Help a friend skip Windows 10 and try GNU/Linux
fsf.org
fsf.org
There's also a question about long-term usability. They won't be able to install the same apps their friends are using. In many cases, there won't even be a viable equivalent to a given Windows app, at least not for non-techies. Some Linux updates will break key components, such as the display driver, and it will be very difficult and frustrating to fix (if not impossible).
The assertion that they are free won't mean much to these users, and over time they will resent me for suggesting the OS switch - just before they return to Windows, install their favorite game and their favorite crapware chat client, and breathe a sigh of relief.
Even as an open source advocate (where I can!) I have to accept that my motivations and use cases are drastically different from 99% of the population.
If someone has a solution to this, I'd be eager to hear it.
I'm just happy I've convinced my parents to switch from Internet Explorer and XP.
I used to be a rabid Linux advocate.
Now I do two things; one is I don't help Windows people fix their computers "Sorry, I don't use Windows. I don't know anything about it." and the other is to always let the Windows user ask first.
If they don't ask, I don't do anything.
Interested people would often ask him what his computer was because it was obviously different than anything else they had seen. At that point it was fairly easy to see if the person had any interest in software freedom. I seem to remember he used to carry around those Ubuntu CDs that Canonical gave out for this purpose as well. At worst he would give them a CD and say, "Give it a shot. You may like it or not."
The thing is that quite a few people, even if they aren't technical, have an interest in software freedom once they know what it is. Many of the people who approached him did so because they were frustrated by companies dictating what they could and could not do with their computers. They were looking for choices. The killer feature to demonstrate was the package manager of all things.
Of course choice comes at a cost. It was important to stress to people that the cost of using the choice was spending time learning and fiddling. The people who approached my friend were often the type of people who were quite happy with this trade-off.
Later, when I worked in a high school in Japan teaching English, I used to hang out late at night hacking on my computer (I had no heat/cooling in my apartment so the school was the best place to hack :-) ). Many of the other teachers would see me working on my laptop and ask me about it. GNU/Linux is practically unknown to the mainstream in Japan as far as I can tell, so it was always an interesting conversation. After the school board dictated a change from MS office to Open Office (which I had been using throughout anyway), several of the teachers installed Ubuntu on their personal machines. To be honest, for the kinds of things they did, it just worked better.
I think that this kind of passive advocacy is probably going to be the most effective. I think many people here would be surprised at the level of resonance that free software has with normal people on the street (once they understand what it is). But it is best to narrow your target to those people who are interested unless you just want to hear endless stories of "I tried Linux and it didn't work LOL".
I had an old laptop sitting at home, which had Ubuntu on it. I gave it to him as an experiment and told him if he didn't like it to go ahead and buy a new pc. He has been using it for about 18 months now. I'm about due to buy myself a new laptop so I'll probably shunt my current one over to them then.
My mother is a teacher and she uses Macs in her classroom so she was already receptive to non Windows options which probably helped. I'd say Linux is certainly a viable option if you're like my parents i.e. In the 60+ age bracket and don't need to play games, don't need to run applications but do want something you can use to email grandchildren and surf net on. The most complex apps my parents use are Firefox and LibreOffice.
Of course, that's not even getting into issues like Office compatibility. I have a very non-technical older friend who could easily do everything he needs with Linux and LibreOffice, but he has mountains of old Office files dating back anywhere from Office 2003 all the way back to DOS versions of Office and all of them have multiple rendering issues when opened in LibreOffice (we tried). Running MS Office in WINE isn't an option either, as it's brittle, technical, and confusing.
Major strides in user education and compatibility will be necessary before Linux distributions have even a shadow of a chance of picking up significant desktop marketshare.
Yes! Running a linux distro is NOT free. It's only free under the assumption that your time is worthless, which is true for precisely nobody.
The true cost is a function of how valuable your time is vs the fixed cost of windows / buying a mac, assuming a relatively small constant setup time cost for both of these. This makes linux desktop distros, with their typically long and painful setup process, actually more expensive than Windows / OSX for basically everyone.
