So we came home yesterday from celebrating Christmas early with my family to a phone call from John at SyncSpeed asking “what happened?” Apparently our web stats went crazy. I quickly checked my e-mail to find 30 new comments about the Yo Momma Loves Ubuntu post and an e-mail from John that we’d been on Digg. I clicked the link he sent and my jaw dropped. 900+ Diggs! 10,000 unique users in one day! Bandwidth usage warnings from my ISP! The Internet cares about the operating system my mom uses!

The first thing I thought was, “Whew! Other people have done this with their folks and not regretted it… yet.” The next thing I thought was, “How long is it going to take to sift through these comments?” I read through ALL of the comments on Digg and was amazed at the number of questions and comments that seemed directed either to me or to my mom. Not being a Digg user I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of setting up an account, so I decided to answer the world’s questions here on Shooting the Kids. I understand that this sort of diverts from our normal content, but the response to the post has been astounding so I feel obligated to talk a little more about it. I’ve distilled the comments and questions into 10 that sort of get to the heart of it all – 5 for me and 5 for my mom. They are:

10 Questions the Internet Has for My Momma:

For Chris

1. Why post this on Shooting the Kids?
2. What are you, a Linux fanboy?
3. Did I make my mom use Ubuntu?
4. Why Ubuntu and not Kubuntu or some other Unix derivative?
5. How would you explain to a 50 year-old computer noob why the Microsoft wireless photo keyboard that he saw stacked in PC World does not work on his Ubuntu machine? What happens when a piece of hardware breaks?

For My Mom

1. Does this mean I’m now "Tech Support?"
2. Why didn’t the guy just educate his mom on how to keep a clean and tidy system?
3. Did your mother read that stupid New York Times article that said to throw out your computer if it’s spyware-ridden?
4. What do you wish Ubuntu could do?
5. Does the software on Ubuntu seem unfinished?

I’ll be posting my answers over the next week and would love to get your comments. I’m also going to send my mom her questions and see if she has some time to write back. Hopefully we’ll be able to get my mom’s perspective – both the good and bad.

Now – time to upgrade my bandwidth.