Re: [seul-edu] Some Random Thoughts

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

Ed Lawson wrote:
> 
> This list has been quite active and the proposed developments sound very exciting.  I just need to determine how I can contribute.  In the meantime, a few random thoughts:
> 
Glad to hear from you, Ed.  We're always willing to accept any
contributions people are interested in making. :-)

> 1.  One post talked of winning the "war" between Mac and WinTel.  Was there a "war"? [...] I find it less than appealing when Linux advocates constantly position advocacy as a fight or war and an essential element is disparaging comments of MS and Windows.  I don't believe this is all that effective as a tactic.  After all you are telling most people that what they use and find useable is junk and only idiots use it.  Don't make many friends or receptive listeners that way.
> 
I agree that disparaging comments about alternatives to what we're
proposing aren't generally helpful.  However, testimonials from Linux
users about how much more they like their Linux systems than what they
were previously using should be OK, right?  I find that often people
accept the shortcomings of Windows (let's be frank about it) with the
perception, "that's just the way computers are."  If we can show them
that they've been trained to be too accepting of the crashes and
constant upgarades (without disparaging them for that), I think we have
a duty to do so.  Even if they don't accept our system, they will at
least know that alternatives exist, and may perhaps be a bit more
discriminating in their future appraisals of computing systems.

> 2.      This past week I gave a presentation about Squid and related topics to educators at a conference.  [...] Isn't Unix/Linux hard and take a "rocket scientist" to support?
> 
> I said no and mentioned the config files were in plain english with many comment sections and logical.
>
> I then showed a sample config file for squidGguard which is really quite sraightforward and explained the sections.  His eyes glazed over.
> 
> My point is you need to take that perception into account.  There are many advantages to the Linux system of config files and they should be seen as advantages not the black art.
> 
This is an important point.  In our presentations, we should stress the
flexibility of being able to use whatever GUI tools exist or to be able
to edit the configuration files directly in a text editor. 
Incidentally, you can do just that with many Windows programs too,
Netscape Communicator for example.  For programs with no GUI tools, it
may help to stress that we can make whatever configuration changes are
possible by editing the text files, while GUI configuration wizards
necessarily limit you to whatever subset of the possibilities the author
thought were most useful.  I speak from experience, as I have to
maintain a number of Windows programs at work that can only be properly
maintained by editing the configuration files by hand.

> A parent had originally set it up, but now they paid someone for support.  She said they preferred to pay for support rather than use voluteers because they wanted to know someone was contractually obligated to show up and fix things.
> 
Another inportant point.  While we need to encourage LUGs to support
their local schools, there will be some (many, perhaps) that won't feel
comfortable without such a contractual arrangement.  We should assemble
a list of companies or other organizations that will contract for such
support, so we can present it to the folks who require it.  And it might
make a nice side business for some of us (providing on-line support),
who knows?

> 3.      Rather than a whole distro, perhaps a CD which contains a selection of important apps and detailed, practical instructions on configuring them for a school setting.  If setting up Samba, Apache, Squid and related apps could be well documented, then it would give some a greater sense of comfort in trying them out.
> 
Great minds think alike.  We discussed doing something very like this
last February, and have been assembling the info needed for it in fits
and starts.  Once this coalition takes off, I hope we can get some folks
to work seriously on it.

Doug Loss
drloss@home.com