[Gllug] Windows 7

[Benjamin Goodacre]

Chris,

That's amazing - the next time somebody wants a new laptop I might
suggest that we buy a license-less laptop and put Linux on it like you
suggest. Did you have success using the Ximian connector for Evolution
or were you using something else?

Benjamin

-----Original Message-----
From: gllug-bounces at gllug.org.uk [mailto:gllug-bounces at gllug.org.uk] On
Behalf Of Christopher Hunter
Sent: 23 November 2009 20:08
To: Greater London Linux User Group
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Windows 7

On Mon, 2009-11-23 at 09:50 +0000, Benjamin Goodacre wrote:
> I think that one of the problems is that decision makers don't 'care' 
> about the subject like we do. Even if they could be persuaded that
Linux 
> is better etc etc they do not want to bother learning anything which
does 
> not behave exactly like Outlook/Windows. Even if TCO of Windows can be

> proved to be > Linux they simply don't care as they dont want to have
to 
> spend time out of their day learning a new OS. There is a 'not in my
back 
> yard' reasoning where change of IT is fine so long as it does not
affect 
> their desktop. It was easy for me to persuade DMs that moving to
Apache was 
> a good idea but a move away from Windows for desktops? No chance.
> 
> Benjamin 

Just for the sake of it, I built a KDE 3.5 desktop, on Suse, to look
pretty much like Windoze Vista.  I configured Evolution to look like
Outlook, and even made a big blue "e" icon for Firefox!  The clueless
executives who were "upgraded to Vista" thought it was fabulous, and
told all their friends how wonderful it was.  There was exactly ZERO
"learning curve" (OOO "Writer" looks exactly like "Word") - they could
all use it right away.  

They continued with it for two weeks, and then we showed them exactly
what they were using. They were all astonished. We gave them all the
option of a Windoze Vista install (for real) and they all declined, and
continued to use the Suse system! They all still do to this day (almost
two years on).  They've also discovered the delights of the BSOD
screensaver (which always causes great amusement) and most have asked
for installs for their home machines.

It's simply a question of will and presentation.  The company were
amazed at the size of the licence fees they had to pay for all their
proprietary software, and with the adoption of FOSS (without any pain),
they found that they could make a very substantial saving.  This
particular company only have use for email, letter-writing, web-browsing
and basic spreadsheets.  They were ideal candidates for migration, but
trying to reason with them would have been a waste of time.  We left the
vast majority of machines with XP (at the time) and did the "upgrade"
for a select few.  

The times I'm asked "what's that?" when I'm running Mandriva on my
laptop with all the whizzy bits turned on never ceases to surprise me.
Most people still have the impression that Linux is "hard" or for
"techies", but this notion can quickly be dispelled if you give them a
"live" CD of Mint or Ubuntu and have them try it for themselves.

I actually can't be bothered trying to proselytise about Linux - people
will discover it soon enough when their Windoze machine is struck down
by yet another virus or trojan that their "anti-malware" snake-oil
failed to deal with!

C.


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