The only case where it becomes worth it is when there's a return on your investment of that large initial cost, i.e. you'll either be taking advantage of linux a lot professionally or you just find playing with it very intellectually rewarding.
Ergo, linux only appeals to engineers, academics and hackers.
There's no solution to this per-se, it is what it is. Just a result of the economics of the current setup.
But, I still stand by the assertion that this doesn't really make a difference for most users. I mean, if you're talking about novice users, the ability to check logs, and talk to engineers is pretty useless anyway. The fact you can do this stuff is an advantage only if you're a pretty advanced user in the first place, and know enough to use that information to solve a problem.
Contrary to what you said, in my experience, problems in OS X are not a nightmare to solve compared to Linux. While you can’t exactly get help from the engineers who actually wrote OS X’s first-party software, I’ve solved quite a few issues in the past by going through logs in Console.app¹. Frankly, OS X gives you a lot more tools to solve issues than just “big shiny icons”.
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Mint can be installed in about 10 minutes with a handful of mouse clicks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKI024wUTUw
> Everything is "easy" but it'll cost you $30 to buy an app to fix your mouse and you gain no useful knowledge through the experience.
While I don't think paying for software is necessarily a deal breaker, I have never come across a situation where buying an app for $30 was necessary to "fix the mouse". What was wrong with it? I agree that just using an external tool doesn't give you knowledge, but strictly speaking, fiddling with an arbitrarily designed config file doesn't grant you any meaningful knowledge either beyond the single program it was intended to run on. For example, I would rate the knowledge of how to edit an X11 config manually as functionally equivalent to knowing how to install a GUI tool that manages your display.
Knowledge about Xorg config files is admittedly not very useful, but it's been years since I've touched one. Nevertheless I'm glad that those files are there and that I can look up how to edit one if necessary[1].
1. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#Using_xorg.conf
> Nevertheless I'm glad that those files are there and that I can look up how to edit one if necessary[1].
Well, you can look up how to configure OS X's scrolling direction as well, same as for most customizations where dedicated apps exist that are really just thin wrappers over the command line [1].
1. http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-manually-change-the-scroll...
Moreover, I know one postdoc (CS major) who uses a mac but never did "ps -u <username>" on a terminal.
I still remember the whole Internet Explorer bundling antitrust debacle and, while it took about a decade, I believe this is a different Microsoft we're having now. I'm not suggesting they learned something from that from a moral point of view. Better. Consumers are increasingly hostile to monopolizing companies and "extremist" movements like the FSF have their fair share in raising awareness. Microsoft is probably just moving into the openness direction because they have to if they want to keep their customers' business. So, to put an end to my rambling: I can't support the kind of freedom the FSF stands for, but I have to give them credit for (in a small part) forming the public opinion.
(1) tiny footnote: I was about to call their products shitty, but I guess "It's not you, it's me". Stuff just feels absolutely foreign to me :(
I've seen little that would convince me to actually move back to Windows as an OS. All of the privacy SNAFUs that are leaking out do not inspire confidence.
The heavyweights in the Linux world (Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, RedHat, etc.) aren't recommended by the FSF because they have all compromised their strictly free principles in favor of some practical usability. I want to be able to play .mp3 files. I want to be able to play DVD's legally.
I* want a list of distros that aren't Windows or OS X and make sense for me to actually use. They don't have to be strictly free, but they do have to be a step in the right direction
*Okay, not really me, for someone who is new to Linux. DistroWatch is great, but I'll bet most people will end up disappointed if they chose a distro strictly off of popularity.
Even as a technical person, I really do appreciate it when my home computing devices don't fail the first time I try to use them.
For me, I just want an OS that works so that I can do work and not have to fiddle with debugging a weird issue happening or setting up things that should just be working out of the box.
I'll stick with Windows 10 and OS X which both satisfy the above :-)
I think FOSS is great, but I also don't have any issue paying for something that provides a better experience. Getting paid to make software is how I eat. Regardless, getting a friend to skip Windows 10 is a dick move, as they could miss the free upgrade window unsure of how to restore Windows before the free upgrade window closes. VirtualBox is a pretty good way to introduce someone to Linux without being a dick about it.
