Devices, operating systems and web browsers apparently favoured by the over-70s

Lucan · 5 Dec 2019

AM9 said:
The OS's [Linux] current geeky interface prevents this happening, but it wouldn't take much to add a layer of code to bring it up to something that most would see as user-friendly

I'm puzzled by that. Perhaps you are unaware that there is a choice of interfaces, some of which are deliberately very similar to Windows. Linux is available in many different pre-configurations (they are called "distros") and of those I understand that Zorin and Chalet are very Windows-like.

I don't use either of those two, I use a more expert (geeky perhaps) distro (Devuan) and configure it further myself - you can do that with Linux, unlike Windows, but you don't have to - you can just choose a beginners distro and stick to the default configuration. There are a lot of misconceptions about Linux; you even come across people on the internet who think it only has a command line interface!

RailUK Forums

Adam Williams · 5 Dec 2019

Lucan said:
I use a more expert (geeky perhaps) distro (Devuan)

Not a systemd fan then, I take it? :P

AM9 · 5 Dec 2019

DaleCooper said:
I use Ubuntu and wouldn't call the interface geeky except for more esoteric tasks which 99% of users (including me) will never need to worry about. For someone who wants to browse, do a bit of word processing and spreadsheets it's as easy, if not easier, than Windows and a lot less intrusive.

For many long-time Windows users, even the best Linux desktops are sufficiently different to deter them from migrating there. Yes there are many users of Linux, but windows is still the dominant desktop OS. If Microsoft tried to move desktops to a rental model, there would be market resistance, but the plethora of Linux OSs as they now are offered, would deter many ex-Windows users. So there would need to be some form of Linux GUI that allowed lay users to use their Windows experience without going through a further learning exercise.

Lucan said:
I'm puzzled by that. Perhaps you are unaware that there is a choice of interfaces, some of which are deliberately very similar to Windows. Linux is available in many different pre-configurations (they are called "distros") and of those I understand that Zorin and Chalet are very Windows-like.

I am very much aware of various Linux distributions including Ubuntu (and the Studio version), several Raspbian versions and freeBSD. Several of them could be called 'Windows like' but to somebody who only knows Windows, they would not give them what they need.

Lucan said:
I don't use either of those two, I use a more expert (geeky perhaps) distro (Devuan) and configure it further myself - you can do that with Linux, unlike Windows, but you don't have to - you can just choose a beginners distro and stick to the default configuration. There are a lot of misconceptions about Linux; you even come across people on the internet who think it only has a command line interface!

I can do limited things via CLI but that's not what I'm into.

cb a1 · 6 Dec 2019

It's odd how you get used to 'stuff'.
16-year-old son just bought himself a 'gaming' computer. Hard Drive came pre-partiioned C: and D:

It's that moment when you have to try to explain drive naming when I can't for the life of me remember the last time I saw a computer with an A: and / or B: floppy drive.

Lucan · 7 Dec 2019

cb a1 said:
I can't for the life of me remember the last time I saw a computer with an A: and / or B: floppy drive.

I'm looking at one with a "A" floppy drive now. Not the PC I'm using, but another alongside it that I use just for archives. I still have stuff (documents etc) on floppies that I must get round to copying off one day ...... It's a very long time since I saw a "B" drive though.

Coming clean, I use Linux so it's not called "A" but rather "fd0" at the hardware level, and you can call it what you like at the user level. But the latest versions of Linux have dropped floppy disk support, I believe.

AM9 · 7 Dec 2019

Lucan said:
I'm looking at one with a "A" floppy drive now. Not the PC I'm using, but another alongside it that I use just for archives. I still have stuff (documents etc) on floppies that I must get round to copying off one day ...... It's a very long time since I saw a "B" drive though.

Coming clean, I use Linux so it's not called "A" but rather "fd0" at the hardware level, and you can call it what you like at the user level. But the latest versions of Linux have dropped floppy disk support, I believe.

My (video) editing workstation has both an A and a B drive, not of floppies of course, because I need many drives for storage, cache connections, NASs SD cards and sometimes, direct camera connections. One day I'll build a big NAS but it will need upwards of 10TB and then there's backup!

SS4 · 7 Dec 2019

Lucan said:
Coming clean, I use Linux so it's not called "A" but rather "fd0" at the hardware level, and you can call it what you like at the user level. But the latest versions of Linux have dropped floppy disk support, I believe.

As of kernel version 5.4.2-arch1-1 the contents of /dev/fd/ are symlinks to /dev/pts so it's probably true that support has been removed but I have seen USB floppies around so maybe they still exist somewhere in the kernel but through USB?

