Web design & FOSS
Front-end web technologies and Free Open Source Software.
Tuesday 9 June 2009, 10:33 AM
Why Normal People Don't Use Linux
aka The Four Eyes
A way back I blogged in a self-important and knowing way about Why People Don’t Use GNU/Linux.
I'd like to update that now, and thus the appearance of The Four Eyes:
1. Inertia: it’s a lot of effort to change your ways and your system.
2. Ignorance: people just don’t know about Free Open Source Software.
3. Indifference: people just don’t care what flavour software they use, and why should they?
4. Innovation: there is no show-stopping, gob-smacking, utterly compelling reason to use Linux.
We (and I’m including you in this we ;) can do something about Ignorance, Indifference and Innovation. Only then can Inertia be overcome.
Here's a list of what we can do:
1. Spread the word. Ie bang on about how great FOSS is all the time until you don't get invited to any more dinner parties.
2. Carry an OpenDisc or five with you at all times. Slip it into Windows® PCs when no-one is looking. Hand them out in front of PC World.
3. Carry an Ubuntu CD with you at all times (or whatever your favourite distro is). Requisition your colleagues' computers when they take a toilet break and dazzle them on their return with a demonstration of the LiveCD. They will love you forever.
4. Choose your Favourite Five FOSS projects and give them some money. At the very least, send them a postcard saying how brilliant you think they are.
5. Think of ways your Favourite Five could be improved and let them know. But nicely. And with a cash incentive.
PreviousComments on this post
I have been having this dream this week.
I don't know if it's a result of attending JavaOne and seeing Larry scoop up Java but...
In the future, there is just this one massive company that supplies us with all our goods and services from Marmite to email.
Please don't let this proprietary hell happen people.
Four legs good, two legs bad - open source good.
AdrianB
ps. I actually felt like I got under the Oracle skin ever so slightly and don't feel that there is evil intent there, but still... it's early days...
Adrian > funny you should mention Marmite. I was gazine absent-mindedly at the marmite jar (why oh why do they insist on rubbish poetry on the label?) when I noticed that it was made by Unilever. A faint feeling of disquiet...
Then, my eyes happened upon the Maille Dijon Original mustard (nothing if not classy in this house), and there it was again, the flowery U-tube logo of Unilever.
Pret-a-manger part owned by McDonalds, Innocent drinks by Coca Cola. And now MySQL indirectly by Oracle (I could be way off beam on this one, as haven't really been following it...)
Like people say about ID cards, it's not the intent of the present government but what could happen with all that power in the wrong hands.
Excellent post Jake, thanks. I would add only one more thing to it - an increasing number of Linux distributions can also be easily written to bootable USB thumb drives, and I find those to be marginally easily to carry along (and not break/damage) than a CD.
jw
Ah I was just going to say that I too have taken to carrying around Ubuntu NBR on a thumb drive and showing mighty folk how they can run it live and manipulate their windows file systems. And there is excitement out there amongst the general populus when shown a working alternative.
For basic stuff you can just use a live Linux distro and online storage on any computer in no time att all.
Ok. This is the bit where I need a helping hand. Guys, With Ubuntu NBR I was given a tidy .IMG file to down load along with a nice little app to mount the file onto a thumb drive thus making it bootable.
Is there a simple application that I can use to convert .iso files into .img files so that I can mount them onto a flash drive? It's just an Item of research that I've had no luck with. Mr Watson?
Roger,
I haven't found a general purpose utility that will do this for any arbitrary .iso distribution. It is something which I too have been meaning to look into. I know that current "standard" Ubuntu distribution includes a System/Administration menu option that will read an Ubuntu .iso and create a bootable USB disk. I'm assuming that is actually a script of some sort, which we could look at to figure out what they are doing. I did try to use that once on a non-Ubuntu .iso file, and it refused to cooperate.
Of course, Moblin also downloads as a .img file which can be squirted directly to a USB disk with dd, which is dead easy... but honestly, even after less than a day of investigation, I can assure you that you aren't going to impress anyone other than hard-core Linux people with Moblin in its current state.
At least one other of the various distributions I have tried also has options to download either .iso or .img files, but I can't remember which one it was at the moment.
If I figure out anything else on this, I'll let you know.
jw
Roger > I think I used "USB Creator":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Live_USB_creator
I did try ImageWriter but that didn't work for me, maybe because of the problems you're having? (it's all a bit hazy, anything before yesterday ;)
Hello all,
Here are a couple of other distros that also make it easy to install their distros to pen drives, Mepis Linux, and Dream Linux both of which are based upon Debian. I have used both of them and find them both to be rather polished and enjoyable to use. I also just did a Google search for an article I remember reading a while back about a program that makes it easy to install any distro to a pen drive. The title of the article is “How to create a live Linux usb pen drive” and can be found at this link, They are using a program created by a project called Unetbootin which can be found at this link I have not tried these yet but plan on doing so later this week. I hope that this may help some of you.
Now some thoughts concerning the article here and some ideas that I plan on exploring that may help with the ignorance many have of Linux and FOSS in general. Perhaps some here might also consider doing something similar.
I have been working on putting together a presentation on an introduction to the Internet and basic Internet security practices that the average user should be aware of. You may think that who in this day and age would need a very basic introduction to the Internet. Well it all started from a conversation with one of my Doctors. I was able to offer a simple solution to a problem he was having with his personal pc he used at home and the conversation led to other things when he brought up an interesting comment he made to me. His mother just had to move into an assisted living community and he had bought her her first computer. He said she had no idea what email was or doing a search using say Google etc. He suggested that perhaps I could put together a series of talks that would introduce various aspects of the use of computers targeted at the older Americans. This is probably the one group at least here who have been late coming to the technology table. Well one thing has led to another and since I could not keep my love of FOSS out of the presentations I began thinking that perhaps I should also prepare a separate presentation of an introduction of Linux and FOSS as well. I plan on going down and discussing this with my local Library to see if perhaps they would allow me to use their conference rooms so that it would not cost me any money other than my time. What I thought I would do is build a mobile display case that would house my 47” Vizo TV (for use as a monitor) and one of my older PC's that has windows installed. I thought that by showing how easy it is to create a Live CD of Mepis 8 and then booting into a live session of Mepis and demonstrating how useful it is even in a Live CD session I may peak a lot of interest. Perhaps if time permitted I could actually do an install of Linux and then (if the Library would allow me to tap into their Internet connection) show how easy it is to install additional software using the Synaptic package manager. If this went well a follow on presentation could be offered at a different time introducing some of the different programs that are available like Open Office, and The Gimp. I realize that this all sounds like a lot of work and it is but perhaps there are other retired individuals like myself who are looking for something constructive to do with their time.
Best wishes to all you FOSS users and in your present and future endeavors.
Robert B.
Thank you all!
Robert you forgot to post the links.
Jake: Image creator only sees a .img file and the only one I have is Ubuntu NBR. That said I'm liking it. I think giving someone a computer for their pocket as a gift with simple instructions could be a good way to spread the Linux buzz.
J.A.Watson...thankyou, that is certainly food for thought. Mint is the distro that I'd like to make thumb drive bootable, after reading your article I gave it a try using the live option and was very immpressed.
I'm in a state of flux at the moment, having discovered Linux it's certainly shifted my perceptions. So once again thanks to all the Linux people on here for opening my eyes.
They were there in my text, I wrote it in Open Office and cut and pasted my post. here are the links again hope that they make it this time. http://www.eeextra.com/eee/how-to-create-a-live-linux-usb-pendrive.html and the one for Unetbootin
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net
I have been messing around with Linux since around 1999 so have tried quite a few different distros. The one thing that anyone needs to keep in mind is that what for one is the perfect distro may not interest you at all. It is largely a matter of taste and what works for you personally. I have tried most of the major ones so also have used most of the common package managers. They were created in this order, the old tried and true tar.bz packages that Slackware and its derivatives use, then there came Debian and the .deb packages. Then along came Red Hat with their RPM system. They are all good, however over time I came to like the Debian packages the best so I now tend to concentrate on the distros that are based upon Debian.
Well I hope that the links make it this time if they do not then ZD Net is filtering them out of the posts. If that is the case just do a Google search for this title How to create a live linux usb pendrive on a website called eextra dot com in this article you will find the link to Unetbootin but they are on sourceforge.
Robert
Well I guess that this will be my last post on this site. they are ridiculous. I just tried to send you guys the urls for those projects and I just recieved this email from your friendly people here on ZDnet.
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I guess you will have to use your imagnation and your search engine to find the actual links. You have the title for the article as well as the name of the project that they used. Good luck
this website SUCKS!!!!
By all and good luck with this website this will be my last visit to any of ZDNets sites.
Robert B.
Oh and if you friendly guys working for ZD NET read this please remove all of my personal information along with my profile from your servers for I do not want to be affiliated with you any longer
Roger, it looks like I have some good news for you...
I was sitting here mulling what you had written, and it occurred to me that Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu... and Mint "Gloria" is current with Ubuntu "Jaunty Jackalope"... and I wonder if their Live CD is still similar enough to be accepted by the Ubuntu USB Startup Disk Creator...
So I just dug out my Linux Mint 7 Live CD (didn't even bother re-downloading it), stuck it in the CD drive of the nettop (gosh I really like this thing...), which was currently running Ubuntu, went to System/Administration/USB Startup Disk Creator, and it happily read the Linux Mint CD and created a bootable USB thumb drive! I now have that running on the nettop. There is one very minor quirk - when you boot the thumb drive, GRUB stops at the "boot:" prompt. All you have to do is press return, and it then goes through the rest of the boot sequence and comes up to a Live desktop.
I hope this helps. I think it is extremely cool, and I think your idea of having Mint on a thumb drive is really good - if you're going to give it to someone to try out Linux, then giving them the most "user friendly" version that I know of is certainly a good choice.
jw
J.A. Watson Thankyou once again, that is a superb option to have and look forward to trying it!
to create a bootable thumbdrive with an iso on it, try unetbootin - you will find it in the Ubuntu repositories.
Just slip in a thumb drive, point it at an iso and click go
There is an excellent site with walkthrough's for many distro's:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
For fedora there is liveusb-creator which has a windows version too and can create a persistent area to save docs etc:
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
RobertB > I don't think it's anything personal, I'm always tripping the spam trap on my blog posts.
re. your idea about setting up a demonstration in the library, I think the problem is finding those people who aren't Indifferent _or_ jolting them out of the Indifference. I think there's a gap in the market for well-made and whizzy presentations that advocates can download and show. This is a job that should be _shared_. Time to set up a such a site....
This comment has been deleted at the users request
This comment has been deleted at the users request
And still they wonder ? Sigh......................
I feel inertia is a big big factor which is mainly because people wouldn't care to learn all new OS and dump what they have been using for 10 years. Things shd change in a couple of years.
