[Ubuntu-BD] FOSS & Ubuntu in Bangladesh

[Shumon]

Dear MAQ-tanim & Ashabadi ;)

Thank you for your candid comments. As you may note, I don't claim to know
the right answer but sharing some opinions which in discussion with people
like yourselves will hopefully improve.

Adnan, minor clarification, I don't claim XP to be user friendly or standard
GUI in a design sense but you might agree most people who use it are
"comfortable" with it and would rather not learn a new interface. Would it
be so bad if we could get all the benefits of Linux while using an XP-like
interface? It may not be a perfect solution, but a practical one. And I'm
sure the person who will provide such a solution will do a great service for
the community at large. I like your dubbing "XPbuntu". I will add my
suggestion, "Wubuntu", which can be pronounced same hence it's philosophy
while an association with Windows.

You note correctly that it takes us a long time to become good at XP, or the
first OS. Would I invest even a quarter of that time to learn a new one?
Perhaps. Will most people? I don't think so. Most people change for
practical reasons, not philosophical. Can we at least give him/her that
practical option?

Shahriar, I understood what Nasim meant. How about a slightly different
strategy to converting overnight or even all my old files? How about I keep
my old .doc files as is and simply keep on creating new .doc or .odt files
using OpenOffice? Should I not at least expect the FOSS community to inform
me of this option even though I may not be philosophically fully committed
to changing everything overnight? I would like to see the FOSS community to
serve the public without demanding full conversion. In this sense, we'd be
different from some of the other fundamentalist groups in Bangldesh.

But let's put all that aside as I may be wrong about my opinions. I am
curious to find out from those of you who are promoting FOSS/Linux/Ubuntu in
Bangladesh, what is the community's strategy to get more people to leave
Windows/proprietary software?

I had hoped a central website would have some information easily but there
seems to be only a placeholder page at http://www.linux.org.bd/ and is being
used solely for Google Apps by the Bangladesh Linux Users Alliance (which
probably doesn't have incoming mail service anymore). And
http://www.ubuntu-bd.org/ 's hosting accounting has been suspended. Not sure
why there isn't a website for either but more importantly, let's re-awaken
these giants and I would like to help whether in providing hosting, web
development and/or content editing. Let's serve the public to become more
aware of their technology options.

Shumon