Code:

root@Sol[11:49] /root # ls -lR /dev/fd/
/dev/fd/:
total 0
0 lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Dec  7 13:19 0 -> /dev/pts/1
0 lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Dec  7 13:19 1 -> /dev/pts/1
0 lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Dec  7 13:19 2 -> /dev/pts/1
0 lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec  7 13:19 3 -> /proc/54713/fd

hooverboy · 8 Dec 2019

AM9 said:
My (video) editing workstation has both an A and a B drive, not of floppies of course, because I need many drives for storage, cache connections, NASs SD cards and sometimes, direct camera connections. One day I'll build a big NAS but it will need upwards of 10TB and then there's backup!

10tb is not particularly big for storage these days.
for those of you familiar with/have relatives into gaming, the games themselves are in the 100's of GB now,

512GB/1TB is now considered a boot drive

it's crazy to think that you can get a 1tb nvme drive the same size as a stick of chewing gum for £100, and that's about 100 times faster than a mechanical hdd

same applies to CPU's.
4 core/8 thread is basically bare minimum for anything going forward.

8 core/16 thread is going to be "entry level" in a couple of years, especially as the new PS5 is going to have most games optimized for this.
the next step on will be cloud gaming, which is going to need about a 10 fold increase in internet/router speeds and bandwidths.

google stadia and a couple of other providers have stated they aim to provide 4k at at least 60 frames per second.That's going to totally saturate any network you're currently using,and woe betide anyone else in the house streaming netflix at the same time!

dgl · 8 Dec 2019

There's an A drive on my desktop and I have a USB FDD for the laptop. When you have a vintage Roland sampler (admittedly not currently working) it's essential if you want to download the Roland sample library and don't have a USB FDD emulator installed. Even more so when the unit will not do anything without either a sample disk (which has most of the OS installed on it), a utility disk which has the S50 convertor and sampling software on it or the SYS-333 Director-S sequencer.

DerekC · 8 Dec 2019

The question asked by the OP seems to have been forgotten and used as an excuse for a bit of IT jargon waving, pretty much incomprehensible to most people, over 70 or not!

AM9 · 9 Dec 2019

hooverboy said:
10tb is not particularly big for storage these days.
for those of you familiar with/have relatives into gaming, the games themselves are in the 100's of GB now,

512GB/1TB is now considered a boot drive

it's crazy to think that you can get a 1tb nvme drive the same size as a stick of chewing gum for £100, and that's about 100 times faster than a mechanical hdd

same applies to CPU's.
4 core/8 thread is basically bare minimum for anything going forward.

8 core/16 thread is going to be "entry level" in a couple of years, especially as the new PS5 is going to have most games optimized for this.
the next step on will be cloud gaming, which is going to need about a 10 fold increase in internet/router speeds and bandwidths.

google stadia and a couple of other providers have stated they aim to provide 4k at at least 60 frames per second.That's going to totally saturate any network you're currently using,and woe betide anyone else in the house streaming netflix at the same time!

I didn't say that 10TB was anything exceptional, it's just that I don't have it ATM and I need to store video, (and back it up). Much of that video is pro res at 700Mb/s which eats up space pretty fast. I don't play games, but compressed 2160p 50 video from clean sources can be usable at 50Mb/s.

yorkie · 9 Dec 2019

I think this thread has run its course.

But can people please edit any posts that include undefined acronyms and make them easier to read.

Also please try to avoid the use of ambiguous abbreviations such as 'ATM' (which can have multiple meanings).

Thanks.

Comstock · 9 Dec 2019

My 74 year old parents still use Windows Vista and Chrome, both unsupported. It is something I worry about, as they do quite a bit of online shopping, but they won't get an new pc whilst theirs is still working.

And I currently can't afford to do much about it either.

dgl · 10 Dec 2019

Comstock said:
My 74 year old parents still use Windows Vista and Chrome, both unsupported. It is something I worry about, as they do quite a bit of online shopping, but they won't get an new pc whilst theirs is still working.

And I currently can't afford to do much about it either.

I would say that if the PC has a dual-core processor then try to see if a windows 10 download will activate, if necessary clone the HDD onto another one and try doing an upgrade from the Microsoft website.

Lucan · 10 Dec 2019

Comstock said:
My 74 year old parents still use Windows Vista and Chrome, both unsupported. It is something I worry about, as they do quite a bit of online shopping, but they won't get an new pc whilst theirs is still working. And I currently can't afford to do much about it either.

Put Linux with Chrome on it; it's free. For their use they won't know any different and any malware will just bounce off it.

Xenophon PCDGS · 11 Dec 2019

When I opened this thread, 22 of those people aged 70 and over only had a laptop that they had for a good number of years and none of them wanted to use anything else.

Baxenden Bank · 11 Dec 2019

Xenophon PCDGS said:
When I opened this thread, 22 of those people aged 70 and over only had a laptop that they had for a good number of years and none of them wanted to use anything else.

They come from a generation when you didn't expect, nor were you told, to replace everything every 5 minutes.

My Office XP was working fine. I could use word and excel. I was FORCED to upgrade, at some expense, because I could no longer download government statistics as they moved from .xls to .xlsx format.

Devices, operating systems and web browsers apparently favoured by the over-70s

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