Hi every1,
I have a good news and a bad news. the good news is my presence on FSD
as a volunteer has been approved by my parents. the bad news is i won't
b able to bring my pc as promised owing to transport costs :-( .
Now I did a kinda survey near my place and based on my experiences here
r my observations
1. As Srini had pointed out children seem to be more interested in games
and everything colorful. So showing them a demo of Live duc should not
be a problem.
2. When it comes to adults, they dont merely work on their word
processor or spreadsheets. they are more concerned about aesthetic
appeal, animated windows, themes, icons (i really didnt expect this). So
can we show them a copy of the more handsome versions of Linux like
Xandros? Now Open Office runs really slowww on these systems. so we need
to find a workaround. moreover they also like to listen to some music
while working. So xmms with the crystality plugin (like dfx plugin). Now
I have downloaded some nice plugins, so let me know whether i should
bring a copy of linux softwares on cd. Now we had forgotten about the
ELX-BIZ; distro perfect for business, as far as licensing is concerned
it is free to use on non commercial systems. i have a copy of ELX-BIZ, i
can bring it on SFD.
3. College students prefer the more raw distros ,like slackware or
gentoo, Anjuta, Eclipse, Kdevelop, Mono are perfect and I guess Parth
and Prashanth are incharge of those stuff. So this shouldn't be a
problem at all.
4. Now there is a separate category that falls in between a newbie and
an expert. they are terrified of command line interfaces (thats bad) and
prefer the gui for everything. Now I have repeated this several times,
but webmin is just a thing they need.
5. On SFD we have a major hurdle to break. To non-linux users the very
word, 'Open Source' refers to Linux only. This is itself forms some
kinda mental barrier. We need to somehow banish those myths. One way of
doing this in my opinion is not to limit our focus on Linux alone. But
show our guests other open source stuff like, apache, SugarCRM,
Compiere, thunderbird, proftpd, firefox among others. These are quality
products, and once thay get to know about power of Open Source, the
success of SFD becomes a cinch.
So on SFD we are going to cater to a wide range of people. Now these
observations are based on a suggestions and feedbacks given by many
people including kids.
regards and sorry for keeping this mail long,
Sudharshan S