Why not change our market objective?

[Shadow Skill]

The first computers that I was ever exposed to were Macintosh computers sometime in mid to late elementary school; shortly thereafter I was exposed to the PC [which was probably running Windows95 the horror indeed. ] I didn’t get my own computer until I was perhaps twelve or thirteen years old. People in numerous places including here have noted that Unix type systems can be difficult for people who have all but grown up on Windows to get the hang of unless they were around long before the rise of Microsoft [Anyone ever notice how Word sets “Microsoft Corporation” as a keyword of sorts? Every time I try to type Microsoft it wants to auto fill the line as “Microsoft Corporation” as I type this..] and were already more than accustomed to DOS and in many cases Unix type systems. Now onto the point of this post what if instead of trying to go directly into the desktop consumer market where we would have to go to war with both Apple and Microsoft directly we instead made a move towards educational institutions, specifically at the compulsory school level as opposed to the centre’s for “higher” education. The computer has become an important tool [that schools seem to have no clue how to actually use properly in my experience.] for learning and I think that the Unix type systems are missing out on a great opportunity with the education apparatus because they are too focused on making their collective wet-dream of “Widespread commercial acceptance outside of the world of the computer scientist” become a reality by attempting to go into direct conflict with the only two major players in this area Apple and Microsoft.

Instead I feel that a more covert course of action is in order, we should focus our attention on capturing the minds of children and younger adults as early as possible so our way of doing things is familiar to them, we should try to popularize our file formats with these children so that they become accustomed to actually using those formats and the programs that utilize them. At the same time we must also work on making the system easy enough for a child to use without having to hold their hand because there happens to be a problem that requires some type of command line voodoo to make go away. Start teaching them at an early age that having a problem when you have not expressly changed anything related to that which starts misbehaving is not normal behavior for a computer, and perhaps they will advise their parents to buy them a machine running Redhat or Suse as opposed to the latest edition of Windows or OS X. Children do have a great deal of influence on what their parent’s purchase I know I did when I got my dad to finally buy my first computer.

[kosmosik]

People in numerous places including here have noted that Unix type systems can be difficult for people who have all but grown up on Windows to get the hang of unless they were around long before the rise of Microsoft [...] and were already more than accustomed to DOS and in many cases Unix type systems.

sorry I am more accustomed to unices than DOS... :) last time I used DOS it was FreeDOS booted from floppies to unpack boot image and loadlin.exe because this laptop didn't have CD-ROM... newertheless I do not know much people accustomed with DOS - if you start using DOS in front of some Windows user he will think that you are a hacker of some kind. ;)

[rest of the post]

I don't understend why you want everybody to be using Linux - let them use what they like.

[CuCullin]

sorry I am more accustomed to unices than DOS... :) last time I used DOS it was FreeDOS booted from floppies to unpack boot image and loadlin.exe because this laptop didn't have CD-ROM... newertheless I do not know much people accustomed with DOS - if you start using DOS in front of some Windows user he will think that you are a hacker of some kind. ;)

[rest of the post]

I don't understend why you want everybody to be using Linux - let them use what they like.

I was more accustomed to DOS than anything else. Until I installed slack in 94.

Anyways, I don't think its wanting everyone to use linux, I think its the desire to expose more people to it - I've found people tend to gravitate to linux once exposed.

As of last night, the roommate who told me he'd never have the time to learn linux, and so would never use it, then asked me to get rid of windows for him on sunday and install linux, just last night told me "Linux is so awesome, I'm loving it". Btw, when it comes to computers... he is most definitely the "average" user.

Early exposure to an alternative expands their minds. I say a linux box or two in the comp lab is more than a good thing.

[Linux The Great]

I think it is about time that a linux education push started. One of the big reasons that Apple servived the 90s was that an entire generation of kids (me) were playing Math Blaster on a LCII.

