On 18/05/11 21:46, Martin Houston wrote: > I seem to have stirred up quite a bit of debate with this. > > Michael Devenish makes a good suggestion that the Race Online volunteers > need to get a bit of education with Ubuntu. It is an achievement to get > it on the menu as an option but it is clear that the Microsoft spin > doctors have had a hand in the wording of the Remploy site. The Windows > option gets more coverage and glowing terms like 'safe and familiar'. It > gets 50% more coverage in fact! > > It would have been nice to have little snippets like Linux's 20 year > history and the fact it runs on > 95% of all super computers. The page > is very biased to say the least. > > It is regrettable that the computers are such low spec, but if you are > on benefits even another £50 spent on improving this would seem like a lot. > > Another thing we could help with as a community is finding ways of > making there low spec computers tolerable. It seems the place they have > been squeezed the most is memory. > > Surely collectively the 'geek' community must have quite a bit of > smaller capacity and old tech memory lying about. But could let the > recipients of these systems get to 512 meg or more. Its just a matter of > matching up memory type with who needs it. This is something that local > Linux user groups need to do. Each group could have a 'charity box' of > donated bits that could just be the thing to make some otherwise piece > of junk live again. > > Using a computer need not be expensive. Just time consuming (but > interesting). > > > If the right memory cannot be found at the right (i.e. very low or free) > price then at a pinch adding a second HD just for swap makes even a low > memory system far more tolerable, or taking things on the head and > running the OS from a £5 USB stick, just using the HD for swap. The > biggest cost of swap is the fact that the disk heads have been forced > away from what they were up to at the time. Take that out of the > equation and a swapping system could be called sedate but not as easily > catatonic. All for an old small capacity HD. > > We need to give these people confidence that they can 'pimp their ride' > like this. > > I want people to see this as an opportunity to get a vibrant local Linux > SIG going in your own area as a service to the community. > > Service can take many forms, helping more people out of the darkness of > ignorance is one thing. > > These people will be done no favours if they go from no computer > knowlege to trying to cope with XP, especially on such a low spec > machine! And later perhaps some of those same people introduced to the > way the global community of the Internet really is become useful > contributors to cool free software projects. There is nothing to be lost > by sharing more widely. > > With free software 'the feeding of the 5,000' (biblical reference there) > is not a miracle, because the duplication of it is what computers do as > a fundamental operation, it is just a matter of attitude to want it to > happen. > > For anyone in Essex I am trying to restart the Chelmer LUG in > Chelmsford. We had our first meeting last weekend and had great support > from SOSLUG - but are in need of some more local volunteers too. > > -- > *Deluxe Technology Ltd* > /Linux Consultant/ > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > http://www.deluxe-tech.co.uk > Mob: 07970 850961 >
So lets put some of this on the loco pages :) Paul -- Paul Sutton Cert SLPS (Open) http://www.zleap.net Open Mic nights - Wednesday 8pm to 11pm (14+) Free entry Breakin' Ground - Street dance for young people (8+) Wednesday 6pm (starts May 11th) The Lighthouse,26 Esplanade Road, Paignton 01803 411 812 or e-mail [email protected] for more info. 17th September 2011 - Software freedom day -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