Although many of you use GNU/Linux daily, it seems that most have failed to truly understand the value, the very significant importance, that the GNU project and the FSF represent in our world.
In fact, if more people actually internalized what computing freedom means, and what the technology landscape could one day look like, then GNU/Hurd would already be finished, it would look like Windows 10, and there would be far fewer proprietary software apologists on Hacker News, dismissing this post.
Join us over here in the gray area, mate...
Only a Sith speaks in absolutes. Very few people can, or want to live like RMS and never compromise on their beliefs. Most of us have responsibilities or hobbies that require us to manage our time. The negativity is a reflection that Linux works great until it doesn't. An update disables your network card, your GPU doesn't fully run under linux, an update to GCC removes your ability to update a port. At some point, people get tired of having to fix things and just want the OS to work out of the box. That being said, there are plenty of free software projects that do work well on Windows, such as Emacs and Firefox.
>Although many of you use GNU/Linux daily, it seems that most have failed to truly understand the value, the very significant importance, that the GNU project and the FSF represent in our world.
It's Linux, not GNU/Linux; only RMS calls it that because he's a poor marketer. Speaking of which, the FSF does not realize the value it brings to people. It's not free software. The trend for most people is they simply do not care, because the FSF is terrible at marketing. If people do not respond to your campaign, it's not valuable. The value of the FSF is not in freedom, it's in protecting people's choice. It's in ensuring that there are alternate products, such as Linux, Emacs, Firefox, etc that people can use if they want to avoid the consequences of using proprietary software.
>In fact, if more people actually internalized what computing freedom means, and what the technology landscape could one day look like, then GNU/Hurd would already be finished, it would look like Windows 10, and there would be far fewer proprietary software apologists on Hacker News, dismissing this post.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The Hurd project is a (poorly managed) volunteer effort, and is suffering the usual fate. The issue is not with supply, there are plenty of well qualified people who could focus on Hurd and get it done, but they won't because it's not worth their time. Trying to incentivize people with freedom only goes so far. At some point, the hierarchy of needs changes, and people don't want spin their wheels on something that offers them no tangible benefit. The FSF would do well to understand why the linux kernel. won.
And "Only a Sith speaks in absolutes" is itself an absolute statement.
I enjoy it when people feel the need to educate me on things I know. However, insisting on it being called "Gnu/Linux" is being pedantic; to the vast majority of the world, it's Linux. If you go around calling it GNU/Linux, and trying to educate people on the why it's called that, you're going to lose a lot of people because you're missing the forest (a free operating system) for the trees (the individual components.) The FSF suffers from poor marketing. Your mission would be better served by people who understand how to get people to care rather than pointless nitpicking of facts.
>And "Only a Sith speaks in absolutes" is itself an absolute statement.
The actual quote is "deals in absolutes". For good understanding of why this is not a contradiction, read this: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080228110259A...
Not to be mean but have you tried even creating a toy kernel yourself with modern tools? Now imagine doing that in the 1980s when none of those tools existed (it's why bison exists for programming language construction and the like). It doesn't matter how many people you throw at a project if the scope of it is as generalized as an operating system tool kit and kernel then it's going to take a long time to build it and longer still to extend support for it to newer hardware (especially in light of how many modern motherboards and peripherals have blackboxed firmware that's patent encumbered). And that's just the technical limitations. When you factor in the problem of managing different groups, keeping them on target for features to be released and bugfixes, egos to be checked/soothed, and so forth then you got a problem that would make the creation of the US Constitution seem easy.
Ultimately, I think folks like you are the classic true believers that don't have much in the way of understanding people. You demand people to comply to your ideologies even if their lives are lessened by it. You demand that each person wears a hair shirt just for the sake of it. And that for me isn't something I can see working. Anarchists tried that crap in the 19th century and it failed terribly (and I'm an anarchist today). Purism is cute and it's nice when you write about in essays, but it's not how you get real people with irrational beliefs, subjective one-off experiences, and divergent goals to adopt and apply your ideology. You start on the basics and you yourself show others how that works out in those basic situations. Before you demand others to apply your specific approach to Free Software ask yourself if it actually adds immediate value their lives. If not then your approach fails to be useful or effective. And your purity for its own sake is a weak excuse for actual results. /rant
There's usually a reason why people have stuck to Windows or Mac, it suits their needs and it's familiar. And besides that point, I'm a professional software developer, I work with Linux servers all day, and I would never, ever think of running it as my personal desktop OS. There are just too many features/programs missing for it to be useful for me.
