🚀 go-pugleaf

 I work in the Nursing Home and health care industry, although not in
a health care role as such, I recently visited my elderly mother in
the United Kingdom following the death of my father.
 
 Sometimes communication is difficult with the elderly, especially
over long distances.
 
 I noticed in the nursing home that one of the prime recreations was
watching television.
 
 I recently suggested in a message to my boss ( but only banter,
rather than serious discussion ) that it might be useful for
institutions such as nursing homes to investigate the use of the
Internet:-
 
 a) so that elderly residents can communicate with their relatives,
     where they are able.
 
 b) to provide an alternate means of entertainment, possibly via
     mailing lists to other nusing homes, or perhaps perusing the
     many useful and informative sites the Internet has to offer.

 Those who lack the ability to type, but aren't disabled by eyesight
or other ailments could learn the necessary skills.
 
 It was recently suggested at a Linux user group meeting that Linux
was an appropriate operating system in various institutions in that
there was an abundance of old hardware which few people wanted, and
limited facilites to purchase the older copies of operating system
software such as MS-DOS or Windows 3.1 that it requries to run on.
 
 Linux is free, and runs on a variety of platforms.  As much of Linux
software is also free, and Linux loves older machines where it has
oftren been tested extensively there may be arguments for development
teams working on Linux programs for the elderly, especially via the
Internet, which Linux ( being natively a networking operating system)
loves...
 
 Who knows within five years the inhabitants of nusing homes could be
running Linux on the Internet, communicating with their relatives on
old "unwanted" ( unwanted at least by those who love shoot up games
requiring 3d graphics) macines, with community support from Linux
development teams.
 
                                                         Bob

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Bob Bain. Terra Firma
bobb@alt.net