Hi!

Last week my mother (supplied by me with a debian-testing system,
running kde) did call me with fear in hear voice: "the computer isn't
working anymore! and all my files are lost! and my emails! and the
internet has vanished!"

soon i found out, that she had tried to clean up her homefolder
(organizing her files in folders, as she has learned in some
computer-course she has taken) and got confused and has clicked once or
twice too much on 'proceed','overwrite', 'copy'... (i don't know
exactly what she did, it took her a long time too... )

after much discussion ("that can't be possible, as you didn't delete
anything, the files are still there, you just can't see them,
because they are in some subfolder!") i talked her through building an
ssh-reverse tunnel to one of my machines and i could investigate and
repair the problem.


somehow she has succeeded in moving her complete homefolder
(.*-files included) into subfolders of her homefolder...
i don't know how that can happen, but apparently there are no
safeguards in place. (Or at least they are easily clicked away)

That resulted in landing in a complete new gnome-environment. and as
she is a beginner at computers and of age, she couldn't cope
with her computer anymore.

So, my question, dear reader:

Is there a way to shield her from doing smth like that again?
What are the kde-safeguards for moving the homefolder (which is easy
enough, if you are not so confident with mouse-handling)?

What are the big Do's and Don'ts if you setup a linux desktop for
senior beginners?


Sincerely,

Florian

p.s. please cc me, as i'm not on this list

On 01/12/09 12:56, Florian Mickler wrote:
[snip]


That resulted in landing in a complete new gnome-environment. and as
she is a beginner at computers and of age, she couldn't cope
with her computer anymore.

So, my question, dear reader:

Is there a way to shield her from doing smth like that again?
What are the kde-safeguards for moving the homefolder (which is easy

enough, if you are not so confident with mouse-handling)?


Teach her how to use hot-keys?


What are the big Do's and Don'ts if you setup a linux desktop for
senior beginners?


Sit with her and create subfolders with names that she's happy with
for downloads, My_Documents, etc, etc. Then configure Tbird, FF,
OOo, etc, to save their files there. There should then be less need
for "clean up".


Also, there should be a way in konq to suppress dot-files.

--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."


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On Monday 2009 January 12 12:56:56 Florian Mickler wrote:
>Last week my mother (supplied by me with a debian-testing system,
>running kde) did call me with fear in hear voice: "the computer isn't
>working anymore! and all my files are lost! and my emails! and the
>internet has vanished!"
>
>soon i found out, that she had tried to clean up her homefolder
>(organizing her files in folders, as she has learned in some
>computer-course she has taken)

Organizing *her* files in one thing, and good. Organizing application files
is usually a no-no unless you are fully aware of everything that can break
(and are willing to fix it).

>somehow she has succeeded in moving her complete homefolder
>(.*-files included) into subfolders of her homefolder...
>i don't know how that can happen, but apparently there are no
>safeguards in place. (Or at least they are easily clicked away)

I suppose that is by design. UNIX (and Linux) made it a point to make sure
that files and be moved/renamed/removed when they are in use. Also, user
have full access to files in their home folder by default, even if the
beginners maybe shouldn't use all that access. ISTR a young freshman that
completely broke their university email by hand-editing their mailbox.

I can't think of any solution that wouldn't make things more difficult. My
first instinct was to a-r ~her_user, and have all her files reside under
~her_user/Documents or something. Unfortunately, this will prevent programs
from creating ~her_user/.application, maybe not *too* much of a burden if
she's already got all of those .*-files. It wouldn't prevent her from
writing new settings into an existsing .file or creating/updating files
like .directory/some_setting.

You might be able to get the desired behavior by using acls. (Removing the
ability to rename/delete files in ~her_user, while keeping the ability to
create files in ~her_user would be a start.)
--
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =.
bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/