...it's great for running my service stack, though.
SELECT CONCAT (YEAR(GETDATE()),' is the year of linux on the desktop!');End users do not care about the things you care about, especially if you is the FSF. You will need to sell users on something more than a vague notion of 'freedom' if you would like them to buy into OSS.
The Linux desktop has come a long way but it still comes nowhere near the ease of use and universality of Windows as a workstation OS. To the user, Windows is just a vehicle for Microsoft Office. Try using LibreOffice in an actual office environment, sharing documents with MS Office users and then tell me how ready Linux is for the desktop.
The main problem is that the file format relies on the behaviour of the Word formatter to work in a particular way. If you wrote a word processor and decided for yourself how it should format, then there is virtually no way you can figure out from the contents of a doc or docx file exactly how it should be formatted (and conversely no way to take what you have rendered and write a doc or docx file that will render it the same way). The only way to do it would be to write a complete clone of the Word formatter, which is essentially impossible because if you look at the docx spec you will realize that even MS don't know how it works.
Of course, this is a technical issue that compounds a political problem -- MS enjoy a monopoly on office products and those office products happen to be essentially impossible to clone because they are ancient, idiosyncratic, legacy monsters. The only way to fix the problem is to get people to stop using those legacy apps --- which is pretty much unlikely.
Linux is more than ready for the desktop. It is unlikely ever to interoperate seemlessly with MS Office, though. Still, the office in which I work has switched completely to Chrome OS and Google apps. The school I worked in before that has switched to Open Office and actually forbids the use of MS Office (because of interoperability issues). Who knows...
The Canadian government and the vast majority of businesses I know of use Office, so that would also be a hindrance.
Sorry for the pragmatism.. I also probably shouldn't have written the query for MSSQL...
- Round trips will be problematic. So if you export to doc and then reimport and then export again you will likely have some difficulty.
- Some things won't work (like multi-page footnotes) because Word formats them incorrectly. This will affect pagination, but probably will be fine for most things other than legal documents.
- Fonts can be a problem. If you don't install the same fonts you can have font metric problems. This isn't really an issue because it is easy to install the same fonts. Some Linux distros don't make it easy because the fonts are non-free (as in freedom), though.
I worked for 5 years teaching English and for 4 or those years I had to interoperate with people using Office (they were forced to use Open Office in the 5th year because the school board decided not to renew their MS licenses). I was making very complicated documents with precise layout, multi-lingual fonts (Japanese and English), and many pictures. I very rarely had any problems. Don't get me wrong. I hate Open Office with a passion (and I'm glad that as a programmer once again I never have to touch it). But it's not really much different than Word in that respect ;-)
Some work flows are just impossible, though. If you are group editing a document and marking it up as you pass it around a group, then it just won't work because there will be too many round trips. As I said, there will be pagination issues for very complex formatting and so it is not possible to use for legal work (most people who do serious legal work use Word Perfect, though, because Word's formatting is broken).
As for resumes, I always avoided sending doc files to people for fear that someone would try to edit it. I always send PDFs. However, in the few cases where I was not allowed to submit anything other than a doc file (for example my teaching job), I had absolutely no trouble. YMMV.
And for what it's worth, the programmers at Microsoft actually work very hard at keeping things as interoperable as they can (as far as I can tell). It's just that they have a massively huge legacy app and it's hard to work with. The MS QAs even used to send me bug reports when Word Perfect outputted poor doc files.
I'm not a fan of MS, but in the course of my career I've worked with a lot of past and present MS programmers/QAs. I don't have a bad word to say about any of them. In fact, when we did some joint ventures with MS while I was at Corel, the QAs we worked with were some of the best I've ever met.