[Gllug] Facilities for Free Open Source Beginners

[Ryan Cartwright]

Riq wrote:
> There are huge numbers of people who want to
> 
> do email
> browse the Internet
> do simple word processing

That be true in the business world and whilst I agree many start out 
with those needs: my experience tells me that these kinds of _home_ 
users soon want to start doing other things. For example Photo 
management and editing, home accounts, family trees, home DTP, maybe 
even some home video editing.

It's no longer enough to think of the average home user as someone who 
"just" wants to do e-mail, web and word-processing. Those may the things 
they do the most often but that doesn't mean we should only address 
them. I give one-to-one IT tuition to my immediate social circle. Some 
of those use FOSS but almost all of them do (and want to do) more than 
the three tasks you mention.[1]

> and do not want to know about constant updates, viruses, or any 
> technicalities whatsoever.

Okay so on malware FOSS has the advantage but it still needs updates and 
to an end-user is there any apparent difference between Windows Update 
and Ubuntu Update Manager?

I'm not saying we shouldn't try or that the educators don't need 
educating. I'm just saying there's a lot more to it than "E-mail, Web 
and Word".

cheers
Ryan
-- 
Ryan Cartwright
http://www.cafamily.org.uk/oss

[1] As an aside, many of these have taken short beginner courses at a 
local library or college and nearly all of those seem to come away with 
little of what they wanted to learn. I'm not sure if that's a symptom of 
them not being used to the learning environment, the class being too big 
or if the tuition is just plain crap. :o)
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug