RE: [Fsuk-manchester] Ubuntu begginers guide, reply

[Pete Morris]

I'm not sure I'd be quite so harsh on Mike personally, but I do think that he's 
sort of dug himself a bit of a hole there. It's a culture that is sadly endemic 
to the GNU/Linux/FSF world: Microsoft and Apple are not enemy to free software, 
it's the FSF community itself.

Whether you like it or not Mike, you have just demonstrated nicely exactly the 
sort of "usual response" that the mainstream expects from FOSS/GNU/whatever. A 
person expresses their concerns, and in return they have them confirmed rather 
than reassured.

I used to go to quite a lot of the free software meetings, but I got 
increasingly fed up of being told I was a bad person simply because I (to 
borrow a good example) wanted my home wifi to work. I know others who say the 
same. I would like to be interested in free software, but I'm not prepared to 
sell my soul just to explore. Sometimes free software groups can be like 
religious zealots rather than empowering, preaching fire and brimstone to 
people who want the most simple (and reasonable) of things. Enthusiasm is 
great, but one needs to temper it with a good sales pitch. I don't care much 
for a history lesson on 4 freedoms; I use Linux because it's cool and has some 
fantastic features.

Do you know what I like most about my Maverick installation? The desktop 
background it came with. It's as petty as that. I really like the colours and 
the lens flare, and I think it looks pretty cool. After that, my next favourite 
thing is the software centre, because it makes it easy to install new programs 
without having to hunt around on Google. "The right to modify the source code" 
comes somewhere low down the list near the bottom I'm afraid. Sorry to shatter 
any illusions or break any hearts.

You [the group, not allcoms] asked for comments on putting together a talk for 
beginners. Well, I am a relative "beginner" by most of your standards, so your 
target audience is clearly something very different, because you're certainly 
not enthusing me. If you'll permit me to be sceptical, I'd put good money that 
80-90% of the people who turn up on that day are already part of ManFSF, 
ManLUG, MadLab staff, etc.

And Mike, you may not be planning to burn placards, but trust me, you'll be 
burning bridges!



-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of allcoms
Sent: 02 December 2010 22:54
To: Pete Morris
Cc: Manchester Free Software
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Ubuntu begginers guide, reply

<Petes previous post here>

Totally agree with you here Pete!

Hardliners like Mike can really be off-putting to both newbies and
people who aren't greatly concerned with the GNU philosophy. Now,
don't get me wrong here the philosopy IS important but not 30m
diatribe important. I can easily summarise all the key benefits of
FOSS to a bunch of newbs in 5m and that would be perfectly sufficient
for an intro session. Getting things installed and setup is much more
important than havin them be able to recite the four freedoms although
we can easily get them into the philosophy bit.

I'm a Linux user of 15 years now and its all I use at home (I have to
support and use other OSes at work tho). Mike, do you realise just how
important working wifi is to 99% of desktop users now? Even more
important than fully functional GFX drivers I'd say. Both these are
hugely important but quite often people like Mike would just have to
tell them not to bother until someone codes some FOSS drivers. That is
NOT going to give a good impression and WILL put many people off,
hence the massive boon of having jockey to simplify these vital steps
(for 99% of users who need these devices to function properly). What
I'm saying here is that conducting a introductory session that RMS
would approve of will put more people off than convert. I should know-
I've been advocating for years and the aim of the game with these
people is to show they can get a fully functional system that does
what they want with MINIMAL use of terminal and compiling stuff- these
are as big a put-off as no wifi.

Before I was advocating Ubuntu would be a better choice than the
person who suggested debian because of jockey and its other newb
friendly tweaks (ie Ubuntu sets up sources.list for you at install,
tells you what package you need to install when a command is missing,
double-click on a .deb to install stuff offline easily...) but to be
honest I'm not so impresssed with 10.10 as I've seen a few quirks and
the general consensus on the net seems to be its not as good as 10.04
and IMO Ubuntu is its death throes due to crazy decisions (moving the
window buttons, unity to become standard, PA, no alsa-oss anymore just
to name a few). I really need to try Debian Mint see if has anything
to aid in wifi setup- I would imagine Mint will spare people having to
hand configure sources.list at least.

Sorry to take it out on you Mike but you've been the most vocal about
plugging the philosophy when more people just want to escape the binds
and annoyances of Windows more than be a good GNU computer user. If
you can stand to have me around my offer to help still stands.

>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Simon Ward
> Sent: 01 December 2010 23:10
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Ubuntu begginers guide, reply
>
> On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 10:58:45PM +0000, João Pedro Forjaz de Lacerda wrote:
>> I must agree with Michael on this. If done correctly, the philosophy
>> talk will rather become a motivational talk -- what better students to
>> have than those who are intrinsically motivated to learn? You might
>> argue that being intrinsically motivated is a precondition to
>> attending this event, but one might be motivated for the wrong reasons
>> (don't forget that you're dealing with beginners).
>
> This is exactly the reason I suggest starting off with a quick introduction.  
> The introduction should be enough to motivate, and get people wanting to 
> learn more.  The learning more follows.
>
> At the same time, we don’t alienate those less interested in the philosophy.  
> If they’re not interested they’re not interested, but if free software can 
> benefit them in ways visible to them, those that matter, then, while not as 
> good as having people understand the philosophy, it has more people using 
> free software, and re‐claiming the freedoms lost with proprietary software.
>
> Simon
> --
> A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple 
> system that works.—John Gall
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fsuk-manchester mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsuk-manchester
>
>

_______________________________________________
Fsuk-manchester mailing list
address@hidden
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsuk-manchester