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Linux Demo Day Advocacy Event
Thanks to Deepak Saxena for forewarning us about the Feb. 17 Linux Demo Day Event. He writes "On February 17th, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 2000, the next version
of their enterprise/business OS. I propose that the Linux community take
this opportunity to inform as many people as possible about Linux by having
demonstration/education events. To help in doing so, I have organized a
group of Linux vendors who are willing to help LUGs and individuals by
providing freebies that can be handed out. For more info on how to
participate, go to www.linuxdemo.org "
It's great that we have people who want to support and encourage the use of linux, but I think that the timing here could have been better. Why compete like this - wasn't the whole point of linux simply building a better product and letting the consumer / marketplace decide?
I hope that any media coverage that this event gets isn't like the Windows Refund Day coverage. Honestly, someone dressed up like people out of Star Wars isn't going to convince the general public of something, it's just going to make them think badly of what that person was representing.
"Oh, look at those freaks marching up to Microsoft demanding money back."
I think it would be a very bad idea to try to host a media event on the release date of Win2k. First of all, nobody would be there. Sure, you'd get al the die hard linux supporters, but the idea behind an event like this is to gain NEW support, but all the "newbies" would be busy watching MS. Secondly, trying to steal the spotlight from Microsoft is a REALLY bad idea. Although the event really wouldn't be stealing that much attention from the release, it would be enough to incur the wrath of microsoft the next time the linux community held a really big event. I think we (the linux community) should just sit back, let win2k have it's moment, then show up a week or two later and show what you can REALLY do with your PC.
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There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
I think we might be taking the wrong approach. This perpetual attitude of Linux>M$ is kind of annoying. What if Win2K is good? What if it works? What if it's the greatest thing since sliced silicon?
I'm not saying it will be, but give Microsoft a chance. Why pick Win2K's release date? Why not any other day? Why can't all OSes live in harmony?
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-Ravagin
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Linux has to stand for something more than just being anti-Microsoft.
99.9% of the people out there just want something that's going to let them get their job done. All this fanaticism does is makes people think that this is for people who hate Microsoft so much that they're willing to put up with less functionality.
When we see the new XFree and we see big companies like Creative come over to the linux world then we will see the average user using linux.
But like the easiest to install distributions. Why would the average user need an HTTP, FTP and Telnet dameon running? A security minded version of linux protecting the not so keen user of linux from outside troubles is what we need. Corel Linux has a nice pretty installation, but it also puts ProFTPd, Apache, Sendmail, and Telnetd on right at installation. And Root and whatever other user you choose are given no passwords until you set them. Yep that's right ... all those services running with Root with no password.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
This is more of a media stunt than anything else. What are demodays intended to do? They are intended to demonstrate linux to potential users. By staging one on the same day as the win2k release, we are saying that we will not tolerate and it will appear to potential users that you have to choose Linux OR Windows. That is not what the potential user wants to hear.
Do we not remember when Win98 was released. People lined up outside of stores as if they were buying tickets to a concert. Most users are so blind to the truth, and accept MS propaganda, that by staging a demo day on the same day as the win2k release, it makes us appear as the enemy.
Repent!
Linux Demo Day is the place for me.
...John Hall.
...Linux Mall.
...2K will flop.
...Open source is top
Open source is the LUG for me.
Press spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep your Windows, just give me that RaQ 3i.
Win2K is where I'd rather stay.
Treaking kernels is hard I say.
I just adore a closed source view.
Dah-ling I blue screen but give me my NT too.
We own root.
Good bye, Windows life.
Linux Demo Day we are there.
As for media coverage and the issue of stupid people, I am specifically asking people to behave in a proper manner. We don't want people running around making fools of themselves trying to advocate Linux. We don't want people who do nothing but say "Microsoft bad. Linux good." It's up to each LUG to try to inform their membership that this is meant to be a well organized, well presented event. Hopefully some idiot won't fsck it up.
The goal is to educate people that there is an alternative. I don't want Linux to be shoved down everyone's throats, but just to let people be aware that there is something other than what the big media machine tells you there is. I don't want Microsoft to die, but I do think there are a lot of small/medium size companies that will just get caught up in the Win2K hype and spend gobs of money to get it up and and running without ever knowing what alternatives exist. Maybe some of these people know that Linux exists, but how many of them do you think have given it a test drive on their own? Probably not many. I'm not trying to go into Intel or some other large company and talk them out of using NT. It's the small companies, with limited funds, that really need to learn about Linux. The idea of an OS upgrade will already be in their mind due to the Win2K release hype, so why not take the opportunity to show them some alternatives.
--
Deepak Saxena
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
Seems to me kind of silly to try to undercut the Redmond PR machine (that's what makes release days, after all), whereas if we hold off until March, it's no longer about PR, and more about quality.
