downloadsquad.com — Last weekend at BarCamp Portland, I gave a brief talk on switching family and friends to Linux. I hear you asking, why would you want to do that? Well, for a number of reasons really: cost, principle, maintenance, all of the above, or any reason what so ever.
May 16, 2007 View in Crawl 4
izzydahedgehogMay 17, 2007
Acutaine and a gym membership helped me out a lot.
Closed AccountMay 17, 2007
LISTEN UP FANBOYS WHO DIGG DOWN PEOPLE'S COMMENTS:GET A LIFE AND STOP BEING A BUNCH OF CRAZY f**kERS THAT SIT IN FRONT OF THE PC 24/7 CONFIGURING LINUX!!!!!THAT IS ALL...idiots...
jasornMay 18, 2007
I don't get the 'reeducating dumb windows users part'. What's there to reeducate? If they're dumb windows users they probably don't muck around much except installing software. Then there's nothing to educate. Both gnome(with a few minor tweaks) and kde out of the box have the same look and feel as windows. As my wife says, "Why wouldn't I like it? It looks and acts just like windows." And it does for most things the dumb windows user would want. The really good part IMO is when it comes to installing software. Keep them to the repositories and it's so simple and trouble free.While I'm not on a mission to convert the world, I do make it a practice of not supporting windows for free. Well, I do give friends and family one freebe. After that I explain my time is valuable and if they want me to support them they'll have to pay or use linux.But even if you don't convert them to linux you should at least convert them to oss. It's insane for the most home users not to use OSS for the vast majority of their applications.
Closed AccountMay 18, 2007
"Spent over three hours just to get a dvd to play on feisty the other night, after following all the wiki's, ubuntu forum advice etc.,"Ooook. Download and install a deb of libdvdcss2. That was hard. Takes about 3 minutes, 2 of which is googling..."and I have over 10 years experience with Unix/Linux."And you don't know how to play DVD's?!
Closed AccountMay 18, 2007
"Linux users themselves have trouble getting around in Linux, how in the hell do yo think anyone that is computer illiterate is going to deal with it?"Uh, no we don't?"Even those that aren't have a hard time grasping it."Again, no we don't. After initial setup, there's really nothing more difficult to do than there is on Windows."At least they can install programs or peripherals on Windows. You give me one good reason why a regular person would find those things easy to do. It won't happen. Any reason you do give will be littered with ignorance.""Everyone is wrong but ME! I AM RIGHT, YOU ARE WRONG, HAHA!" Please do tell me again, who is ignorant?
Closed AccountMay 18, 2007
"I feel that switching to Linux when you're pretty comfortable with Windows is a stupid idea. What happens to all the software that you spend all that money on? You throw them away, and that's equivalent to throwing away at least $150 down the drain."It's your fault for buying it in the first place when better, free alternatives were available. :) Plus, much of it will still run fine."What happens to those pieces of hardware? You THROW THEM AWAY."Uh, no? I used to think I was lucky, but now I know I'm not. 3 computers in a row, two of which were laptops, and nearly zero hardware issues. Wifi works, graphics card works, and in most cases suspend works."Plus, there's a whole ton of driver issues and setting up. I mean, who's gonna waste 1 month trying to configure Linux and dragging and dropping all those system files? It just ain't worth it."Look, I installed Gentoo, and in case you aren't familiar with it, it means you compile everything from source code, and that it more or less does not set up anything for you. It didn't take me even a week to get everything working. On normal installs I can have them working 100% in less than 1.5 hours."If it ain't broke, why fix it?"Oh, but it is. Windows is very broken."The title really should be "How to waste your money""No, the title should be "how to avoid wasting money in the future, since you have already wasted it in the present."
srg13May 20, 2007
"They'd have you believe that it all comes configured and package managers magically make everything work."Tried Ubuntu recently? Because it actually does...