**************************************** * LUG meet on 12 Jan. 2003 @ VJTI ****************************************
While encouraging home users to switch to Linux we have to alsoFrom: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux India Initiative Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 22:54:26 -0700 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Friday 03 January 2003 21:34, Nikhil Karkera wrote:**************************************** * LUG meet on 12 Jan. 2003 @ VJTI **************************************** On Wed, 25 Dec 2002 Nikhil Joshi wrote :Come on who are we kidding? Do these ppl really care (and why should they?) if theres Linux or GNU/Linux or whatever and what is the right (read purists) way of The shopowners and home users already use free (read pirated) software. While the step is very welcome it would be really good >> to see the lowest denominator using Linux apart from scientists,sarkari babus,geeksWrong presumption that initial capital costs is the only cost. As usage increases, the costs for maintainence and security of data exceeds the initial capital cost by orders of magnitude (now u know why M$ is trying to change it's bussiness model). This is true for any user. The hassle of keeping out worms and preventing random crashes is what will turn the shop owner and home user to GNU/Linux. rgds [EMAIL PROTECTED]
remember that they may be owning non-compatible hardware like winmodems,
printers, scanners, digital cameras and the like which will make things
extremely difficult for them to agree to replace a working system for
another which results in more expense. Almost all Linux distros
out-of-the-box would not work for many and they would not have the
skills / patience to learn manual configuring etc to make most of these
hardwares work in Linux.
Of course we also know that most home users are using pirated softwares
which did not cost anything and the only cost incurred by them is for
the hardware. So would they throw away their old hardware which is still
good enough to work for another 5-10 years.
I believe that home users have no other costs except the initial
hardware cost and it is not sounding convicing enough that their
operating costs or TCO would make enough difference to switch an OS.
Floppies / CDs are sufficient to back up all the important data for home
users and most would not understand what the fuss is all about even if
they are habituated to rebooting their systems 3 times in a day. Keep in
mind that most such home users do not keep their systems on for any
longer than they actually use it. So uptime and stability remain just irrelevant words.
Worms , viruses, firewalls, antivirus software, reboot, BSOD etc are
perfectly normal words in home users lexicons but Apt-get, root,
privileges, sources, /dev/hda, mount etc are not.
So even though we are looking at a superior OS and other applications,
it still needs a little more finishing touches to get the whole package
ready for everyone's use. Let's help by evangelizing a little more and
get atleast one acquaintance interested enough to switch to a dual boot
first (hardware permitting). A little emphasis on taking the high moral
ground and refusing to use pirated softwares when legal alternatives
exist, would be a nice approach with someone who has a sense of wrong
and right. Even a switch to OSS alternatives on Windows (OpenOffice.org
and Mozilla) as a first step would be a nice way to show off the
capabilities of the alternative system.
Nasir
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