[Bassetlug mailing] Spreading the Word: Linux/Ubuntu

[Danny J Roberts]

Hi All,

I hope you are all well.

Something that has been in the Linux community new a lot in various places 
recently is the adoption of Linux on the desktop particularly with users 
who are unfamiliar with Linux. 

Using some of my free time today I've been looking at things the Linux 
Community has been doing to push Linux and particularly Ubuntu out to the 
masses.

First of all is this little treasure:

http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/en/brochure/discover-ubuntu

It is a guide for novice users with an eye towards those who are 
unfamiliar with Linux to help them better understand what the OS has to 
offer. As you will probably notice from the url the guide is entitled 
Discover Ubuntu, so obviously this is focused on bringing people to Linux 
via advocating Ubuntu as a choice. I have given the flier/guide a good 
read and have to say I'm very impressed with what I read. It was well 
structured, hit the key points as far as your "average" user is concerned 
and did not use and "geek-speak" so it is very easy to understand. Of 
course this is only from my view point and others may disagree. If any of 
you guys (and gals!) want to put across your views I'd be very interested 
to hear them!

Of course the site that above I linked above is all about spreading Ubuntu 
to the masses and has some great stuff on there most of which I have yet 
to browse through.

Another thing that caught my attention (again Ubuntu related so bear with 
me) is Ubuntu's 100 Paper Cuts Project. So what is a paper cut? Well 
Ubuntu defines a paper cut as: "A paper cut is a trivially fixable 
usability bug that the average user would encounter on his/her first day 
of using a brand new installation of the latest version of Ubuntu Desktop 
Edition". Now a couple of examples of this are the Open With list in 
Nautilus is not organised alphabetically, and the Nautilus Window doesn't 
close when you unmount an external disk. I personally think this is a 
great initiative, one that certain other OS's in particular should take 
note of as this improves the general user experiance making it appeal more 
to the general public. Anyone wanting to read more can view the Projects 
web page at:

https://edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts

Now I was thinking (a dangerous thing I know) and I seem to remember the 
idea being thrown around breifly not so long ago but is there anyway we as 
a LUG could perhaps get involved and help promote Linux and Open Source 
software in general? I know an install day was mentioned but this raised 
the problem of a suitable venue. At the minute I'm still trying to come up 
with other suggestions. However I did wonder if it was worth trying to 
advocate Linux and Open Source to the local schools and/or council etc, 
what do you all think we can do in this area? And is it even something 
you're interested in?

Well I've rambled long enough, for now...

Kind Regards

DANNY ROBERTS
EMEA Cross Platform Services - Evergreen
CSC

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