i am personally of the opinion that neat, flashy stuff is really cool, but what we have to focus on is EASE OF USE. that's the problem with *nix. unless you've done it before, it's a pain in the freakin' ass to get everything working the way you want it. i don't think people really care about the GPL and "freedom" software. that comes when later. what we really need to do is show that *nix is easy to use and setup for the novice, while being free (as in free beer) if we want more people to use *nix, we're going to have to show to the novice user that *nix is fun and easy. much as everyone hates novice users, i feel that is the crowd we're going to have to appeal to. if you wan't to wow sysadmins and IT staff, etc... setup two networks and show them just how much better *nix is than windoze (and i mean tweak them both out for performance... you can't just tweak out a *nix network and leave windoze at base install. that just proves to anyone watching that you're biased and that *nix ISN'T better...) $0.02 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 7:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [EUG-LUG:2555] RE: Eugene Expo aka our next Demo Day.... > Let's brainstorm cool stuff (We've done it before, someone > want to search the mailing list archives?) > Well, I was pretty interested in PHPGroupware, but I don't think that is a Linux/Unix specific thing. We can show app after app after app, but that wouldn't really get any point accross except "Look, there really are Open Source apps available!". I think it gets more to the heart of the matter to explain why Free (as in speech) software is a good thing. Explain how far it's come (IBM, $1billion, etc...) and why it has a good future. Also, how is the technology better? How does it compare to your home Wintel solution that every Joe who visits the booth is going to have in his den? We need to think of ways to get these points accross that will fit the setting. Anyone? I think I'm spent... TimH ------ 28-Aug-2001
