[Tfug] ubuntu

[Jim March]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Jeffry Johnston <tfug at kidsquid.com> wrote:

> > He told the other that it wasn't as nice as windows, but it worked
> pretty good.
>
> Probably running Gnome... KDE is nicer than windows ;)
>
> Jeff
>

The real indicator as to whether or not somebody is going to jump cleanly
into Ubuntu or any other newbie-friendly distro is whether or not they have
somebody experienced to help with initial tuning and setup.  Multimedia
support for starters, DVD playback, MP3 codec, all that happy $hit :).

Gnome v. KDE means a lot less in my opinion.

For REAL success, get VirtualBox running with an XP VM for those few
programs or times we still need Windows.  A LOT of users will have at least
one such app, in my case the ones I need most involve playing with election
databases.

This works with surprisingly little horsepower.  I'm pulling it off with a
single-core Celeron 1.6 lappy, lowly Intel945 video and 1.5gigs RAM.  And
it'll work in a lot less than that.

Oddity on that score:

I rented a video recently that flat wouldn't play under Ubuntu.  I tuned and
tweaked and tried VLC player, updated LIBDVDCSS, etc.  No joy.  If anyone
cares, it was the video-only final conclusion to Stargate SG1 :).  Finally I
said "screw it", loaded XP, downloaded VLC for that and watched my friggin'
video :).

But here's the kicker for a newbie:

You explain that when they're on the 'net in Ubuntu, EMail/web/whatever,
they're basically immune from viruses/spyware/crapware.

THAT they get.  Bigtime.  The number of newbies getting hammered by malware
is just crazy...that is BY FAR the number one reason a non-techie will
consider Linux.

You also have to explain that running XP or whatever as a VM task is much
safer than dual-boot because Linux shields Windows.  You lose 3D video
support and gaming, but short of that it works.

Jim
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