On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 13:41, BIJU KRISHNAN wrote:
Dear Vickram,
You have a great idea...! Well a year ago, I and my friend decided to sell proxy solutions to these small time cafe's and faced the following problems
- The small cyber cafe's cannot afford to provide one
stand-alone machine for the proxy set-up. Normally they set-up win/analog/free proxy on a machine and allow users to use it during peak hours.
- A entire GNU\Linux cyber cafe setup has the most
daunting task (others may disagree) of a browser which supports all sites just like IE....we may agree that IE is insecure...but most of the sites are optimised for IE..! Opera is the best but then its paid..!
- Cyber cafe accounting software is also needed, the
present ones are all windows based, there are a couple of projects on freshmeat but have'nt found success implementing them, maybe need to invest more man hours.
- Messengers with similiar LOOK FEEL AND
FUNCTIONALITY..!
- VOIP dialer applications to run on the OS.
There are more such avenues where the LUG can play an immediate and active role.
- I had got first hand reports of management students
who received Laptops with Suse loaded feeling uncomfortable and loading WinXP in them. This hapenned at MET too..!
- Educating pupils in schools and colleges too can
ensure Linux Domination by 2007.
- We had a Marketing exec who used RedHat 9.0 for a
year as a desktop but couldnt convince himself and others for extending it, since Word docs were'nt the same when they viewed it in OOffice.
People like me have to be blamed....i have to follow the TALK LESS WORK MORE regimen immediately.
My new year resolution would be to act more in spreading awareness about GNU\Linux, we have to make life easier on GNU\Linux than on windows if we were to ever dream of a secure.
I have succesfully helped many of my friends who are IT managers in non-IT firms to atleast bring about a foot in the door for GNU\Linux and can use more contacts and reach to convince others too.
Although I'am not so sure of my work schedule next week , i would try my level best if we can have a user interaction and a wish list ready in the meet.
WISHING ALL LUG members A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR.
bye rgds BIJU
If linux is to be made more popular and user friendly, it will have to reach out to the people and not vice versa. It was the simplicity and ease of use of Windows that made computers popular in India and Asia and most programmers including linux ones have their foundations in Windows. Before we learn about higher level languages and programming, we first learn to start and shut down windows and to hold a mouse. Then we find out about other OSs and begin to curse Windows. How many of you learnt their first use of computers without Windows or DOS ?
It is not too expensive for a cyber cafe owner to buy legal Windows for his comps. When he is already investing about 25K per system, less than 4K extra for a windows OS should not be a problem for him. Maybe a multiuser liscence might be cheaper. Rest everything is available (browser, messenger....) legally as freeware. Open Office is a beautifull replacement for MS Office and I have been using it for more than 4 years. It prints beautifully unlike its linux cousin. Some antivirus and firewalls too are available as freeware.
Linux does not have a unity of platform and this is a major setback, that makes its different distros doing different things for different hardware. In Windows there are normally 4 device driver files 95/98/Me, NT, 2000/XP and 2003. But for a linux system, each kernel version, with its different numeric values after each dot, per distro has its own drivers and this makes a huge collection to choose from and to write for the driver writer. What works for one distro may not work for another. Unless such issues are resolved, it will be difficult for well set users to migrate from Windows to Linux.
Wishing you all a very happy and prosperus New Year.
Thanks and Regards,
Rony.