[Infopoint] The Open CD?

[Russ]

Katherine Goodwin wrote:

<SNIP stuff about giving away TheOpenCD>
> 
> opinions?

I agree completely. I burnt a copy recently and gave it to my wife for 
her to have a look at (she dual-boots Slackware & Windows 98) Her first 
impression was that it looked good, and professional. The browser 
interface is similar to what you get with a magazine CD, so it looks 
familiar. They are careful to pick programs that look good, and are 
polished, so they give a good impression. I'm very much of the opinion 
that getting people using OpenOffice, the GIMP and other open-source 
software on Windows is an easy first step towards Linux. After all, it's 
easier to try a new office suite than a new operating system.

One idea I did have was to put TheOpenCD *and* a small bootable-CD Linux 
distro on one CD. I don't know much about ISO9660, so there may be a 
better way than this, but I did the following:

1. Downloaded Puppy Linux [1] and burnt it to a CD
2. Opened the OpenCD iso and burnt the files to the same CD

The end result was a CD that looked like TheOpenCD to Windows 
(auto-played when inserted, etc), or booted into Puppy Linux if left in 
the CD-ROM during a reboot.

The point of this is that someone can take away a CD full of useful 
software for Windows, which should impress them, and make them realise 
that free/open source software is frequently good quality. And, if they 
want to give Linux a try, it's already there for them. Of course, Puppy 
might not be the *best* Linux distro for this purpose, but it does have 
the advantage of looking familiar to anyone used to Windows, since it 
uses fvwm95.

Russ