[Tfug] [stein.les at gmail.com: TCS General Meeting]

[Chad Woolley]

I think it would be impressive to show a Live CD automatically
detecting sound, peripherals, cd, playing mp3s etc on a standard
desktop/laptop, and "just working".  For any practical non-unix-guru
who is actually considering a switch from windows to linux, these are
the things that will be important.  This is especially true of people
who have attempted (and failed) to switch in the past, when linux on
the desktop was much more primitive.  It might also be compelling to
people who want a new OS that runs better than win98 or win2k, but
don't necessarily want to give microsoft ~$150 for XP (or whatever
Vista will cost)

-- Chad

On 8/28/06, Quag7 <coldfront at frostwarning.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:06:48 -0700, Bowie J. Poag <bpoag at comcast.net>
> > wrote:
>
> > > Next time you see a window that takes a full second to draw, stop and
> > > think.  How many clock cycles, how many instructions did it take to draw
> > > that window? A billion? Two billion?  Once you begin to see things from
> > > that perspective, you will lose all respect for Win-clone desktops like
> > > GNOME and KDE, because it's horrifying. A Linux desktop doesn't have to
> > > be that way.
>
> Forgetting wasted cycles for a moment, there's something else to be said
> for being *intriguing* which Windows is not.  I think if I were going to
> do a demo for a group, one thing I would emphasize is the different
> selection of window managers, and their different philosophies.
>
> I think I'd have a KDE and Gnome desktop to show how the system can work
> similar to Windows for those who want that, and then show things like
> Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Windowmaker (the most visually interesting, in
> my opinion), and even Ratpoison to show the different desktop
> experiences a user can have, for free.
>
> If I had never seen a Linux desktop and had been staring at effectively
> the same Windows desktop for what is 11 or so years now, I think the
> prospect of being able to not only have a selection of desktops with
> different philosophies, but being able to get those for free, and
> install as many as I wanted to try them out, would interest me greatly.
>
> A lot of the criticism of Linux is over fragmentation - but at least
> some of what is referred to as fragmentation is choice, and it would be
> nice to get that across, because in so doing you hook not only those who
> are not excited about change, but also those who are, who want something
> dramatically different.
>
> Explaining how the console, X, and window managers interact with each
> other should be of interest to almost any Windows fan, I think.
>
>
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