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CBC Recommends Linux To Average User
rustalot42684 writes "The CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] has posted an article on its website promoting the use of Ubuntu Linux to the 'average computer user'. 'With the exception of gaming, which is limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package. I've used the last three versions of Ubuntu on my main portable web-surfing computer for years just to avoid viruses and spyware (as the vast majority of these nasty programs are written for Windows), and I have yet to be disappointed.' The author seems to have made some sweeping generalizations about the development of GNU/Linux, but that aside, will mainstream media coverage help more people switch?"
I disagree.
A awful lot of people have never heard of Linux nor do they know that there is anything other than Windows.
If they start hearing about something which doesnt have the pitfalls of Windows then it will be very interesting.
Also there is the people who think its a nerds only OS (e.g. my mother). When they start seeing in mainstream media they may want to look in to it.
As it stands right now, I dont have a snowball's chance in hell of getting my mum to switch.
It was hard enough getting her to use Firefox.
The CBC has been pretty good about open standards and open source. I, along with over 70k other people, download the 1 hour free podcasts showcasing canada's independant music. These podcasts come in OGG format too! Recently they started a second podcast and a track of the day feature. The french canadian (bap.fm) also has an hour of free music per week mostly showcasing montreal area and french canadian music.
s px
The CBC has been very responsive to complaints, comments, etc. Check it out at http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastplaylist.a
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Since CBC has a budget the same as most of it's viewership yearly income (yea rly), no wonder it reccomends Linux as a viable alternative to Window$.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
There are an awful lot of people out there who only know what they get from the mass media. This article, and others like it, will serve to raise Linux from "Mysterious and Scary" to "Mysterious, but Substantially Less Scary."
/usr/bin/pycentral. This is not something I want to have to explain to my mom, my girlfriend, or my neighbor -- nor do I want to do it for them.
My year of Linux on the desktop was 2002, but I've also had a lot frustrations along the way... including with the upgrade to my Ubuntu upgrade today. I eventually solved it by using vim to comment out lines 543 and 544 (not lines 541 and 542, like it said in the Ubuntu Forums) of
I had a sad realization today, reading an earlier Slashdot post. To beat Windows (much less Mac OS) on the desktop of people who are not early adopters, Linux does not have to be as good -- as I believe it is, on balance. Rather, it has to be better, and conspicuously better.
For some people, this will mean games. For others, multimedia. For still others, CAD, or other occupation-specific apps. But for everyone, it means "When I want to do _______, it better work on the first try."
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
The CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] has posted an article on its website promoting the use of Ubuntu Linux to the 'average computer user'.
No, David Conabree, a regular reviewer of new high-tech gear and longtime computer user has written a favorable story on Ubuntu that's been published on the cbc.ca website.
I'm a big fan of cbc.ca and most things Canadian (except for the beer, of course), but I doubt they have an official position of open source software, or are otherwise in the habit of recommending a particular Linux distro to their readers.
Most of that stuff simply isn't true. Hardware generally works and the proprietary 3D drivers have perfectly good 3D performance. It's true that Windows software like games doesn't work, but that should be pretty obvious - no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
What is this fascination with saying that the problem lies in making Linux friendlier to "the average user"?
Like the article says, Ubuntu covers very well the needs of the "average user". He needs basic tasks done, and Ubuntu does that well. Will he/she have issues along the way? Of course, in the same way that Windows does, which is the very same reason that you need to go to the average user's house every to months to clean up all the crapware that's installed in their machine and install codecs. After all, VLC and Firefox didn't appear on their desktops all by themselves now, did they?
No, the obstacle for Linux now lies in the odious "power user": the person that has developed a relatively good skill set for using Windows but is too stubborn to port it to another operating system, be it Linux, OS X, or whatever. This is, interestingly, a group of users for which many of us have contempt: they can achieve complex tasks but only because or rote learning and memorized steps. They will get that pretty Windows theme or know all the shortcuts to the one application the use frequently, but god forbid they have to use something else and they're lost all over again. They're the people that have command line phobia and yet will have no issues with editing registry files, difference being that the CLI is immensely useful and the Registry is the spawn of Satan.
Addendum: Gamers are not regular users. Regular users don't spend $250+ on a video card to play $60 games. CAD and design app users are not regular users either: they're domain specialists in whatever their application is, and industrial CAD solutions do exist for Linux and Unix. Ask 3d animation shops that used to be IRIX shops what they're using now.
Up to 2003, I think overselling linux was a real problem. These days I think many here are underselling linux - people are not complete idiots. They may not know how computers inside or out - but many just want a decent browser, a word processor, and many, with kids, want something that little Timmy can't mess up - the little kids not being able to install crapware and killing the computer is a big plus.
Is sweeping your computer for malware with several programs more tolerable? How about slowing it down in general with virus detection. How about running all these programs and still having crap slip through?
You can make Windows secure, but default it isn't. Windows is not some magical utopia where everything works - it is work but people don't recognize it as such - instead it becomes an "inevitable" task - like having to defrag the drive is normal chore on Windows given hardly a thought "why am I doing this crap?"
I think many in the Linux community are selling Linux short by problems that were issues 3 or 4 years ago but not so much today. The last few people I switched were people who had malware infested Windows computers almost beyond repair and they wanted Linux for several reasons - I was asked to help them put it on there, they even specified Ubuntu. These are not computer people.
Most of their printers work seamlessly. Their cameras work seamlessly. Their MFCs work for the most part - though there was one that was a pain in the ass to install for no reason (looking at you brother).
And games? Many don't play games in the first place though I keep their Windows partition around just in case. One guy plays flash games on line a lot - no linux barrier there.
Linux is truly good enough for a large segment of the population out there.
My grandmother rips her music in FLAC and Ogg Vorbis you insensitive clod!
And she even ripped her old vinyl collection to digital formats; a feat even I don't know how to do as cleanly as she did.
Besides, she doesn't watch porn (as far as I know), so WMV support is worthless to her (which is the only situation where I've seen WMV used frequently that isn't restricted with DRM).
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I've yet to meet a USB Scanner, External Disk, Digital Camera, or Name-brand Printer that didn't Just Work with Ubuntu. Maybe you've got some obscure edge case device that doesn't work, but they mostly just do.
I plug and unplug network cables all the time. This is probably a feature of Network-Manager - I'm pretty sure it was enabled by default in Edgy. Dunno, but it's definitely enabled by default in Feisty Beta and it's running great on my Edgy laptop and I don't remember any effort installing it.
Wait... which first person shooters run on Linux that you'd expect to work on an embedded 4 generation old Radeon card? Quake III should run fine with the "radeon" drivers.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work
I like the gist of what you're saying, but I think this point is a moot one. Vista has plenty of incompatibilites.
And sadly, it'll wind up being the best selling OS of al time, most likely.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As a Canadian Linux user and advocate, I have handed out more than my share of Ubuntu and Kubuntu disks. To outline the problem that Linux is having in terms of actual adoption in Canada, the following story says it all.
A few days ago two studies were being discussed on both the CBC and CTV. The first study wanted to learn how many Canadians actually believed global warming was a reality. The numbers were high, and generally speaking believers numbered somewhere around the 70% mark. The second study wanted to learn how many people in Canada where prepared to do anything at all to help prevent global warming from actually happening. If memory serves, it was found that almost nobody ... effectively 0% ... would actually do anything themselves to help reduce the effects of global warming.
So, the studies show Canada to be a nation composed of a great many ardent believers in global warming, but believers who will do nothing themselves to prevent it. If you study our politics you would know that our actions in the last decade or so regarding Kyoto would certainly support that assessment. Simply put, we take great self-righteous pride in our ability to talk the talk, but anyone who pays attention soon learns that in the end we are completely incapable of walking the walk.
... back to Ubuntu ...
I have given out dozens of disks, and each person really, really wanted to try it. Successful installs to date? You guessed it ... Zero. Not one person was willing to spend two seconds learning even the most basic information about the beige box under their desk. In talking to people over the years I have learned that the idea that they would 'change' their computer to be about the same intellectually as asking them the grow an extra limb.
So I keep talking to people, and I show them my nifty looking Linux systems, and I convert the occasional rookie Windows sysadmin who hasn't yet had a chance to be burned by the Redmond flame, but average home users? I am becoming more and more convinced that unless Virii and such get so bad they destroy the Windows platform completely, Linux will only make major double digit inroads into the 'average user' base when hardware comes with some flavour of Linux pre-installed...
...or a whole shitload of non-programmer advocates like myself do it for them free, in our spare time.
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Just curious, would it be correct to call a Windows rookie a Wookie? :-)
In B.C., our fascism is green.
Let me get this straight, you're suggesting Windows is like that? I can understand people not switching to Linux just because they read a glowing review on the CBC site, but I don't understand their not wanting to escape from Windows and from the shit they seem to regard as normal. I think it may be due to some form of learned helplessness syndrome.
Loose lips lose spit.
My girlfriend was a typical "get frustrated first, ask how to fix it later" windows user; with just enough knowledge to make her way about excel, word, and a web browser. Her computer became horribly broken from trojans and viruses and rather than doom myself to an endless succession of repairs I /handed her an ubuntu CD/. I didn't install ubuntu, I gave her the CD and told her that she merely needed to restart her computer with the CD in the drive to install it, being sure to email her personal data to herself before hand.
You know what? She prefers linux. Can use linux. Doesn't become frustrated with Linux.
She scoffs at Windows now.
I don't know this average computer user you speak of, but the one I know well coped just fine with using Ubuntu.
Before I start, I'm not a Windows fanboy, I use primarily Linux at home (Kubuntu to be precise).
Quote: "no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same."
You've obviously never met someone who's used only windows and switches to anything else for the first time. I worked in a school for two years, while there I was repeatedly asked why application XYZ wasn't installed on the mac laptops the school had. They have quite a surprised look on their face when I inform them that without emulation software there is no way to run windows applications on mac's (and then I have to explain what emulation software is and why we didn't have it... but that's a longer story).
Same goes for Linux. Principal hears "school ABC is running their Terminal Services network on Linux and having less problems than we are, why aren't we doing that too?!?!". After getting in contact with the school and finding out exactly what they were doing I found out they didn't even have Terminal Services, and they only had one Linux box. The PDC was Linux with a bunch of fat XP clients. But that's not the point is it? The point is that roughly half of the uneducated users I have every met don't have the slightest clue that there's any more difference between OS X and XP than there is between XP and 2000, so why on earth would they expect that their applications wont all run Linux?
For further proof just look at Linux is NOT Windows. If everyone knows that Windows applications will not run on Linux why did that ever need to be written?
I live in Australia, I suppose it is possible users are better educated elsewhere in the world, but I doubt it.