On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 12:45 -0700, Matt Graham wrote: > After a long battle with technology, Josh Coffman wrote: > > On 8/31/07, Craig White wrote: > >> On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 11:00 -0700, Josh Coffman wrote: > >> I always thought that the impressive thing to demonstrate was stability > > You can't show someone "stability" in 30 seconds. (Well, unless you do > something like randomly delete a bunch of important stuff in /etc and show > how the system keeps limping along.) Most people's attention spans are too > short to ... oh, look, a puppy! ---- if these are the decision makers (short attention spans), then you have much more serious issues to deal with. people understand things like stability when they have a program that isn't working right and then they have to uninstall and reinstall because that is the only option left to them. Dig out the original CD's, etc. I guess the point is that if you want to hang your hat on eye candy as a means to make a OS choice, I would bury you with a tablet demonstration. Windows Vista desktop has 3d effects, next month so will Mac's...there's no exclusivity there. I mean there has to be some essential honesty and if you can honestly say that the reason you use Linux is compiz/beryl, then by all means, use it as a selling feature. ---- > > >> text based configuration files, automated installations/updates and of > > Text config files, while extremely useful, aren't impressive or even > comprehensible to Joe User. "apt-get dist-upgrade" or its synaptic > equivalent, OTOH, is easy to explain and demonstrate. I think *that* is a > better selling point. ---- yeah but people don't want to use CLI - fedora is starting to get the packaging together to do additional software installation via GUI. I suspect that other distro's do and I know that Linspire *cough* has been doing this for a while now. ---- > > >> Eye candy things like compiz/beryl are hardly stable and are impressive > >> only for people that know little about computers. > > "People who know little about computers" are roughly 90% of people. I suppose > you can ignore them if you want, but it's a losing long-term strategy IMO. ---- I tell people the real details and provide background when necessary. I think the assumption is whether they are utterly incapable of understanding the real reasons or not. ---- > > > 3d desktop is impressive to the casual over-the-shoulder peek at a coffee > > shop, or showing someone something on your machine like a youtube video > > briefly. > > > > Craig, you're right, but unfortunately my opportunities to introduce linux > > are limited to first impressions. For first impressions, style is usually > > more impressive than substance. > > *ding* we have a winner. FWIW, compiz-fusion has been pretty stable for me on > 2 machines once I got it set up properly. It's just ... slower on this > bloody FireGL2 card than it should be, and sometimes shows tearing. Ah well, > onward and upward! ---- I would feel stupid pumping Linux based upon compiz/beryl because it has nothing whatsoever to do with productivity...in fact, I find it to be a barrier to productivity. Impress people with real benefits instead of baffling them with bs. -- Craig White --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss