Quick Setup

You'll need this post for some of the later subjects.

My low friction suggestion is to start with the Ubuntu "distribution" of Linux.  There are many others, some possibly better for your needs in a few places, but this one is well supported by the community, makes frequent releases, is very popular, and very simple to set up. Click here to download and follow instructions there.  The short version is you'll burn a CD or USB stick, then boot it and answer some prompts (most people can just pick all the defaults) to get a useful system.  If there's interest, we can do a bigger post on it, but it's pretty simple these days.

What I wanted to mention was users.  The Ubuntu installer doesn't give too many details, but the idea is that each user gets their own account, which lets each have their own personal look and feel, personal settings, and private files.

There is also a way for an administrative user to get full access to the machine, including reading or changing any user's files or settings, adding or removing users, etc.   (I'm hiding complexity here: there is also a middle layer called groups if you want more.)

If you're just setting up for one user, like your mom, when you're installing just make one user account and you're done.  The installer will prompt you through it.

If you you're setting up for kids, we want each of them to have their own account without administrator privileges, and we want the grownups to still be able to administer the machine, so we'll make one grownup account at least.

After install, choose the menu System -> Administration -> Users and Groups which will give you a list of users.  Select yourself and hit properties.  On the User Privileges tab, give yourself Administer the system (at least, and any others that sound good!).  Back on the list of users, add users for each of your kids and make sure they don't have Administer the system checked.  


We'll be needing these superpowers later.