Re: "Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers"
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 13:02, BruceG wrote:
> My experience with the wonderful world of Linux and end users
> - or normal people. My sister needed a laptop to help her
> start a new business writing grant proposals. I figured I'd
> help by buying her a laptop (used, but still good, a Dell
> Latitude PIII, 256Meg RAM, 12 Gig hard disk, CD-RW, external
> floppy, Xircom 10/100+56 card. I tested Mandrake 9.1, SuSE 8.2
> Personal and Knoppix installed to harddisk. Decided to ship it
> with SuSE with all updates done, and with OOo 1.1.0 and
> Scribus 1.0.1. Paid for Internet access, and configured dial
> on demand. Also configured KMail,Evolution, Mozilla Mail and
> KNode.
>
> She called today. Had a problem with it (trouble-shooting was
> turn it upside down and shake it). Brought it to computer
> repair shop. He installed non-licensed Windows and MS Office.
> I'm discouraged. It truely was 'point 'n click'. Everything
> was installed, tested and working. Literally plug it in, turn
> it on, connect the included phone cord and your online. Just
> click the Seagull and you have a choice of OOo1.0.2 or
> OOo1.1.0.
>
> Think I want my SuSE 8.2 Personal boxed set, SuSE Live Eval
> CD, and boot floppy back! But on the good side, my 7 year old
> son and 14 year old son are perfectly comfortable with SuSE,
> Mandrake and RedHat. Maybe Debian in a while.
That's damn shame. Rather than actually trying to fix the problem, he
went with the Format, Reinstall approach. Exactly what I'd expect from
99% of so-called 'technicians'.
About six months ago, my parents got fed up with Windows 2000, and asked
me to reinstall. I had my Debian box up to do some programming work, so
I demo'd them that, and had them interested enough to change over. After
some lengthy downloading on their 56K modem, I had a functioning Debian
(Unstable/KDE) install. It's been six months, and to quote my father
'It just works.'
Multizone DVDs, VCDs, DivX, Quicktime, and Realplayer movies, something
that's always been a source of much frustration under Windows, now 'just
work'. The only thing's that are annoying are a lack of a decent Access
replacement for my father (The various free SQL servers are excellent,
but I have yet to find a decent front end GUI for them), and my brother
has got my sister using Photoshop instead of the Gimp for my sister
graphics stuff. Grrr.
The fact that they're 400km is not a problem. I have an IRC channel that
I monitor. Starting Xchat from one of the user profiles will
automatically log them in, and the rest is done by SSH. If everything
goes to hell, they can run wvdial from the console, and ring me on my
cellphone with the IP (hasn't happened yet).
One of the issues I've hit, that's already been pointed out, is the
unwillingness of people to learn a new interface or program. My brother
already knows Photoshop, so he is/was unwilling to learn The Gimp. In
the cases where the FOSS software is not up to scratch - such as Access
as a Click'n'Drool interface, this is acceptable, when it comes to
things like Photoshop, where equivalent tools are available, it
undermines the whole effort. I have nothing against closed source
software, but I have a large problem with software that only runs on
closed operating systems, because it's so damn hard to emulate the
underlying OS properly.
My advice when switching people over is to avoid all non-native software
as much as possible - unless there is absolutely no alternative.
- Edward
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