On Wed, 10 Oct 2001, Neil Stevenson wrote:
> Home users like to think that they dont need to know much to use
> their computer.
Sadly, yes. This is where any Unix-alike (whether it be a Linux or BSD
based system) starts to frighten people off. Type commands? This is the
21st Century, dammit!
> Business users will want to see a migration route to something that
> costs them less or brings them more bang for their buck, but also need
> to know its reliable.
...which for many is where 'alternate' OS systems (whichever) win hands
down.
> - Use wine or VMware to show Outlook Express (or Eudora or whatever
> e-mail program will work) running on a linux X-terminal. You can show
> other stuff running too - the home user gets to see how comfortable
> and cosy life could be and business users get to see they're not tied
> to Microsoft.
Ah. So using VMWare, which OS would you use in the container, exactly?
While that might be a clever demo of functionality, it doesn't clearly
remove the 'tie to Microsoft'. And Wine, I think, would frighten people.
The last time I used it - at the weekend, I use it to dump data off of my
decompression computer after diving - it spat out loads of debug info to
the xterm I ran it from...
> - Show some of the stuff that Windows is crap at
Memory protection. Show how easy it is to trip it up, and how damned
difficult it is under Linux.
> - Show off some of the _really_ polished Linux stuff; KDE and Gnome,
Ugh. Gnome, polished? I refer you to the quote from theregister about
Gnome2.0, the roughcut release:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22025.html
"It's a major rewrite, first announced at LinuxWorld Expo in August 1999
when it was slated for a September 2000 release. The software is
accompanied by a note warning that this initial Alpha build 'does not
include anything of use to end users,' which at least makes it consistent
with all the previous versions of GNOME Desktop we've used"
Made me laugh, anyway!
Still needs a *lot* of work, in my book. Whilst clever in the way it gives
a desktop and stuff, I don't need a desktop. I drag and drop things on my
PowerBook, not a Linux box. But then I'm probably not representative of
the average user ;-)
> StarOffice (show it loading a Word document - that'll fry some business
> users who think this isn't possible), Gimp, etc. Is there anything stable
> that connects to MSExchange for e-mail yet?
Sort of: check out the Bynari website at http://www.bynari.com or instead
http://tradeclient.sourceforge.net/
Neither of them do Exchange per se, but both will do IMAP/POP3/SMTP/LDAP
stuff, so you can get pretty much everything your Exchange server gives
you.
Alternatively you could just use Pine+SSL & the IMAP functionality of your
Exchange server. Works for me!
> Remember the issue is not to show that Linux wins hands down over Windows -
> we know it does, but telling folk they've been using the wrong O/S all their
> life 'aint gonna go down too well. The whole point is to show users that
> there are alternatives; and that the alternatives are strong enough to
> warrant serious consideration.
Why don't we pitch it slightly differently?
You (as in you, the non-Linux person) tell us (NLUG) what you want Linux
to do, then we'll show you it can. That way we preach the words the
audience want to hear... probably!
G
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