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On 24/09/12 16:39, Neil Winchurst wrote:
Yesterday we went to RHS Rosemoor near Torrington for the Food Fair. Afterwards we were in the shop and I was looking at a photo book. An elderly man near me commented on being interested in computers himself and that he used Photo Shop to work on his photos.
Ahh so not an easy Linux convert then unless he's running an old version of Photoshop.
So of course I told him that I did not use Windows but a free OS called Linux. He had never heard of it. When I explained a little he seemed rather bemused. He was convinced that if you wanted to use a computer you *had* to use Windows and that nothing else worked! (I wonder where he got that idea.)
That's a sad fact as you seem to have pointed out :-)
So I explained a bit more and he said 'but you can't use the internet of course or send emails'. More explanations. Eventually he went on his way looking very surprised.
So he'd been given miss-information then :-D
This encounter brought home to me just how far we are still from getting people to understand that there is a choice out there. There is still a long way to go to get that message out there.
I have a positive story. A couple of years ago I tried to get a friend to use Ubuntu on his desktop dual booting with Vista. He was one of those "I don't like change" types and wanted to stick with Vista. He ended up buying a laptop and leaving the desktop with his parents when he moved out (about 2 years ago now I think).
Anyway, I had a message from his brother the other day asking me how to get an Epson printer working on Ubuntu. It turns out they're now running Ubuntu on their PC, I didn't have any involvement on the install so I can only assume another friend or family member suggested it to them. :-)
Recently I've managed to convert my brother-in-law onto Linux Mint as his laptop (running Vista) caught a virus. As far as I know he's happy with Mint as it does what he wants (mainly Internet and Facebook games). I'm going to be showing Mint to my sister-in-law tomorrow too as she too has a laptop which is running like a dog. I figured leave her with a USB stick or DVD with it on so she can have a play and see how much better it is than Windows :-)
Hopefully with the launch of the Raspberry Pi it's going to get more people interested in Linux. I've seen so many comments and heard so many stories of people picking up Raspberry Pi's and to learn Perl and Linux, despite being able to do that on a standard PC, so maybe those people playing with a Pi will maybe look at Linux on a desktop or laptop PC too (maybe someone should release a version of Debian renamed to Raspbian for x86 :-D).
Rob Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq