better on machines I have had issues getting vanilla Debian to install properly/at all on.

Not to derail particularly, but I do have a possible idea to try moving one of my folk's machines over to Linux as well, I guess that the question would be, how easy it'd be to get AOL running on it. (Yes, I know...😛 But they will not get rid of it regardless of how many times I've tried) The other thing is how easy/possible it'd be to get something like a citrix connection going on it, as my mom occasionally does need to use it for her job.

 

[Nothinman]

Testing generally is more recent, but I have heard on more than one occasion that it wasn't particularly intended for end users...Plus I do suppose that when Squeeze does does make the leap to stable, repositories and updates could get jumbled at that particular juncture.

It's not really for end users, it's for people willing to test the next release. But as long as they have someone to call for help if an ultra-buggy package happens to make it through sid into testing I'd say it's fine and will be a lot more recent than stable.

And when one release goes from testing->stable all they do is update the symlinks on the mirrors so there's no time when you might end up with packages from both.

The other thing is how easy/possible it'd be to get something like a citrix connection going on it, as my mom occasionally does need to use it for her job.

That would probably depend on whether it's ICA or RDP. If it's RDP then you probably just need to create a shortcut to start rdesktop pointing to the right hostname. If it's really ICA then you'll need to grab the client from Citrix. Last time I looked it was ugly, but worked just fine.

 

[Satyrist]

That would probably depend on whether it's ICA or RDP. If it's RDP then you probably just need to create a shortcut to start rdesktop pointing to the right hostname. If it's really ICA then you'll need to grab the client from Citrix. Last time I looked it was ugly, but worked just fine.

From what I am aware, she has had to use IE to login to the Citrix server. Firefox was a no-go.

 

[Nothinman]

From what I am aware, she has had to use IE to login to the Citrix server. Firefox was a no-go.

There are Citrix clients out for just about every platform imaginable, worst case is that you might need to install a JRE browser plugin. Unless their IT people did something intentional to block all non-IE access, you'd have to try it yourself and see what happens.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

How well do webcams work with Skype? I currently have it install and running.

I've had issues with my webcam and Skype. It works, but the issue was that it wouldn't see the webcam as a device after either a reboot or coming out of sleep or something. I can't really remember the particular trigger since I haven't looked into it in a while. The fix was to simply unplug the webcam and plug it in again. Must've been after a reboot.