Speaking from personal experience in migration battles with my wife:>

[Matthew Copple]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Oren Beck <orenbeck at gmail.com> wrote:
> The reality is most non-tech "appliance operators" don't give a
> thought to what's in their computer. At least that's my home
> experience. The migration  away from outlook to purely web based mail
> was not traumatic. Firefox replacing IE has been a recurrent headache.
> Largely born of UI changes breaking her learned interactions, I have
> had her use my oft mentioned Kiosk install of Puppy 4.0 with an
> amusing set of comments. Most notable being the frustrations over
> subtle differences,

I have been trying to migrate my family over to Linux for years, with
mixed success.

My wife obstinately refuses to even consider moving from Windows. She
uses XP at work, she wants to use it at home. She likes MS Office 2007
and refuses to even try OpenOffice. Unfortunately for her, she really
doesn't understand Windows troubleshooting, and since I have been on
Linux for so many years (and more recently, OS X), I have lost most of
my Windows troubleshooting skills. The other night, she told me she is
about ready for a new computer; I told her that if she wanted Windows
Vista or Windows 7 on it, she would have to learn to do her own
troubleshooting, because I just won't support it. That went over well
(NOT).

My son, however, is an entirely different story. I gifted my old Linux
desktop to him, put Edubuntu on it, and he has quickly adapted. Most
of the educational software is too mature for him (he's only 5, and
just learning to read), but he has taken an immediate liking to Tux
Paint (and printing!) and enjoys practicing his spelling words in
OpenOffice Writer. I feel better because he is using Firefox, fully
loaded with AdBlock, FlashBlock, and several other plugins, and he can
still use his favorite websites while I can control what those sites
try to load on our machines. The other night, he confided to me that
he enjoys using "his" computer much more than using mom's laptop; part
of that, I'm sure, is that I allow him to play with pretty much any
part of the system he wants, knowing he can't break anything that
can't be trivially fixed. Thank you, sudo!

A question for parents out there with small children. When do you
think it is appropriate to introduce the young one to programming
languages such as LOGO? I remember playing with it in gifted classes
when I was in elementary school on an old Apple, but I'm sure I was in
5th or 6th grade at the time, just because that is when we first got
the machines. Do you think it is easy enough for a first- or
second-grader to pick up, or should I wait until he's older? Are there
other languages out there that are as easy for young ones to pick up?

I'm interested in your thoughts!

-- 
Matthew G. Copple
mcopple at kcopensource.org