RE: [TCLUG:8945] Installfest was great

["Schoenhofen, Kelly" <KSchoenhofen@Carlson.com>]

I woulda been the first to respond, but some of us have to work every now
and then :)

I agree with everything Joel said - and in a ha-ha kind of way, it's ironic
that everything he said, I agreed with six years ago. OS/2 enthusiasts
(don't say fanatics), like myself at the time, kept running into these same
issues, and it all eventually boils down to the user not knowing enough to
know what they really want. OS/2 didn't even invent this - I'm sure it goes
way back into *nix history. 

What eventually became option C, and the option we all ended up going to was
this:

C) Don't encourage anyone to install Linux. Don't advertise outside your
community for any event. Don't offer _really_ newbie help. Put up virtual
barriers to new users to surpass. Don't answer kindergarden conceptual
questions (ne1 know of a warezed ftp program that supports that new protocol
called telnet or something?). In short, put up a passive resistance to users
going to Linux.  

IMO, we were not put upon this world to teach others what they want, or what
they should be using. If someone wants Linux, they will get it. If someone
needs help, they will find it. If they can't find any help, then they didn't
really want it to begin with. Cynical? Not really. Ninety-nine out of a
hundred new users of a alternative OS are led to installing it by the worst
kind of hype that can exist - the hype that lures users to a product for a
capability that they will never see or use. So now you have Joe Schmoe
saying to his friends "What a POS... it was impossible to do anything and it
didn't run anything I use.". 

IBM's big mistake with OS/2 was pushing its Windows compatibility so hard,
as a reason to switch to OS/2 from Windows. Boy, what a mistake. You can't
beat one product by offering the emulation of said product as your primary
feature. Take the stability claims of Linux. People love blathering on about
this. Let's put this to the Joe Schmoe test.
Joe Schmoe gets home from work and turns on his home PC running Windows
version X. He uses it until dinner. Watches a little TV. Balances the
checkbook before bed. Shuts it off. Now, contrast that with a Linux
solution. "Hey Joe. Now you can leave it on all day and night, so when
you're at work your three year old can f*ck everything up!". What does Joe
care? What does the extra stability of Linux do for him?

Here's some of the other big claims about Linux vs. the Windows World (by
quite a few web sites, linux.com, linux.org, etc. etc.)

Linux truely multitasks.
Oh yeah. Joe really can tell a big difference when he's switching from
QuickBooks to IE 5.0 as soon as the wifey walks out of the room, so he can
browse www.thehun.net in peace. Linux can do that _so_ much better.

Linux has TCP/IP networking. 
Err, wow. Both can dial up into his ISP so he can check out www.thehun.net
every night. And one of them is about eighty times harder to setup your
dialup connection than the other. You guess which one.

Linux has freely available source code.
I'm sure Mr. Schmoe is going to tear himself away from www.thehun.net long
enough to troubleshoot intermittent segmentation faults in the source code
of his browser. He can't troubleshoot too long though - his Kenmore
Appliance delivery job starts pretty early in the morning. 

Linux in the world of Joe Schmoe = big whoopy ding-dong. 

It just seems to me we're cheapening a product we believe in when we have to
practically beg someone to let us install it on their system.


-----Original Message-----
From: Joel A. Koepp [mailto:jkoepp@atlas.socsci.umn.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 10:33 AM
To: tclug-list@mn-linux.org
Subject: Re: [TCLUG:8945] Installfest was great

Do we:

A) Encourage anyone and everyone to install Linux, but not warn them of
the time and effort required to become truly competent with it? 

B) Warn people of these things and only suggest Linux to those that would
demonstrably benefit from running it?  (perhaps at the risk of seeming
haughty and elitist?)

C) Some other option I haven't thought of but which no doubt exists.