Web design & FOSS
Front-end web technologies and Free Open Source Software.
Wednesday 16 July 2008, 1:15 PM
People don’t know
I was chatting to a chap at The Ministry the other day, saying that he could use the Ubuntu Linux testing machine for checking webmail. He had never heard of Ubuntu. Or Linux. Or Free Open Source Software. And there I am, in my little bubble, assuming the whole world knows about these things. Nope. People don’t know, which is why I keep banging on and on and on about it. And on.
A few days ago I gave a Brown Bag Seminar on OpenDisc, a collection of Free Software for Windows. Somebody thought I’d said “Free Open Sore Software”. That was rather unfortunate.
The session did help promote WinSCP, an FTP client (alas, The Ministry has just splashed out on half a dozen licenses for commercial FTP software). And I also managed to promote 7-zip, a Free alternative to WinZip. And I dished out half a dozen OpenDisc CD-ROMs and asked people to spread the word, in good proselytizing fashion.
PreviousComments on this post
I work part time for one of the world's largest home improvement companies and we used to have UNIX on our POS, and it ran flawlessly. They switched to windoze 2000 and now it is a piece of junk. I have been passing out live CD's of Linux distros and only 2 people in the entire store knew what Linux was. I have gotten 2 more people to give it a shot, one is going to set up a server using SuSe, and the other is using Mandriva. It's a start. I take my laptop in quite frequently and show it off and most people think it is windoze, until they see the 3D desktop. Once someone starts using Linux the real difference shows up. my XP partition is games only now.
Yep, I think it's a slow process of spreading the word, because there isn't the marketing clout of a large multinational. I'll be stocking up on OpenDisc CDs and Ubuntu installers methinks...
Also, I do believe that people will get used to Linux and Free Software with the rise of cheap notebooks (such as the Asus Eee, Acer Aspire One and the Dell mini netbook).
