-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2007-12-11 at 17:19 -0600, Bryen wrote:
You guys are all missing the point of my anecdote since Carlos snipped out the last part of my original posting. In the end, while my friend disagreed with me that she would ever have to use OpenOffice, one year later, her employer mandated that she and everyone else in her company use OpenOffice. So, the "resistance is futile" quip that Carlos always refers to is quite relevant here. Resistance to OpenOffice is futile. :-)
I later remembered an anecdote of mine, or rather of a friend of mine. He is a kids teacher on a neighbor province. The authorities are pushing linux in the school, and thus they supplied the school where my friend was at the time with a bunch of linux PCs for the kids and another one for the administration. The administration machine was installed in the office, and as soon as the technician left, she (the director) told my friend to install windows there. A bootlegged copy, of course. She didn't want "that crap" in "her" computer. (You can get Windows for schools really cheap, if you shop around, even for free, and legally. The chaps at Microsoft are no fools: they know they benefit from kids learning to love Windows). They also installed a room with the computers. Some localized linux version, loading from a local server. The setup never worked right. My friend is not a computer chap, but a teacher, with teaching skills, not technical - but he is of the tinkering mindset, so lets say he is good with computers... running windows. He is friendly to linux, but knows very little linux and hates the command line; but being the only teacher that even knew something, the task of setting that computer room fell on him. It never worked right. Programs did not start, one or another PC would not boot, or the server would not boot... countless problems. I couldn't help him: not over the phone, and me not knowing the exact setup. The technician came many times. No good. Of course, the technician assumed the teachers knew how to use and manage Linux, which is false. My friend barely knows how to do an "ls". The room was never used for kids. My friend left that school, for another (he is a "temp"), so I don't know what become of it this year. I understand the politicians have dropped that linux version and switched to Ubuntu. Of course, they should have trained the personnel first. What do you expect? Politicians... However, these attempts to forced switchovers in fact make people hate linux, IMO. I'm afraid I'm a pessimist O:-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHX9I8tTMYHG2NR9URAjwcAJ0fdsAkXwO4CIUdsHPmQ+Z0DqGxCwCePRMU gTCHHyNREmUp1MLrZzKS2TQ= =HvMy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org