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Introducing Linux to Joe Average
eco2geek writes "The local "alternative newspaper" is running a cover story titled 'The Rebel Alliance: An unlikely army of hacker hippies, geek visionaries, idealistic teachers and corporate giants is making Portland ground zero of a digital revolution.' I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call Portland 'ground zero' of anything, but the article does give the average reader a good introduction to what Linux is, why it's important, and some of the politics surrounding it. (The article also mentions 'the frenetic Slashdot.org.' :-)"
I'm pretty impressed as it's only a 'local alternative newspaper' that it's not buckling under the Slashdot effect, in fact it hasn't even slowed down!
Even stranger is the Netcraft 'what's that site running?' results, showing that the server was recently running MacOS!
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
It took a while for the words to sink in. I mean, my friend works in the publishing industry, and while she uses computers all day for word processing and presentations and stuff like that, I didn't expect her to know about FreeBSD. So I asked "Why FreeBSD? Have you been reading OSNews again?"
She gave me a strange look and replied "No, because FreeBSD is free, and I've heard all sorts of things about Linux getting picked up by the big corporates. Those IBM ads are everywhere! I thought Linux was going to be expensive...more expensive than Windows!"
I went ahead and install GNU/Debian for her, lecturing her solidly on the finer points of apt-get while we installed all 6 CD-ROMs from my laptop over a heavily degraded 802.11b link (I'd removed all the RF shielding from her PC's case to 'lap' the hard drive). But it got me thinking. Are Linux distros losing out to FreeBSD when it comes to new users simply because of their names? I mean, who's going to know that GNU/Debian Linux doesn't cost $699 per seat? FreeBSD says immediately that the product is free
I'll put a question to the community...do people think that it might be worth re-naming Debian in some markets (like campus bookstores, for instance) to FreeDebian? I mean, Tux could even hold a pitchfork or something. Do people think that a 'marketing friendly' name is important? Would this get the Debian developers off-side with the FSF, or would they understand? Would the viral nature of the BSD license necessitate distribution changes because of the 'Free' in the name? I welcome comments from the GNU/Linux and FreeBSD communities equally!
Sure there are small things (not a GNU/Linux in sight) which will probably be the cause of much criticism here but for an INTRODUCTION to Linux, and a brief update on the who SCO joke I thought it was rather well done.
/. effect too... :D
At least it didn't leave me thinking: "What idiots wrote this garbage..."
Kudo's to a small newspaper standing up the
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
Does that mean that any company (SCO, M$) could copyright the Tux logo and we won't be able to use it anymore?
DVD Ripping, Divx, VCD, SVCD under Linux
Any effort to familliarize the public with Linux that doesn't involve a creepy-looking 9 year old with yellow hair has my support.
That, and anything that doesn't involve Laverne talking about "chaos theory"..sheesh.
What the hell would be so wrong about simply putting a few kernel/distrib contributors infront of a camera, and letting them talk for 30 seconds? "Hi, I'm Dave. I wrote the part of Linux that makes this camera work. I did it because it's fun....and because the manufacturer wouldn't." Sure, most of us are pretty damn ugly but there's gotta be a few photogenic nerds among us. With good stories, too.
Bowie J. Poag
Google picked up about 700 pages with "that will just be a completely unintentional side effect"...
Unfortunately for every good article there's another full of FUD about *ix systems. take this one
"A new email virus called MyDoom is spreading rapidly across the Internet through UNIX mail servers, bringing with it a dangerous attachment that, when opened, can give attackers access to users' computers through an electronic backdoor."
Amazing what they'll print these days? unix systems, one of the systems so amazingly resistant to worms like mydoom, and still we have the press implying they're to blame for the spread of windows viruses.
Maybe that Portland read this on slashdot about a year ago, heh.
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19, @12:00AM About 500 years ago, a guy named Martin Luther decided to translate the Bible into German, thus was born the Protestant revolution. The point being, that before this, if you were German and could not read Latin, you had to have a priest translate the words of God AKA the Bible.
