Supporting Ubuntu growth

[Peter Whittaker]

On Tue, 2006-01-08 at 08:29 -0400, Chris Thompson wrote:
> If you think supporting your Windows friends is a pain, watch what
> would happen if you installed Ubuntu....you will become 24 hour first
> line support, help desk, tutor, and designated scapegoat every time
> anything, however seemingly trivial,  goes wrong. 

A few quick points on this and related follow-ups:

1) I'll bet he already is 24 hour tech support for many of his
Windows-based F&Rs, just as I am.

2) I would much rather be 24 hour tech support for Linux-based F&Rs than
for those using Windows, for two extremely important reasons:

	i) It is much harder for computer-illiterate usage to bog down a Linux
box than a Windows box (even when I lock my mother-in-law's XP box down
as tight as I can, she still ends up with spyware and adware of various
that gob up her computer something fierce), and

	ii) Under Windows and Linux, one can obtain tools and utilities to
correct all manner of system problems, and generally under the same or
similar licensing conditions as for the  original OS. Your guess as to
which makes it easier in practice to fix those problems!

I do the best I can on my m-i-l's computer, without spending any money.
Since I refuse to spend a dime, there is only so much I can do. And I
have to repeat those efforts regularly.

I do my absolute best on my daughter's Ubuntu box, do it once for any
requirement or problem, never do it again, and never spend a dime.

3) The teach someone to fish argument doesn't work so well for many
F&Rs, because they are simply not computer literate enough and do not
wish to be. Take my m-i-l, for example (oops, that could have intro'd a
very bad joke... :->): Very basic concepts, like the difference between
minimizing and closing a window, have taken a long time to sync in.
Preview panes are a mystery, as is the difference between a single-click
and a double-click, in many instances.

It isn't that she doesn't want to know or cannot master complex things
(she learned Bridge in her 60s - you want complex, try contract
bidding), she simply doesn't "get" the concepts behind the UIs.

Why not? Because a) they're aren't any consistent underlying concepts
and b) what underlying concepts there are have, in general, been
designed by geeks for geeks 'cause they thought they were cool.

Every now and again I walk past a Mac running OS X and poke around. Wow.
Amazing what one can do when one hires industrial designers to design
something for use by human beings. Too bad it is a closed and
proprietary system.

4) Re throwing in the towel: No way! But be realistic, there are at
least two questions to ask: a) What markets does MS own, and how can
they be dislodged from these markets, and b) What markets does MS shun,
and how can these markets be won? For more thoughts on that, see my
recent post on sounder.

To summarize: Developed world home desktop, Bells and Whistles and ease
of use and reduced TCO. Developed world business: Reduced TCO, ease of
administration, no pain, integration with existing systems, support for
existing data and practices. Developing world, all cases: Must run well
and sensibly on lower cost, lower powered machines.

And those are just some of the use cases to consider.

End random thoughts (yeah, sure :->),

pww



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