Okay, it has been a few months since I have set my 83-year old grandmother with a desktop PC running Kubuntu 7.10. Just to recap, she has never used a PC before. She doesn't know Windows or Mac or Linux. It was the first time she used a mouse, though she is a touch-typist. I configured everything in advance. I removed everything that I thought would be distracting or not used.

Every so often, you read on Slashdot, Digg, or some other techie news site that Linux is finally ready for the desktop. It's finally to the point that any end user could sit down at a computer and happily compute away. The applications are sufficiently sanitized and Windows-like that even Grandma can use them.

"Sorry, my students’ steady stream of “your mom” jokes brings out my inner 14-year old. However, this is the first in my series this summer of training for the masses (see * for dummies) and the point is that your mom (or your grandmother, or your most typewriter-bound secretary) could quite easily Kubuntu (or Ubuntu, or SUSE, or whatever)."

In my family, I’m the tech nerd. I get this from my father, from whom I’ve learned so much, from our early days tinkering in the basement on our office-tan 1994 Dell desktop, seeing if we could get DOOM to run.

So you say you like Linux. You say you have tried it and it is very good. You say it looks good, it is fast and your grandmother can use it. But you don't use it. Why is that?

I have been running Linux exclusively on my computers since Ubuntu 6.04 was released. For nearly as long I’ve been helping non-geek friends install it on their systems as well. Three years ago this often included kernel compilations, unrecognized hardware, and a lengthly, error prone installation proccess for installing multimedia codecs.

First off, for those of you not versed in Operating Systems let’s have a brief overview of the top 3 currently being used.

A search for "linux ready for desktop" brings millions of results on any search engine. The phrase "Linux Desktop Year" has been around 5 years now. Over the years, the question on its validity has been asked again and again. Fundamentally what does one mean by "Linux Desktop Year"?

[ Thanks to linooxlee for this link. ]

Test methods:
1. Get a computer with Linux installed.
2. Install Wine and then test it with our test programs. Finally get the test result.
3. Uninstall wine
4. Get Longene installed, test it with our test programs and then get the final test result.