Laptop new

[David Fletcher]

At 10:15 17/07/2007, you wrote:

>People tend to find things when they are ready for them, or when they
>become interested in them. Either way, they are either prepared to put
>
>The "plain people" you refer to, Karl, have had access to Linux since
>it's birth; that has pretty much been the soul of the system since it
>evolved past the stage of being graded by a crusty old professor.
>
>When people want it, it will be there for them.
>
>Just my opinion, though, apologies if it ruffles any feathers.
>
>Andy

Andy,

No, it wouldn't ruffle my feathers even if I had any.

As I see it, there are two problems with Linux adoption:-

1) The "plain people" don't know it's there

2) Even when they are told that it's there, they still don't use it

The first is because of the relative sizes of the publicity machines. 
Flashy prime time TV advertising wins out over word of mouth every time.

The second, I'm not sure exactly why it is, but I can think of 
several possibilities:-
  They're incompetent
  They don't want to toss out products they've paid good money for
  They're scared of trying out something completely different
  They think something that's free can't work properly
  They're just plain stupid

The guy in the office next to mine discovered a few months back that 
for some time, unknown to him, somebody had been using his Paypal 
account, transferring large numbers of US dollars in, followed 
shortly afterwards by GB pounds out i.e. a money laundering 
operation. I pointed out that this was most probably enabled by a 
trojan on the windoze 98 machine he uses for everything. Having 
passed him a Dapper Drake installer CD to play with, to see if it 
operated his hardware or not, with the offer to install it for him 
and show him how everything works, after several months he hasn't 
even taken the Dapper CD out of the case to try it. So, I conclude 
that the last of the above possibilities is applicable in his case.

But at the end of the day, does the Linux community need to worry 
about the low rate of adoption amongst the "plain people"? Some would 
say that it's better to leave things as they are, that way we don't 
attract the attention of the virus and trojan writers. On the other 
hand, I say that the greater the take up the better. Linux has 
hardware support problems especially with graphics card drivers. 
These problems would, I think, gradually vanish with an increasing 
number of Linux users either putting pressure on existing hardware 
manufacturers to support open source, or hardware designed 
specifically for open source by new hardware manufacturers. Also, the 
world would become a far better place without the influence of what I 
will call here a gigantic financial parasite, sucking countless 
millions of dollars out of every economy in the world without any 
real benefit to the donors.

What am I doing about this situation? With a BSD enthusiast friend, 
I'm going to place a free advertisement in the neighbourhood 
magazine, to invite members of the public to come along to free 
meetings at the local pub and take part in a FOSS discussion and self 
help group. Hope we get some interest.

Dave