Mom's Ubuntu 10.04 went wonky (desktop came up, no response to user input via mouse or keyboard), likely due to a software update. Unfortunately, it was days between applying the update(s) and a reboot, and I'd forgotten what was updated.
I was quite hesitant to upgrade her to 12.04 or 14.04 since
a) I'm at least 4,000 km away if something goes wrong, and
b) Unity == no thank you (the new Ubuntu desktop is called Unity)
As I considered my options and poked around her computer via SSH, I came up with an idea, to give her a brand new desktop environment:
This got her a desktop which actually responded to user input, yay.
Unfortunately she found it jarringly different (and if she saw Unity?!?) and wasn't very comfortable navigating the menu.
I launched Thunderbird via SSH so she could at least access email while I investigated how to get remote desktop server (VNC server) running.
I kept finding pages discussing vino-server, which is a gnome tool. I could run it, but when trying to connect, I couldn't authenticate.
Finally, thanks to user "twb" on Freenode's #xfce channel, the answer was provided.
And, I'm in.
So now I'm learning XFCE desktop environment and I expect Mom will get a
on her Lucid 10.04 in short order. Xubuntu 14.04, here we come.