It is possible to get people up and running on free software or mostly free
software. The trick is to make sure they have the support for it. Most users
don't know any better. You can stick a GNU/Linux system in front of them and
it is easier to figure out than a new version of whatever they had prior
(assuming they owned or used a computer in the recent past).
The thing to remember is you alone won't achieve much. The best thing you can
do to help achieve massive adoption and promote free software is to
commercialize on it. There is nothing wrong with earning money from it. The
goal is freedom. Even charging for free software would be OK. Now you may
have a hard time with that one given most of this software is available at no
charge online. However not everybody is technically adept at downloading or
installing it. Burning an ISO is technical! So there is a great opportunity
here to charge for your time.
My advise is to advertise computer support services. Get business cards
printed. Prints LOTS. Charge for your time and sell people computers,
hardware, etc. If something doesn't work with free software tell them it
isn't supported any more. Then sell them something that is.
Places you can distribute business cards: pizza shops, family restaurants,
grocery stores, cafes, barber shops, and hundreds of other types of places.
In fact.
If anyone wants to do this let me know. I've got plenty of marketing
materials, inexpensive sites for cheap and quantity printing, etc. I can
literally give you a business plan.
