Interesting Article - "Ubuntu made me quit college!!"

[David Tremblay]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Joel Goguen <jtgoguen at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Victor Mendonça wrote:
> > Article
> > http://actionnooz.com/news/?p=2870
>
> <rant size="big" temper="upset">
> *deep breath*
> I've seen this same thing in half a dozen places, and every time I've
> said the same thing: this isn't the reaction we need, this isn't
> interesting, it's sad.  Nor is this the whole story.  Check out
> http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 for the original story.
>  It has a little more information that the others "neglected" to put in
> their stories.  What isn't said here is that MATC offered to help her
> re-enroll and set up OpenOffice to save in MS Office formats by default.
>  They even offered to accept her work in whatever format works with
> whatever software she has installed!  I wish I could do that, if I don't
> send things in exactly the format requested I get asked to re-send.
> Verizon discs don't work with Linux she said - but Verizon said that
> while some advanced features and the installation discs won't work, she
> can still use Verizon Internet.  They're even sending (or maybe by now
> it's "They have even sent") a technician to get her up and running.  If
> Dell actually did tell her to stick with Ubuntu, they may have been
> trying to save her money and time, but a good tech would have talked to
> her to determine if keeping her on Ubuntu would be a good idea.  It may
> be hard to believe for some people, but Ubuntu is not the ideal solution
> for every single person in the world, and even among Ubuntu users it may
> not be the single best solution for all situations.  If I were to set up
> a firewall box, or a gateway, I wouldn't hesitate to choose OpenBSD.
> Perhaps a better idea for this woman would have been to send her Windows
> and offer to help her dual-boot if she wanted to.
>
> Overall, MATC and Verizon are willing to help her, providing support
> that I simply can't get from my educational institution or from either
> ISP in my area.  I had to go through my manager's manager to get the
> university IT department to post the settings needed for me to connect
> to the university wireless network.  They just kept telling me that
> "Linux is not supported", even though some of their own staff use Linux!
>  And I work for them.  I would hate to think of the hassle someone else
> would have had to go through.  Now, because of my near-constant
> harassment, they've recognized that Linux users are people too and set
> up a wiki.  Still no support, but at least now Linux users have a
> (poorly advertised and not well known) place to go to see what other
> Linux users can do to help them.  As for her Internet problems, she's
> still getting better support than what I could ever hope for here.  They
> recognized that Linux is capable of connecting to the Internet, that
> alone is more than I could hope for here!  If I go to either ISP and say
> "Linux" I get told, depending on the technician's experience and
> knowledge, anything from "What's that?" up to "Sorry, Linux can't
> connect to our network, you won't be able to use our services without
> Windows".
>
> The responses to this article were perhaps the worst of all.  I've never
> seen such shameful behaviour or such terrible responses to someone's
> questions, and I've been on the OpenBSD mailing lists when Richard
> Stallman posted one of his "GPL 4-evar! You are doing it all
> wrong!!1!one1!" posts.  These aren't the responses that are going to
> attract people to Linux.  This young woman's problem is the sort of
> thing that happens frequently (although usually not with such drastic
> ends as dropping out of school!) and it's the sort of thing that gets
> sorted out by friendly, helpful Linux users.  This article was the
> chance for Linux users (specifically Ubuntu users) to show the rest of
> the world why Ubuntu is a good choice - to show people that the
> community will come together and help people solve problems, as it so
> often does on the mailing lists and the forums.  Instead, the community
> (not our community on the forums and mailing lists thankfully...) came
> together, but it came together to form a wall pushing people away.  How
> many new users, non-technical users like Ubuntu seems to be aimed at and
> good for, are going to see this and not use Ubuntu, or any Linux?
> </rant>
>
> Now...I'm open to people telling me I'm wrong.  If I am, at any part, I
> hope someone will point it out.  I also hope that this can fire off a
> discussion about what happened here and what could be improved in Ubuntu
> or in the Dell ordering process.  Things that could become submissions
> to Brainstorm (either Dell and/or Ubuntu Brainstorm) or bug
> reports/feature requests.
>
>
>
You are mostly right, somehow the reaction to the news is the problem...
things happens and even if she's not the sharpest tool in the shed,  people
should have refrain to attack her. Not everybody care about fixing a
computer (whatever the OS) and in case of problem many people will simply
buy another box because the OS, the software, the hardware with all those
strange words are just part of those things that can't be understood, people
just want to click have a result .

That said, ubuntu preloaded computer should come with a little video on how
to set stuff up (especially the internet). It may be silly but there may be
some use for Ubuntu Bob or  Clippy the gnome kind of stuff
But I'm sure that kind of feature won't go far in votes in brainstorm...


-- 
David Tremblay

IT analyst
mob: 418-208-3631
jabber: ict4ngo
skype : ict4ngo

Blog : http://blog.ngowiki.net
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