Easwar Hariharan wrote: > On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Rajeev R. K.<[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 4:57 PM, Krishnakant <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >>> On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 14:59 +0530, Easwar Hariharan wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Mathew >>>> Carley<[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hi all, >>>>> >>>>> Am new to ILUG, but this is not a silly idea. I'm a long-time member of >>>>> WLUG in New Zealand, and they have monthly meetings, as well as >>>>> workshops for normal people who want to do things such as try out >>>>> >>> linux, >>> >>>>> install linux on their computers and solve problems. >>>>> >>> Infact I was going to propose this because off late I have been invited >>> in many colleges to give a 1 day or 2 day workshop for shifting to >>> gnu/linux (SNDT Joohu is migrating their entire lab to gnu, although I >>> will put up more details on or after 4th). >>> >> Hmm, this sounds interesting... Can we work something out on these lines >> with any of the city colleges? >> >> Also, let's have an installfest soon.. i'll can volunteer my office space(in >> goregaon East) and infra for it even.. >> > > A installfest would only be feasible if there is an adequate demand > for people who want Linux on their boxes,but aren't confident enough > to do it themselves.Have any people contacted list members with such > requests?If so,we can pool these requests to individual members > together and hold an installfest,with the added advantage that the > newbies will be able to socialize with GLUG members and be reassured > about the availability of support. > > <snip> > Regards, > Easwar > Registered Linux user #442065 > > What about every time that user wants you to install a VLK copy of Windows XP/Vista and office on his machine? Depending on their use case, *buntu might suit just as well. I'm sure we each have at least a couple of those people per month.
In reality, it's the girlfriends/wives/grandmas/mums/dads etc who become "cost prohibitive" to support, because they usually expect fixes for free. At home, my brother is always infecting my parents computer with malware of some sort, but of course, I'm 10,000km away, making it a bit difficult to fix. My grandparents use the computer for office and Internet - maybe solitaire too - so I'd like to see them on Linux as well, if for no other reason than the hardware (in both cases they are hovering about 1-2Ghz machines) Here's what I have learned though: My parents and grandparents both got "in" to computers with Windows 98, and were later dragged kicking and screaming in to Windows XP. Changing the interface once again would be a real kick in the teeth, even though the changes are miniscule. I just spent 1 hour on the phone to Russia setting up a PPPoE connection on a German operating system - the girl relied so heavily on the way the icons looked because, even if she could read the text, she didn't (I had to keep asking her to try). So while most users couldn't give care less about *what* they run, it needs to look and act similarly to what they're familiar with OR be intuative. Case in point: my Fiancé only likes Windows Vista because of the "Piggymon" clock in Windows Sidebar. If I can replicate that and make everything pink, she reckons I can give her Linux - It's a Dell with 3GB of RAM, so *buntu flies, even running off the Live-CD. I find usually the best way of doing it is to essentially force users to use the system for a month, and show them the basics - they'll either use it, or they'll decide that the old system was better and ask you to switch back. At least if this is the case, you can install all the right software (Firefox, OpenOffice, VLC, Pidgin etc), so if they decide to repeat the experiment, you can show that its possible to run these things on either platform. Mathew -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
