Probably stupid question, but

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 28 August 2013 12:25:07 Christofer C. Bell did opine:

> On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 8:44 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 27 August 2013 21:11:49 Liam Proven did opine:
> > > On 27 August 2013 20:05, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > > > This girl of about 55 is intelligent but computer illiterate, and
> > > > I am trying to put enough stuff on it that she can actually DO
> > > > something once she gets whatever level of networking running that
> > > > is available at her
> > 
> > That latter will likely be up to me taking an evening drive to
> > reconfigure what I setup to work here on my local network.
> > 
> > > All the more reason to keep it *absolutely* plain, standard and
> > > vanilla.
> > > 
> > > DO NOT put in place any clever hacks, wrinkles, patches, tweaks or
> > > anything else. This *especially* goes for your insane
> > > read-only-network-config files.
> > 
> > I have not yet resorted to using that ultimate hammer on this
> > particularv install, but if Network-Smasher gets in my way at her
> > place, I will NOT hesitate to do it if it means I can drive away
> > leaving a dependable connection.
> 
> Alternatively, if you're not meeting with success in disabling
> NetworkManager, then install Ubuntu Server and "apt-get install
> ubuntu-desktop" once you have it running.  You'll end up with
> effectively the same thing without NetworkManger and you'll get a
> pretty system report every time you login via ssh to assist her
> (assuming you're planning on doing that).
> 
> Is this a hackish way to disable NetworkManager?  It sure is, but it
> will at least get you the end result you're looking for.  The caveat is
> that the installer is a "simplified" version of the Debian installer
> (same as the Alternative CD), not the "click this icon to install
> Ubuntu" deal you get with the Live CD.   This just means you have a
> couple more questions to answer.  It's still pretty intuitive and hard
> to shoot yourself in the foot.

That would be one possibility, but this machine is so low on ram its 40 
megs into swap sitting idle on my table saw over night.  Even with a bare 
xububtu install.

So I am not putting any real memory hogs on it that aren't needed just for 
email & web browsing.  When she gets more adept, then is the time to 
consider a machine with more resources, within the budget means.

Cheers, Gene
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