You could have an "Uninstall y2k for St Patrick" day the month after... if people aren't *too* busy drowning the shamrock :)
Give Windows enough rope to hang itself before we get a lynch mob together :)
Dave Neary.
There is ABSOLUTELY no point in having a Linux Demo Day that starts at the same time as Windows 2000 is officially rolled out. That's not where the press will be.
Yes, you absolutely want the event to go -through- the roll-out, but you really want to start the day before with a massive campaign to the press.
That way, come the release of Windows 2000, eyes are on Linux, -not- Bill Gates or whoever Microsoft decides should make the press announcement.
The newspapers and TV stations only have so much space/time to allocate to computer news, so the more you can shift the focus to Linux, the less time (and therefore mindshare) Windows 2000 will get.
Just keep in mind, Microsoft has the advantage of numbers. But numbers really don't count for much in a well-planned ambush, and don't count at all if you can be sure that you can strike first.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I wouldn't.
Besides, why would MS do such a thing? Linux kernel releases do not get much attention from the mainstream media. Windows releases, on the other hand, do get a lot of media attention. It makes sense for Linux devotees to piggyback on the hype of the Windows release. There is no (or little) such incentive on the part of Microsoft.
I think this could be a great thing. What I imagine is having mild-mannered people setting up tables from which they can distribute linux distros (supplied by various distributors) and maybe pamphlets about why Linux is so k-k00l.
-- My comment is above.
Because this is going to be a Windows-sponsored media "event" - that means a lot of money dumped by M$, and a lot of media coverage, and a lot of attention from the public. That's EXACTLY the time Linux should be presented as an alternative, and the media, many of whom will be looking for balanced coverage (Don't think I'm giving them too much credit-- in this case "balanced coverage" is also more interesting than just reporting what they've been spoonfed) will be more than happy to present another OS-option, especially considering that the mainstream media already knows about Linux.
This will work if we're unified in our message and we have some good spokespeople who can show how/why Linux is better than Win2k. Waiting a week or two will totally miss the wave.
It's free publicity folks-- and to those of you who say "who cares, Linux isn't about marketshare, it's not supposed to be a replacement for Windows, it's about the ART, man...." Uh.... suuure. Coulda fooled me.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"Linux is much easier to administrate, you only need to dive deeply into the good old unix cruft to get it (3 or 4 years should be completely sufficient)."
...blabla ... security fixes ...blabla ... bugtraq ...blabla... he may not get cracked)."
Not so good, isnt it?
"Linux is inherently insecure due to the flawed security design of UNIX, which it clones. But it at least it can be more secure than Windows 2000, which is even worse. Of course, to get superior security, you need to learn about UNIX, but 3 to 4 years... (we already had that)"
Not really good for marketing, unfortunately.
"You only need to apply 20 or so security fixes to your distribution and look at bugtraq with argus eyes, and with some luck you may not get cracked!"
Oh, no, please.
"While admittedly setting up and administrating anything non-trivial on UNIX is pure hell for any beginner, it will be much more stable than anything Windows. If the poor admin didnt give up. (And
Well, it IS much more stable. Still... suppose the marketing people need something better to promote Linux...
Anyway. Please be honest:
Do you REALLY want to send all that poor Windows people into UNIX hell? And tell them that Linux/UNIX WILL make them happy?
I dont. How about this:
With Windows X you are using a crappy system from a company that repeatedly has proven to be unable to deliver good stuff. If you switch to Linux you =can= get a more stable and secure system. But keep in mind that UNIX is not designed for easy administration. For beginners its pure hell. The UNIX design is 30 years old and flawed. For security its deeply flawed. But unfortunately still the best this poor planet has.
(moderators: moderate this down, please, it lacks expression of popular opinion.)
Crashing the W2K release should not be about bashing Microsoft. It should be about promoting GNU/Linux as an alternative. If you are unclear about how to go about that, please read the Linux Advocacy Mini How-To.
For information about the Microsoft W2K release hoopla, check out Microsoft's Event Page.
NT gives you no such migration path. If you outgrow the amount that PC hardware can support, you're stuck. And while a 8-X system is much more powerful than PC's were a few years ago, they are still many orders of magnitude smaller than the Enterprise class systems I mention above.
99.44% of Slashdot readers have never even SEEN Windows 2000. The fact that they are judging it before they see it demonstrates that they have an entirely non-technical agenda, and that they simply want Microsoft products to fail, regardless of technical quality.
Either that, or they don't understand that it has absolutely nothing to do with Windows 95. A majority of Microsoft haters I've met have never even used Windows NT but think that their experience with Windows 95 makes up for it. They use their experience with Windows 95 to judge Widnows NT and spread lies as a result ("Windows doesn't haven't command history", etc.)