It's time to put unix/linux into our lower education centers. If we really want our children to know how to use a computer we have to expose them to more than just the realm of icons and start menus. It's time we hit school boards and IT departments with a free alternative to Microsoft.

Our family donated a SPARC 5 to my high school's comp sci department just so the kids could see something besides Win98. Sure only a few of the hacker type students would ever be impressed by it but, at least, the rest of the students will have broadened their horizon by a few notches.

[tejas]

I don't think the point of the FSF movement was to force people to use Free and/Or Open Source Software.

The whole point was to simply let people know that they have options. And to prevent organisations from becoming monopolies (If I remember, Linux was invented (under the name Freenux) to stop the monopoly of UNIX, winders wasn't even too popular back then)

It has been a successfull movement, albeit mostly amongst the more computer literate, and those that are willing to spend some extra time for their results. Consider this: the entire of the movie of Shrek II was built on RedHat (9?) machines. This is an integral part of HP's ad campaign (in India at least), and they gave a detailed description of what software/hardware the machine that shrek 2 was designed on had.

Yes, I do feel that we should target primary schools. However, we cannot force our opinions on others. I'd suggest that we'd start by blacklisting MS proprietry 3rd party software. Convince schools to use SunStar Office or OpenOffice.org, not MS office. Teach them the advantages of tabbed browsing in FF and IE 7 (I think IE 7 will kill the IE series), until they are finally convinced that FF is faster than IE. Let them use mplayer/xine in windows (yes, .exe files are avaliable)

And most of all, People need to remember this: Linux is part of the free software movement. That is free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.

[Shadow Skill]

The point isn't to get everyone to use Linux, its to attempt to eliminate the stigmatization of Linux as an overly difficult system to use [At this point the stigma is somewhat deserved quite frankly.] by actually teaching people to use the system. The reason you target children through the educational apparatus is simply because there is no other way that has a chance of being remotely effective to get younger individuals exposed to the system. Older individuals the people actually buying computer systems are more set in their ways and are not likely to explore and/or switch to an entirely new type of operating system that isn't a Mac. People would really like to be able to play the occassional game without having to run an emulator [Which robs the game of performance and reguires the specs of the host machine to be even higher than what is needed for the game to function to compensate.] I would love to not have to deal with craptapular office solutions or be punished simply because I didn't feel like paying for ms office because Microsoft can get away with not opening up their formats so that other programs like OO could support them properly. Lets not forget some of the either non existant or otherwise crappy drivers we have to deal with.

[Omega Blue]

The reason you target children through the educational apparatus is simply because there is no other way that has a chance of being remotely effective to get younger individuals exposed to the system. Older individuals the people actually buying computer systems are more set in their ways and are not likely to explore and/or switch to an entirely new type of operating system that isn't a Mac.

That is not entirely the case. I reckon if an adult needs to use Linux at work, the chance of that person switching to Linux at home becomes good. The average user is not like us geeks, most of them don't want to be bothered with handling different OSes.

Now, consider that many countries (notably the PRC, RoK, and Japan), regions, cities, and companies have switched or are considering the move due to a variety of factors (#1 being the desire to avoid being locked-in), I think Linux will capture a considerable share of desktops in 10 year's time.

Of course, this also means many school districts will be using FOSS, so it is a good prospect.

[Shadow Skill]

But those that need to use Linux at work are part of a given segment of the population that the strategy wouldn't really be targeting at all since they are probably far more informed and already far more likely to introduce thier own children to Linux. I'm thinking more about when the parent goes to purchase a machine for their child since they may very well ask their child for advice on the purchase since the child has a better chance of knowing about these "new fangled things."

Linspire seems to have the right idea Indiana is doing a pilot project using Linspire http://news.zdnet.com/Indiana+schools+enroll+Linux/2100-9590_22-5820237.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

[Jman]

I'm looking forward to the second Linux generation, kids raised using free software.

You can also discuss Fedora marketing with the marketing project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing).