Audience targetting at ITEC

[Jeff Mings]

    I think StarOffice is ok under windoze, but the Gimp is somehow not 
quite there.  I am a fanatical gimp user, completing quite a bit of work 
with it every week under RH 7.1.  When I installed Gimp on a win95 
machine, it seemed oddly slow, some of the feature appeared to be 
missing, and a few things just didn't work right.

-Jeff

joel wrote:

>Heh... this might be a bad day to post this...
>
>There are a whole lot of people out there with the mindset that if something 
>is free, it can't be any good. Most people do not initially believe that free 
>software can be as good as the professional software they buy in a store. We 
>are culturally conditioned that free means either it's worthless, or it's an 
>advertisement for something we have to pay for.
>
>"Just try it, you'll love it," we say, handing them an installation CD. "It's 
>a lot more powerful than Windows." We're right, Linux can do a lot of things 
>that Windows can't. For most things, it's a dream to work with. But how many 
>normal people (not computer enthusiasts) do you know who would actually 
>install a completely foreign operating system on their hard drives? That's a 
>big step, and it takes a very brave (or motivated) person to do it. 
>
>What if we were to hand them a disk with programs they could use, right now, 
>today, to extend the capabilities of their existing systems? This would show 
>them that open-source programs can be as good or better than the software 
>they can buy. 
>
>I think we should have a CD of open-source software that works under Windows, 
>including the Gimp, Mozilla, Abiword, Star Office... can anyone think of 
>other open-source programs that work in both Linux and Windows? They could 
>take the CD, play with the programs on in for a while, read some of the 
>philosophical ramblings (also on the CD, surprisingly enough ;-), and start 
>using open-source software themselves. Then, it's not such a foreign concept.
>
>This also gives us another opportunity. Instead of seeing ITEC as a one-shot 
>deal, we could give them a taste of free software there, and mention that 
>we'll be hosting an install-fest next month, if they're interested in doing 
>*more* with free software. Not having a date, time, or place for that yet 
>could work in our favor, because it'll give us a chance to gather e-mail 
>addresses of interested people ("we'll e-mail you all the details later").
>
>At an install-fest, we could have people installing Linux on their own 
>machines, help them set it up exactly like they want it, fix all the little 
>problems that periodically surface, and help them through the initial 
>learning curve. 
>
>In a few short months, they'll be ours! Mwuahahahaha! >;-)
>
>--Joel
>
>---
>You are currently subscribed to luau as: jeffm at lava.net
>To unsubscribe send a blank email to $subst('Email.Unsub')
>
>