Converting a friend to Ubuntu

[Alain Muls]

Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago I asked advice on what to do to convert a friend
from WIndows to Linux. I got some helpful advice and I installed his
system as a dual boot system between Vista and Ubuntu 9.10.

When comparing the speed of both systems, my friend was impressed
because his Vista takes roughly 5 minutes before the network
connection comes up, while in Ubuntu after a minute he is up and
running. I also made an account for his wife and 3 daughters.

Since he is a real noob (eg. he uses spaces in a Word processor to
center lines) I created a Writer's template that he can use for making
invoices. Under Windows he made a backup of his "My Documents" folder
on a weekly basis on an external USB hard drive. I told him that
having a backup on a device only one meter away from his desktop is
not tha ideal solution. I installed Ubuntu One and linked his
directory for invoicing to it and he was amazed that when he saved an
invoice it was auto-magically backup up to a server. So happily I left
him with his system and returned home.

Yesterday, two weeks after his conversion, he phoned and asked me
whether the install was still under "guarantee". I asked what was
wrong and at startup he was placed into a administrative shell. I went
by and started a fsck on his Linux partitions (/ and /home). On one of
the partitions I got a message that there were files with a future
timestamp (I think it was the /home).

I wondered why this would be the case. Could it be that Windows puts
the clock on local time (for Belgium this is UTC+1hr) while I
installed Ubuntu with UTC time or vice versa. So that when you restart
within the hour after a windows session, Ubuntu gets mixed up by the
timing?

Any advice will help, or all my talks about the stability of Linux
will go down the drain with my first convert :-(

bye/Alain
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Alain Muls                                      alain.muls at gmail.com
Rijkenhoekstraat 62                                  +32.477.675091
B3191 Boortmeerbeek                                +32.15.620365
Ubuntu user # 30068