A Brit named William Tyndale had the same idea, he printed 50 copies of the Bible *in English*, the establishment was that shocked at this idea, they burnt him at the stake. Probably because they thought the idea of the common people having direct access to the 'holy writ' would lead to them thinking for themselves and having dangerous ideas.
How like the current debate between open source and closed source this all sounds. Just substitute operating system for Bible, money for God, the stock market for the Holy Roman Empire and Bill Gates as the Pope and it all lines up!
"IBM's endorsement of Linux has added credibility and an illusion of support and accountability," Ballmer wrote.
So, backing from a huge corporation only gives an illusion of support and accountability, by Ballmers own admission? Something to keep in mind next time "corporate backing" is flounted as a Windows highlight :)
On a recent United Airlines flight I came across one of the more unlikely places to read on open source: that bastion of the most bland journalism imaginable: the inflight magazine. Generally I only look in the magazine to see what movies might be playing, so I was surprised that the current issue of Hemispheres Magazine has an article on Mitch Kapor, Chandler, and the Open Source Applications Foundation. It's not perfect, but pretty good for an inflight magazine.
The Syllable operating system (forked from the dead AtheOS project) seeks to create a free-software OS without all of these problems Linux faces on the desktop. Boots up fast, isn't bloated, easy to program for, no mishmash of dependencies, etc. It's coming along pretty nicely (the kernel is [quote] "99% complete"), and when the GUI frontend and other parhelia are done, it should become the first GPL operating system normal people can use.
Linux is great for what it does. It's a switz-army knife of an operating system for all sorts of esoteric professional and geek uses. But end-users don't want this, and forging Linux into something it is not is ultimately self-defeating. So be happy with what Linux is and accept for as such, and do not be upset when people say it is not good for grandma. Projects like Syllable are where the future of the free-software desktop lays.
Let Linux do what it is good for, and let the other 99% of the population who isn't technical find their GPl`ed goodness elsewhere.
The article starts off Linux creator Linus Torvalds chose a penguin as Linux's logo after an arctic bird nipped him at a zoo (left column). Well, it wasn't a penguin then - they are from the Antarctic.
The whole thing is a throwback to the days before companies like IBM started coming onboard and Linux became mainstream. I had not realised just how far things have changed until reading that stuff about long-haired hippie programmers (paraphrased). Linus looks pretty presentable (he always did) and photos nowadays are usually of him rather than Alan Cox or RMS.
Around here, Linux is seen as a professional OS and one for professionals. Perceptions . . .
Some of your points are valid, some are not.
You mentioned installing Linux. How many average users do you know that installed their version of windows rather than bought it with it on there already? Most of those people wouldn't be able to install windows. The fact is, for so called "n00b" distro's, the installion process is in fact easier and quicker than windows. Some such as Lindows and Mandrake can be installed onto a new computer with just a couple of steps and nothing more than pressing next. PC's bundled with Linux and linux friendly hardware alieve this problem completely.
RPM's are shitty and are the cause of more problems than they are worth. RPM's should have been done away with long ago. I remember as a noob, same problems. Could never install RPM's because of dependencys. I think distro's should adopt a portage style package system. Compiling from source takes longer, but it takes care of idiotic linking issues that RPM's create.
I think most of Linux's entry level issues will be solved when OEM's start shipping it more included. The reason Linux on the desktop at the office is a great canidate is because it's installed for the workers and they've got someone to help them get past their entry level issues. Which are minor, but can be a big deal to new users.
I've been working with lots of 'Joe Average' types in the past couple of years, and there have been many abortive attempts to 'Linuxise' my offerings (to friends, family, and moonlighting clients). My wife was a ginea pig for me, switching from her blue-screen plagued windows install on a toshiba 8100 laptop to RedHat 8 + Ximian. She's never looked back. Encouraged by this success, I've brought several other family members and a couple of moonlight clients (barter system - including a veterinarian and a law firm) over to the 'free side'. Very few have experienced any real trouble.
In short, right now, if a given person doesn't absolutely require windows-based apps (like custom applications or games, etc), Linux is ready for the desktop of Joe Average Computer User. The small business office or home user that's not a gamer can recieve significant value increase from Linux, and I have at least 22 happy customers right now.
