Hi all,

I would like to add something to this, although not entirely relevant to Rowan's
case, but it reminds me of a lot of people thinking when it comes to adopting
Linux.

I have tried, half-heartedly, to get family members to switch to Ubuntu, or even
just try it out for a while, thinking once they've used it for a while they will
convert. My father, for example, seems genuinely keen to give it a go; he isn't
a 'why would I want anything but windows' person, he is quite open minded to the
open source community, but as a basic user has a bit of fear of the unknown.

His reason for not trying is support. Now for most of us that's not an issue...
we have a problem, we go on the web and find a solution. He is not like that,
not capable of that and not inclined to want to do that. How he works at the
moment and how he wants to continue to work, is that if something goes wrong
with the computer, if he can't solve it over the phone with me, he just drops it
into his local computer shop and says 'fix it'.

I am not sure on the capabilities of the local computer shop, but assuming they
are Windows people, then he is right in as far as what does a new linux user do
when things go wrong? I think this puts off a lot of people even trying..
because of the 'what if something goes wrong'.

Perhaps most local computer shops are full of linux buffs anyway and they would
be happier to fix his pc if it was linux rather than windows...?

On Tue 24/02/09 21:02 , Rowan rowa...@googlemail.com sent: