> I agree with you on that point, but the question I have is do people
> want to understand more? I've tried explaining what I'm doing to
> fix a computer problem when helping people, but a lot of people
> just don't care. They expect someone to be there to help when needed.
> I don't think it's any different than someone expecting a plumber
> to come fix the pipes when something goes wrong. I think it's important
> to empower computer with a little more knowledge about the computer
> than they have today [I think this would get rid of a lot of frustration
> people feel towards computers], but it's not realistic to expect everyone
> to be knowledgable enough that they can solve all their own problems.
I agree with Deepak. I worked Deskside Support for a power company
running Novell/95 and they couldn't set up their own printers, or do any
of the things that any one subscribing to this list would find simple.
But most of the people that I did speak to of Linux sounded genuinely
interesting during that time. I even got a handful of people to
switch. And they did learn some stuff about Linux. Although they are
now running the Caldera 2.2 release that is pretty easy to install and
setup. I do end up providing an amount of help for these people and
their home computers still but that is ok with me as long as they run
Linux.
In some ways I think it is also more time. A lot of the younger people
I meet are more computer smart than I ever was at an earlier age. My
girlfriends 11 year old can do things that I had no comprehension of at
her age. As a matter of fact she wants her own dual boot machine. But
she likes Linux because it looks cool, and she like the old
games(xboing, asteroids). Which I am not complaining. As long as she
uses it.
A lot of business people do not like MS they just do not know the
alternatives. Or they hear the FUD that no apps are available for
Linux. Or in some cases had to use WP a long time ago when it was
terrible. But they do not know that their are accounting, calendaring,
word processing, and other apps. And they think that UNIX is still some
arcane, command line OS without a GUI.
GNOME/KDE or a shock for people that run Windows and see it for the
first time. Some people are amazed at how Linux just flat rocks on a
desktop in comparison to .ico and those ugly colors of 95/NT.
Jim Ray
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