My grandmother's computer has been hit by more viruses than I'll venture have ever been written. Being that the main thing she does on her computer is exchange email, read joke forwards, and browse bizarre and malicious sections of the Internet, it doesn't really come as a surprise. It's not necessarily her bad habits that adversely effect her computer, it's those of everybody she corresponds with. And those people are goddamn idiots.

In the last six months, myself, my uncle, or my father have had to rework her computer as a result of viral infections. Every time, my poor grandmother has to listen to our stilted, generic technical descriptions of what went wrong, how we fixed it, and how we made it better this time. For the last few months, however, I've been telling her that there's a different world out there. A better world. A world where she can browse the Internet without fear. A world with solid systems architecture, sane permissions frameworks, and actual capability for customization. I told my grandmother about Linux.

So now we're trying an experiment. I disconnected her abused Windows desktop, and gave her a relatively new Linux laptop. I set it up so that her login account can't break anything, configured her wireless mouse and keyboard, gave her all of her emails to work with, and increased the system font so she doesn't have to crane her neck just to read.

She's going to try it for a week and see what she thinks.

Something important hangs in the balance here. A critical element to my theology: the grandmother test. If Linux can pass the grandmother test (that is, if my grandmother can understand and use the system), then everyone else can too.

And then I can, hopefully, stop having to deal with Windows entirely. And start recommending Linux desktops for people rather than Windows.

Because if my grandmother can do it, so can you.