On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 10:34 +0530, Sanket Shah wrote:
And, there is the notion, "Free OS?" "Better than Windows?" "Surely they are bluffing." "Linux is so complex." blah blah blah... People are so used to the idea of paying for software that they dun fathom the idea of linux. Very few actually pay here fr software proven by rampant piracy. They are so used to using cracked stuff and trial versions, that free software seems impossible...
If it was a bluff then why are large organisations using linux? I think they don't care to be in the compedition right? And if foss wasn't better then ff and vlc should have not been so popular. The majority people use foss in some direct or indirect way, but many of us don't care to tell them that this is foss and you must take some minits some day to contribute at least a comment or a suggestion to the developers. And I think you neednot be a hacker or an IT guru to send an email about your impressions on the software in question.
What we need is more interest from the direct sellers point, help with install, more directly usable OSes instead of self service type OS. Agreed that work is being done here, but a lot remains to be done (Like if anything happens, i still hav to go to terminal, which not everybody can use with ease). Ideally we should target such colleges where laptops are distributed in bulk and preinstall them with Linux instead of Windows. I know in my college out LUG installed Linux at all the 300 computers in our labs using a network install. Professors were impressed by our effort and encouraged it... But putting it in laptops for MBA grads will put us in the mainstream and would hav a deeper impact in the professional world. And in a college, they always hav a incharge person who handles this laptops, maintenance etc.
We already have this experiment successfully working in SNDT womens college and the only thing we had to do is after shifting the labs (about 200 + computers ) to Ubuntu, we did an orientation with students and also with the service providers. And they did not find the OS complex. It is just that they were not aware.
Happy hacking. Krishnakant.