Technogory

It’s funny, because a recommendation to anything can mean so many things.  And, just like so many of the techy’s in my industry, they are good at one thing.  Telling you what you need, but not telling you how to get it!  Then treating you like a complete idiot because you couldn’t figure it out.  Fortunately, I am not like most of my peers, I do have the drive to not only recommend, but implement, what I recommend!

In one of my previous posts, I told you that I would recommend Linux to my family this Christmas.  Of course, there are those that might think my family are too cheap to own a new licensed copy of Windows, or too stupid to make Windows really work, or to inept at making Windows really secure.  That doesn’t really matter to me, because those are the same people that would recommend a widget to me, but not give me one thread of information on how to make the widget work.

So, this brings me to the next step in my recommendation of Linux.  To provide them with not only media, but a real live person to set it up, walk them through everything they might need, and help them work through the things they think don’t work just right.

To clarify my previous positions, for my family, the best distribution for them will be Ubuntu with Gnome.  However, if you had fairly astute family that really benefited from having lot’s of control to do good, and bad, things, then KDE might be right for them.

So, where do you start?  Wrap the CD up and give it to them?  No, because if you are like me, you will see your family over the holidays.  So, plan ahead of time.  Tell them you are willing to sit down with them and make their life much easier!  Be prepared to back it up.  It’s up to all of you Linux disciples to step up and show off your favorite O/S.  What you do, and how you do it could be the beginning or end of Linux - with your family!

I have an example:

I have a brother-in-law that uses Windows XP.  However, he doesn’t like all the virus issues, he is constantly having to defrag his hard drive, email attachments cause him grief, and he loves to browse the web.  He plays a few games, but is not as concerned with them being available to him with Linux.   He’s got Office today, uses Word, and that’s it.  So, he paid a lot of money for nothing…I digress.  He has played with Linux when visiting me, so he’s not new to the environment I am proposing for him.

Next up, we decide to blow away the system.  He has an IBM based system with a 2.8 GHz CPU, 2 Gig memory, and a 500 Gig hard drive.  He uses about 20% of the drive total…overkill!  He has an nVidia based video card with 512 Meg memory on board.  His monitor is a Hitachi, and the good news is he has the original .inf files should we need them down the road with the install.

The plan is simple.  Over Christmas break, we are going to reload his system.  I have already told him what to do to save his emails from Outlook, and any special files he wants to access later.  I expect this to be painless, and easy.  Certainly, I will write about it as we go.

The main point here is to not only use your influence to recommend Linux, but step up and make it happen!  Linux doesn’t have the multimillion dollar corporation pushing it along.  It doesn’t get the great advertising and presence in your local stores to make it a viable option to the masses.  So, it is your duty, as the loud-mouth proponent to put all those words into action!