Req. for views ... Win3x-95 vs LinUX

["Aldo Solari [APS]" <SOLARIS@cicei.ulpgc.es>]

Received the message forwarded below from Roger, one of SEUL's  main
hackers.   Thought  it  could  be  interesting  to read some of your
views.

For  the  coming  year, I would like to remind that SEG participants
_are expected_ to be active.  We  will  not move forwards if SEG's a
passive group. Do we need a US Marine Sargent in here ? :-)

    Cheers, APS.
    

Forwarded message follows:

From: Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>

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

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?

------- End of Forwarded Message