Thinking outside my Head
If you spend a dollar with a local company working on Linux, that dollar stays in your economy," said Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems.
"When you spend a dollar with a multi-national corporation as a license fee for a piece of software, that dollar leaves your country."
"It's about keeping the money in your local economy, developing skills and developing the local economy to be strong in its own right in a global context."
Also quoted are Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond.
Not mentioned, however, are The Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agreee. I think the counter-culture has been trying to adopt Linux as Member of the Movement. It's a little embarrassing.
:)
I have a friend who claims to be a geek. He can italicize and link in his livejournal. That's it. He put LimeWire proficiency on his resume to bulk out the "software" section. Yeah, yeah, I know in these enlightened times you can be a film geek, a music geek, a political geek, a goth club geek, or a football geek. In fact, virtually everyone has some kind of interest, so the word apparantly has no meaning anymore. Oh, and it used to be about the music.
Bitter? Hell, yeah.
Actually, political geeks are called policy wonks, and I'm one, and so I guess that puts me with the other hangers-on. But I'll brave that risk and say that any meaningful comparison of Linus to Che Guevara requires that Linus torture at least a dozen people to death.
Failing that, Open Source is an economic, social and technological exercise. Political revolution is not on the menu, except maybe as a side project of some of our luminaries. Whose politics? (ESR? RMS? IBM?) Virtually any, apparantly.
So I'd thank the drug-addled, media-obsessed non-programmers to stop trying to co-opt Linux into something that it isn't. I mean, seriously, go write a mission statement.
The problem is, many OEM's _can't_ sell Linux preinstalled on desktops without the strong hand of MS slamming down upon them. It's all or nothing. You either sell all Window's PC's or you're paying retail for for each copy. No OEM discount. and if you have a contract, we will sue you for breech of contract.
Not saying there's a huge demand, but if they offered it, people would buy it. Espically if it were the same PC but minus the cost of windows and office bundles they many times include. This would be very significant because for cheap PC's (some as low as a couple hundred bucks), shaving the price off of software could lower the price of a 300 dollar PC by as much as 50 dollars. So for many, the option of a PC that's around 20 percent less in price but is the same hardware, it would be a no brainer. Espically if OEM's started to give Linux a little nudge and put those PC's on the forefront.
These are all dreams though because OEM's have signed long term contracts with MS and when it's re-negotation time, it's either you run an all MS shop or you pay retail.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
I have not always been a geek, but even before my geek days I never caught a virus. The type of attachments and emails that these viruses come in is so blatantly obvious that any idiot can figure out which emails they should be wary of. If you do want to open up some little game that a freind sent you, at least update your definitions and scan the file first.
Of course this is nothing in comparison to the ultimate peev which is folks giving out there passwords (or better yet, writing them down and taping it to the monitor). How damn ignorant do people have to be? Do they not realize that giving others your password completely defeats the purpose of having a password? I am not kidding when I tell you this: My girlfreind worked as an auditor at a public university. There were staff members whom had access to the database system that is used to keep track of student records including grades. They put the password for this system up on the computer and then, not only did they sit there clueless while watching student workers access this system, but this office had an open-door policy allowing any student to come in and use this computer.
Gentlemen and ladies, this is the level of ignorance that we are dealing with.
Having spent some time on an LPI course, and delving a little deeper, I found some aspects of Linux still need attention (IMHO).
.conf added on the end. Perhaps people who still roll the software with -conf are trying to be amusing.
Why is it not possible to have all configuration files with the
Daemons are another. Why the hell call your FTP log Xtransfer.log?
There were so many examples of this idiocy that I ended up scratching my head. For an OS built on standards, there was a remarkable lack of reasonable standards when working with the OS, to the point of it being setup in some demented legacy ideals.
Now, I know I can go and add my own aliases, and I can amend all my log files, and break open all the configuration and fix this myself. But if you take that view, JoeNewUser is going to face this everytime you crack open a new Linux on the guy.
In the end, JoeNewUser will have to use the command lines and configuration, where he'll come up on the non standard, sometimes illogical, system confs and logs.
One day maybe, just maybe, Linux and its distributions will agree on its boot configuration files being in a standard place, and the same leads on for conf files.
Now, I suppose if you use the OS every day, you work around these things. You might adapt to the non logical names, non standard conf files, and ever changing locations of files.
Anyway, just my tuppence..
AdmV
We`re all equal
I recycle used computers, I have a contract with a *large* corporation to pick up their old PC's and other "goodies"..
They wipe the drives in them, which is FINE with me, so I take them all and install Linux on them, clean them up like brand new and resell them at rock botton prices that EVERYONE can afford, with a 30 day warranty.
I offer them only with Linux installed, take it or leave it. They are Internet appliances and they do a magnificent job of it, leaving the new owners to enjoy the computer without the headaches of using windows.
I give them 15 minutes free instructions on using it, if they want FULL instructions then I set up an appointment and charge $20 an hour which is $15 an hour cheaper than anyone else in town charges.
If they don't want Linux, that's tough. I don't offer any other options. They can install windows when they take it home but I won't help them if they have problems.
Like it or not, people around here are getting introduced to Linux. They want a cheap computer, they get one but they are at least going to play with Linux a little before they wipe it out.
But if they wipe out Linux and install anything else they void *my* 30 day warranty and they are own their own from them on..
I being a Microsoft croonie am sorry to say that I don't see this revolution of linux and freeBSD slowing down. I have always worked developing in microsofts products and their latest .Net platform is a pleasure to work with.
That being said I also realize that the only reason Bill comes up with these development platforms is to increase his hold on the desktop market. Yet WHY then with the success of open-source software on the rise would they still be charging schools and university's for their products. This is where their user base is created from!! In addition this this fact( which bothers me immensly ) they have also come out with their latest aggravating anti-piracy tool "pain in the ass" activation. Now I can't even move my legal copy of XP from one computer to another without having to go through the activation process again. This is a big mistake in my opinion. I know there are already hacks for this feature but if they ever come out with a version of their operating system that can't be used illeagally I see them going down in
FLAMES. If people in poor developing countries can't use their system to learn on along with the educational community in first world countries, there choke-hold on this industry will quickly be loosened.
I thought the Willy Week article was pretty neat, and I really liked the cover picture. But, like you, I think "rebellion" is the wrong word for this.
It seems to me that calling this a "rebellion" is underrating what is going on. The increasing acceptance of Linux and OSS in general is the visible manifestation of a major revolution-- in thought and culture. The idea that a thousand eyes makes all bugs shallow-- cooperative development of new software wealth-- is as astounding and revolutionary as the idea of standardized parts that brought about the industrial revolution, or the idea of empiric, repeatable observation that brought about the scientific revolution, or perhaps even that idea our distant ancestors had that you could contain a small bit of fire, keep it fed, and actually benefit from it...
This revolution is not a thing of competition. You who choose OSS simply because those apps make your life better than the alternatives are actually right in the middle of the front lines and don't even know it. Which is the way it should be.
The revolution will not be televised. But if you know what to look for, you can see plenty evidence of it on slashdot.
Don't get me wrong, I am definitely pro Linux and use it on a daily basis, but what this article fails to mention is that Portland public schools have no money. Portland has had to cancel all kinds of extracurricular programs, shorten the school year, layoff teachers, etc. Most of the sports programs require the players to purchase their own equipment (for example). The local economy is hurting big time. Portland and Oregon as a whole has had some of the highest unemployment in the nation in past months. So it makes me wonder if the big Linux push at some of the schools is really because they are so "anti Microsoft", etc. or it is out of desperation because they can't afford anything else. Don't forget, Microsoft is headquartered only 180 miles north of Portland and employs several thousand people. I have many friends that have moved up there to take jobs with them. A lot of the contract tech jobs you can find in Portland are for Microsoft. So I think this whole anti-Microsoft thing is blown way out of proportion by articles such as this. Just my two cents.