SEUL: What's wrong with Windows and right with Linux?

[Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

One of the most important jobs of the SEUL project is to provide
convincing evidence and arguments for why each user should make the
change from using Windows to using Linux.  We cannot simply produce
better software -- we're already doing that (Redhat has links on their
webpage to several news articles stating that Hurricane is easier to
install and configure than NT).

There are a lot of people out there who have heard of Linux, but don't
use it because Windows is 'sufficient' for them, or because they don't
actually believe that Linux could be as good as people claim.  We need
to develop a series of pages on our website that describe in detail
why Windows is insufficient, and why people should accept Linux as *the*
alternative.

We'd like to find a couple people from seul-project, seul-seg, or
elsewhere to head the project of gathering information on what people
don't like about Windows and why they should switch to Linux.  These
volunteers would discuss the issues among themselves, and ask people in
the seul-project list and the SEG.  Once they have adequate input, they
will draft some pages and put them up for review, gather review comments,
revise, repeat.

Some pages like this already exist -- Omega pointed me towards
www.annoyances.org.  I think the key to this effort is that we want to be
very serious and respectful towards Windows and its users -- nearly all
of the people I've talked to who are Windows fans are turned off by Linux
people because we mock the OS that they've chosen (though it's been
argued that Microsoft's advertising doesn't leave much of a "choice"
to end-users).  We don't want anything as offensive as a "windoze sucks
because" list (though a "linux rocks because" list might be useful).  An
enumeration of the flaws of Windows is almost inevitable on a page like
this, but my point is that we need to make it well-thoughtout and written
in an explanatory rather than inflammatory manner.

If you would like to volunteer to coordinate or help coordinate this part
of the project please send mail to omega (omega@omegacs.net) or myself
(arma@mit.edu) (preferably both).  We also should compile some sort of
comprehensive list of other pages that are out there that try to serve
this purpose.  This is, after all, one of the main goals of the SEUL
project -- to have a thorough set of effective propaganda in favor of the
use of Linux over Windows.

I may also post a similar message to linux.advocacy at some point, to get
a lot more people involved...

--Roger, for seul-leaders

Some links that appear on first glance to be useful for this task:
http://www.10mb.com/linux/
http://oloon.student.utwente.nl/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Advocacy-6.html
http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html

In other news, Omega and I are working on getting the administration
programs working nicely.  Then we'll update the web page, finish the FAQ,
and 'go public' sometime early January.  'Go public' is defined as
sending mail to redhat-announce (is there a similar debian-announce
list that serves the same purpose?), posting to c.o.l.a, sending mail
to the 'linux advocacy' group and others (Linux Journal/Gazette?), etc.
I'd like to get in everybody's "list of linux links".

We'll want to have some good documentation started for many different
aspects of the SEUL project by that point.  Specifically, the big points
are the FAQ, the web page, and the various announcements that we'll send
to each place.  Are there any advertising/publicity/writing specialists
out there that want to help out?