schotty wrote:Wrong. Big time. The peeps that I serve and support loved this and were anticipating its release. $30 is chump change considering:
Fedora/Ubuntu is free.
The office suite is free.
The plethora of rather decent kiddie games are free.
No need for a commercial firewall.
No need for anti-virus software (jingle jangle all around the lame-asses still on windows, make them switch or fork over the cash)
No need for anti-spyware software
There are ubuntu based distros like the christian linux that incorporate FREE net nanny stuff bundled right in.
The aforementioned distros all ship GAIM, which is an all in one IM tool, rather than needing more than one too open.
Updates are much faster and from multiple sources rather than from just one (MS or Apple).
People make linux because they want to, not because its something to pay the rent. People see the quality. Things may be missing, but the things that arent are progressing leaps and bounds and the regualr schmoes see this very clearly.
So I dont see that as a valid point. Nor do my customers and clients. They just saved over $600 by choosing FLOSS, and a hell of alot of time and effort maintaining MS. Ooooooh, so it is now only $670! BFD.
Note, these are all things told to me in the last month.
Well, are your customers and clients businesses or home users? Businesses I can totally see what you're saying, but for home users, especially people who are already inclined to dismiss Linux or alternatives, I seriously doubt is gonna see this as reasonable.
Like for instance, my aunt who uses a web browser, an email program, word processor and spreadsheet, I tried to get her to use Linux. She would use Microsoft Office at work , which she had known for years, and then come home to OpenOffice.org which she couldn't figure out. And she havn't watched a single streaming video on the net, and I doubt she ever will. I had to switch her to Windows in the end, guess what, that cost her about 365.07 USD. She shelled out that cash like there was nothing to it, she'd rather spend the cash on broken software that she knew how to use. I think that is the case with most people, and my aunt is like 59 years, and Linux didn't work for her. And it's not any better with any of my classmates, they all use the weirdest phones you can imagine that often have proprietary ways of transfering ring-tones and crap, forget about getting bluetooth tranfers going for those, they use webcam crap etc. etc.
It's not like a bunch of codecs is gonna make a big difference, here in Europe we don't have software patents, so I can legally use libmad, x264, etc. etc. and Linux adoption is far from as great as you hear in the media.
schotty wrote:I promised that it would cost less than $50 for all codecs. They saw that as reasonable.
Well, I seriously doubt that I could tell anyone I know, young or old, something like this "You know the best way to get rid of viruses and spyware is to not use Windows at all. There's this great alternative called Linux, it's robust, stable, reliable, very secure, and is gratis." and then when they go to dr.dk and see that they can't play the streaming media there, and then turn around and tell me that that does not work, if I were to tell them that "Oh, well since that is a technology owned by Microsoft, you have to pay for a codec to play it", then they would gloss over and be like "Well with Windows I didn't have to pay for that, and I thought you said this Lajnix or whatever was gratis, gee I'd like Windows back!".
Legal codecs might make a difference in the US with it's completely appallingly bad patent laws, but not for home users, because the idea of paying to just watch a video is not very encouraging, since they already have way to watch it in Windows.
(In Danish "gratis" is the actual word for "free of charge")
Also, let me tell you something, most people around my age don't care about having spyware or viruses! They don't care that their computers have ad toolbars and a few banners, they don't care whether they're sending spam out, they don't care whether their surfing behavior is being monitored by crackers in Russia or Belarus.
Shocking and weird as it may seem, the general person I talk to at school don't really care whether he's got spyware in his machine, as long as he/she can use his computer they don't care! And when it gets too loaded up they just have it reformatted and done deal, they don't turn around and complain to Microsoft, they don't turn around and say "Gee I should really try not to get this crap next time" they just keep on using their crappy Windows until it's time, once again, to have the thing reinstalled.
And even more, the issue of Linux being free of charge is not a very good argument to teenagers specifically because most just use a pirated copy of Windows and Office!! So the argument that they can download Linux or OpenOffice.org and use it for absolutely nothing, well, it's not a very well founded argument, because they just go "Well, I havn't paid for Windows or Office".
Until the day where Microsoft has Windows so locked down, that only extremely advanced tech-savy people can use it illegally without paying for it, because it constantly needs to be re-cracked with DLL cracks, the argument of Linux being gratis, is not gonna work for young people, and not even for your average parent, because even they can wrap their mind around getting an illegal copy of Windows. And if they are even slightly inconvenienced by the differences between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, they will just shell out the cash for Windows, M$ Office and antivirus because they don't wanna sit there and try to adapt to those differences, oddly because it's a human instinct to adopt to change, that's how we survived the big ice age and the extreme drought in the southern parts of the world during the time of the big ice age.
schotty wrote:Please do not allow zealotry to cloud your judgement and vision.
What zealotry? I was referring to just random home users trying out Ubuntu or whatever distro, because they "heard about it".
schotty wrote:Legality is one step towards the mass adoption that we all would love to see.
Well, in Europe we don't have software patents, and it's not like Linux is doing that much better over here. Sure you may hear about Munich and the like in Germany, however Denmark is like a "Microsoft Paradise", Sweden and Norway aren't much better, neither is Finland country where Linus Torvalds was born.
