Ok, so I got to thinking... how do people get to know Linux, which distro do they go with any why? I guess, for many of the new users, it's whatever their friends, classmates, teachers, or place of business currently use. Over time, they may branch out and try alternatives, or stick within thier comfort zone.
Personally, I started a long time ago with Slackware. Of course, back in the early days, this was all distributed on 3.5' floppies, and I remember installing slackware from something like 30 floppies (circa 1993 I believe). Of course, things have come a long way since then, and now there are many Linux distros, each based on one of a handful of package management systems (deb, rpm, ebuild, tgz, etc).
Over the years, I have tried Red Hat, Mandrake/Mandriva, Debian, Gentoo and Kubuntu. Each of the distros have their own strengths, but for this time in my life, Kubuntu fits the bill nicely. Though, If I had to choose a distro for pure hacking and development, I would definately recommend Gentoo, as the ebuild system is top notch.
Anyway, getting back to the title of this post... how many people have you converted to linux? Well, for me, I'm sure I have sold various people over the years, which probably needed little to no coaxing. However, recently, I have begun trying to convert "non-geek" people to Linux, as in members of the common masses, who's only experience to date is point-n-stoopid from MS.
To date, I have successfully converted 8 non-technical windows people completely to Kubuntu. And when I say convert, I don't mean dual boot. I mean pure Linux only. I have to say, this has been pretty easy using Kubuntu, which has all the bells and whistles, and the recent Gutsy version has done a tremendous job on restricted drivers and media formats integration. In fact, so many things under KDE on Kubuntu are intuitive, that within weeks, I had friends showing me things I had not discovered.
So, share your experiences with conversion, good and bad, so we can learn from them.
I'm a pretty poor salesman myself, but in a community I participate in I used to be the only linux user-total geek. But after a while my referring to linux sparked some interest and there are now 5-10 people who have either converted fully or have been experimenting with it. I'm not even the driving force behind that, there are others who are more loud and enthusiastic about linux who are affecting people who've never tried it.
ReplyDeleteIt actually all started with Firefox, though. That was a great example for free software. Then many of the same people decided to try linux some time down the road.
I found out here that you were related to the xeffects overlay:
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-575206.html
But trying to install Kiba Dock
http://www.kiba-dock.org/
I find that It is in that overlay. On another website:
http://tech.idv2.com/2008/01/14/gentoo-xeffects-stopped/
I read that xeffects server is going down. Is going to move somewhere else? Sorry to ask u here but u might know whats going to happen. Thx!
Karl, jump onto IRC (irc.freenode.net) and join channel #gentoo-xeffects (I assume it's still active). Someone there should be able to help you.
ReplyDelete