[Community_studios] Re: [seul-edu] Re: Unified Front...

[Alex]

Howdy,

I think Linux is easier to deploy and manage than Windoze. In my experience
(going on 10 years now) with Windoze, the problem isn't Linux's difficulty in
installation, deployment or maintenance. The biggest problem with Linux breaking
into a new market is everyone's perception of how difficult it is. Sure, Windoze
is easy to install on a new PC. The problem is when it hits a new piece of
hardware, or finds incompatable code in someone else's product, or something
else that is out of the ordinary. Troubleshooting Windoze is where you run into
the problems, which most people who make the buying decisions never see. They
see "even I can install this on my computer at home." I think we're going to
always hit this wall as long as we only focus on "this needs to be easy to
install" or "we need an Office compatible suite" or "we need a company that can
provide a support contract". We already have all that, the thing we keep missing
is everyone's perception. When some giant corporation can steal, appropriate and
bully their way to an unreliable, insecure product, and still get people to pay
way too much for it, that's got to be nothing more than a perception issue. My
mother had to call Microsoft tech support for a problem on her boss' computer
and during the call she figured out how to solve the problem before their tech
guy could. Wow. Great support.

We need to come up with a way to change people's perceptions, that's all. We
already have the ease-of-use, beautiful GUIs, security, reliability, hardware
support, technical support and cost effectiveness.

Any marketing people out there? :)

Alex Heizer
http://www.synchcorp.com/alex
http://www.synchcorp.com/alexheizer


tom poe wrote:

> On Thursday 25 April 2002 11:06, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
> - - -snip - - -
> > I have to agree with Alan and Michael.  While I think a simple,
> > self-contained educational ISO is a great place to start (and we still
> > haven't defined that content yet), I believe you must eventually make "the
> > whole Linux thing" easy to deploy and run to win the hearts and minds of
> > everyone in education.
> >
> > However, we do need a stake in the ground if we are to make any
> > progress.  I think a simple offering that can be dropped onto an existing
> > distro is something than can be done without too much heavy lifting...  It
> > sounds like there is stuff in the pipe (according previous posts), which
> > needs a little attention, that could be put into an ISO.  This could be
> > distributed in a similar way to Red Hat's once-upon-a-time Power Tools CD,
> > and we might get a lot of other contrib if we put the word out.  We might
> > even get a lot of help with initial deployment from those groups mentioned
> > by Tom that could help get us to the next step.  I would still hope that a
> > vendor would pick-up on the ISO and run with it...
> >
> > Once we know what we need for education (i.e., once the ISO's content is
> > defined), we can move on from there!
> >
> > Steve
>
> Hi:  I have set the "try to get informational interviews" thingy aside [as an
> outsider, my requests, I am sad to report, have gone unanswered from school
> principals - must have been a bad idea], and am now working with two fellows
> that understand the tech end, to put a "starting block" demo in place.  We
> have a server and one, maybe two x-terminals as our starting point.  We are
> thinking, today, about whether the server will be Debian, or Slackware.  Any
> consensus out there, yet?  The hesitation I have about the RH approach, is
> that I have the feeling that their "support" package is significantly higher
> than we might arrange for, with some other distributions?  In other words, I
> think there was talk at some point, that the networks would somehow be tied
> directly to RH "in house".  Much along the lines of an ASP setup.  Anyone
> know, what the situation is at this time?
> Thanks,
> Tom Poe
> Reno, NV
> http://www.studioforrecording.org/
> http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/
> http://renotahoe.pm.org/
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