You do realize that this event further perpetuates the notion that GNU/Linux exists because of Microsoft, not despite. This is really unfair to many of us. A teacher at my school has a rather faint idea of what the operating system is about. He thinks it is for people who hate Microsoft. I fear he may be right.
I must ask. What does Microsoft have to do with GNU/Linux?
I can see that much of this event has already been planned. Perhaps it would be wise to have the attendees of this event wear formal dress.
It is also notable that actually most people interested in computers at all usually already know what GNU/Linux is, or rather "Linux". But many of them think is an operating system from people who hate Microsoft.
I sincerely hope that this event becomes a Pro-GNU/Linux event instead of an Anti-Microsoft event, but it seems like you are setting yourselves up easily for the latter.
Microsoft has nothing to do with GNU/Linux.
Face facts -- aside from a different approach to development and marketing, Linux and Windows are the same thing: operating systems. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. If one or the other were to just disappear, some tasks would not be performed well when the other stepped in to fill the gap.
While I spend most of my time in Linux, simply because I enjoy using it more than Windows, it's not all things. I'm limited in my ability to surf because of an underpowered browser (Netscape) and a lack of plugins (Macromedia Shockwave and a workable Realplayer, as well as Windows Media Player formats that nothing in Linux can handle).
I do a lot of webpage design, and Linux has serious shortcomings in this area. While I can code by hand in any text editor, or use Bluefish, it is simply more practical to use Homesite in Windows.
Office software is another area sorely lacking. Staroffice comes close to filling the bill, but in a world where MS Office has set the standard, asking users to trust their productivity to underpowered and incompatable Linux equivalents would simply be wrong.
And such a rally would do nothing to correct this situation. Constant bashing of MS has done nothing in the past. It's preaching to the choir when done in venues like /., and makes Linux users look like Trekkies with their rubber ears and toy phasers when done in public.
Time should be better spent writing code for Linux. See something that's lacking? Create it, or improve on what's already available. That is the whole idea behind Open Source software. Windows got to where it is partly because it does what people want it to do. As buggy as it might be, if it didn't fill a need, no amount of monopolistic practices would have caused it to spread the way it has.
I have no desire to turn on CNN the day of the W2K release and see a bunch of Linux Geeks who can't get a date and have too much time on their hands waving stuffed penguins and burning Windows CDs. I would rather be able to walk into my favorite software store and find useable products made for Linux.
This is exactly the sort of thing M$ does. I remember being a t Netscape Developers Conference and there were Microsurfs outside handing out copies of ie and invitations to a M$ party with free beer and t-shirts. (I gave my shirt to a bum on the street :)) Anyway, let them have a taste of their own medicene. The point is to tell people that would be stupid enough to buy w2k that there is a better solution, if the linux gets some publicity at Bill's expense, it's fine by me.
The revolution will be televised!
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
On CNN:
Microsoft Releases W2K
CNN will present 24 continuous hours of live coverage starting at 6am EST (3am PST) February 16, 2000. Join anchors Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Ammanpour as CNN visits various sites around the world as midnight on February 17 and the release of W2K dawns on each of the world's time zones. Featured are live reports from Paris, Toyko, Rome, London, Newfoundland and New York, as well as a countdown of the top 100 events in Windows history.
(And yes, it will be almost this bad.)
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Tempfiles fugit.
It appears to be childish to the audience. And anyway, having major M$ and Linux events at one the same day is like using an orange-and-purple wallpaper. It just looks afwul.
If we were in business, we would look very ugly for having this event happen on purpose during the Win2k release. Even Judgie Jackson would disapprove such behaviour - we'd better give Mickey a fair chance to compete with us! Also, we show that Win2k matters by trying to compete with it.
Hey, if win2k is not important for you, then this date also isn't. If you plan to use Win2k, well then the Linux demo might not be your favourite. If you plan to use both, then you might say that there is no need for such a direct attack, because both have its goods and bads.
I keep saying that OSS is a great alternative to M$ bullpoop, but that we must offer it as a free choice, not as "you're either with us or against us".
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
If people want to get Linux into the average consumer market's hands, there are quite a few things that need to be done.
1) Lock everything down. Any service running at all is theoretically vulnerable to some form of attack. While it is great the you can administer through telnet and everything else, the average person has no use for it. Open ports have no purpose on most consumer's machines. Uncle Bob isn't going to be telnetting into his box to read his mail. If someone's UNIX guru son decides to set up a box for his parents that he can take care of remotely, great.... but if you are doing that, it probably isn't too much trouble to go through the machine and open up the services you need. It is, however, a lot of trouble for the average newbie to go through and lock down unneeded services. Linux gets a bad name if a major exploit is discovered in sendmail and half the consumer market is vulnerable to it..... say goodbye to that security reputation. The average consumer we are marketing it to wont know how to apply the patch, they only know that their box was rooted and all the personal data they had on it was taken.
2) (Getting off the topic of your post, but I'm ranting) The user should never have to touch a CLI. Keep in mind this is a consumer we are talking about here... one who probably couldn't figure out DOS, let alone the intricacies of the mount command every damn time they wanted to put a cd in the drive (yes, I know supermount is coming). Screw make, screw RPM... For the consumer market, Linux needs something like Install Shield... a lesson should be taken from windows here... everything can be done from the GUI, adding programs to the Start Menu does not require editing a text file, installing and removing software does not require foreign command lines.
Before you start saying that Linux is viable for home users, look at who we are talking about here. Linux is not yet an alternative for:
1) The 16 year old girl with an AOL account who wants to talk to friends on ICQ.
2) An elderly person who is already having trouble seeing, the current font support in most UNIX web browsers is lacking, text just looks blocky and it is sometimes hard on my 21 year old eyes, I wonder what it looks like for those 60+.
3) The teenage boy who wants to play the latest game (support isn't quite there yet, plus the drivers for a lot of common video cards suck. I believe the TNT2 under Quake3 is an example)
4) Mom, who wants to do word processing and print stuff on her recent HP Printer (most of those printers coming with the computer deals at Best Buy are Win printers)
6) Dad, who wants to balance his checking account (are there any viable Linux alternatives to quicken out there)
7) Anyone who wants to browse the web on their brand spanking new computer from $MAJOR_MANUFACTURER. I have yet to see a new system for under 1000 bucks that comes without a winmodem. If your talking about Linux as a free OS, lets do some math here:
1 Copy of RedHat, about 50 bucks (its the one everyone buys because it's well known, right?)
1 Basic lousy hardware modem (probably won't connect any better that a win modem), 60 bucks
Total cost: about 110 plus tax.
1 copy of win98, about 99 bucks plus tax(ostensibly free because they bought it with their computer).
Looks like Windows is ahead on this one, especially since it does everything the average consumer needs right now. Yes, it is unstable, but for most applications, it doesn't matter. I personally have never lost any work due to a crash. BTW, I'm running win2k final right now, and am working on about a 2 week uptime. I have not had it crash yet, the only times I have had to reboot were after I added new hardware, which autodetected perfectly.
Linux is good for:
1) Sysadmins
2) Hobbiests who like to screw around with Unix for fun.
3) "Power Users" who tend to do a lot of work and need an OS that can keep up with them.
4) People who have it inflicted upon them by sysadmin family members, who want to lock it down so they don't get any 3am support calls. I personally would rather have my family running win98 that they could play with and install their own crap on. My family can install anything they want without having to call me about it, and it usually doesn't screw up, but when it does, a reinstall (of the program)gets everything back together in short order.
BTW, before anyone labels me a M$ supporter, the minority of my computers run windows. OS's I'm currently running on my personal machines:
Win2k (main box)
Win95 (p100 laptop)
Solaris 7 (Sparc2)
Linux (suse) (p90, k5-133, 2 486's)
BeOS (Cyrix MediaGX)
I use Windows as my main operating system because I can do nearly everything I need to on it. I switch among the unices when I want to do development or networking stuff.
Don't say Linux is viable for the average user, because it isn't... yet.
What do you mean, "Linux can't afford multi-million dollar ad campaigns"? Linux is an Operating System, remember? I bet it can't vote or drink beer either. If you mean, Linux distribution companies, then I think RedHat for one can afford to spend -- and I'll bet does spend -- quite a bit on advertising these days, don't you?
To save myself from the cries of "Microsoft apologist", I also run Linux and OpenBSD, extensively.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
eight CPUs on one server, 256 MB RAM blah blah ... blah blah? Oh, I forget, this is the bit where he mentioned '8 GB', the bit that would destroy the argument you make in the next paragraph inflating your ego by the fact that it talks about a two gig machine.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
doesn't anyone remember The Great Linux Revolt of '98 for the Win98 launch? That was cool and got plenty of media attention.
Er... no. I don't think they do. Mind you, they probably don't remember the Win98 launch either - and the Linux Revolt of 98 will thus be remembered even less than if it had happened in any way of significance at all.
Basically, people don't care. Today's news is today's news. Tomorrow's news is Today's news tomorrow. Today's news is forgotten tomorrow, except by a select few.
To become one with the supreme Jungian uber-consciousness, one requires mindshare. Which requires much higher saturation than one geeky fan-boy weenie roast.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra