[ubuntu-uk] ubuntu in india

[paul sutton]

On 22/06/12 08:09, Chris Fox wrote:
> On 22/06/12 07:38, richard wrote:
>> On 21/06/12 17:47, john wrote:
>>> Thought that this may be interesting :
>>>
>>> ww.h-online.com/open/news/item/Dell-to-bring-Ubuntu-laptops-to-850-retail-stores-in-India-1620657.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>> so why not sell them here too ?
>>
>
> From what I recall, they did for a while and it was a monumental
> failure. Perhaps it was before its time, perhaps Dell didn't do a good
> enough job of marketing it, but either way I think they did it for a
> while and then binned the idea.
>
> Personally I'd like to see someone try it again. The big stumbling
> block, I think, isn't telling Joe Public that Ubuntu is better than
> Windows: They can figure that out for themselves, and if they can't then
> maybe for them Ubuntu /isn't/ better.
>
> What Dell, or PC World, or whoever tries this at a national level needs
> to educate your average home user about is that Ubuntu is different, and
> isn't compatible with Windows, and why. I vaguely recall stories from
> the last time someone tried selling pre-loaded Linux laptops to Joe
> Public that a number of users were returning them as "faulty" because
> their Windows software didn't work.
>
> Good luck to the chap who posted to this list a few days ago trying to
> do the same thing - I hope it's a big success.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>

I think given when I ask people what Operating system they use they say
Windows and some struggle to then tell me what version of windows they
are running,  this is going to be a real struggle.

I think the Raspberry Pi may perhaps suffer the same fate,  illiterate
adults will struggle with them while children and computer literate
adults will probably understand what is going on and thrive to a point, 
then be frustrated at the illiteracy of adults who are then unable to
help them progress further and what is worse they won't admit they are
clueless on the topic. 

It won't fail per-se just highlight how bad things have got with regard
to peoples technical literacy.

Going back on topic the biggest fail was putting linpus on netbooks,  a
lot of Linux users hated it, and it really gave a bad impression as to
what Linux is.  As for the impression given to non linux users it was
probably enough to really put people off. 

For this to work you NEED local support and this is hard to get,  
people support windows and know windows and can fix most issues,  
fixing issues with ubuntu does require the same level of knowledge which
for the avg user is lacking, 

Paul

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