Hi openSUSE Ambassadors Please all give a warm welcome to Jan-Bart Spang , our new ambassador from Ireland. Below you can learn more about him and his relationship with openSUSE as he told us in his own words. Bit about myself: I'm a 32 year old Medical Scientist. I was born and raised in Hardenberg, The Netherlands but moved to Ireland in 2002 after I met my wife of 5 years online about 11 years ago. We have been living in Mallow for the passed 6 years and I work at the local hospital. Computers has been my hobby for the passed 15 years but Linux only for the last 3. I help people with problems at work and in the wider community where a large number of my previous customers pass my number on. This is all done with Windows, I'm afraid! I have been learning WordPress for myself and am looking into doing a PHP course somewhere. I did a Higher Certificate in Science in Computing but had to drop out close to completion to do the increased work load at the hospital. Haven't gone back to finish it. What have you done already for openSUSE?: I have been an active member on the forums for about 3 years (dexter1979). First as a newbie asking questions but mostly helping people out with small problems these days. I wrote a couple of how-to's specific to my needs at the time. I blog about openSUSE a little bit on my own website. I have also been involved in the Dutch forums since I am a native of The Netherlands. I find it good to keep up my native language. What are your plans for promoting openSUSE? I am currently in the process of trying to set-up a local hub for Camara Education which is an Irish social enterprise that recycles used PC's, installs Linux and OSS educational software on it (Currently a Ubuntu re-brand but maybe we can change that) and sends them to schools in several African countries, Jamaica and some disadvantaged schools in Ireland. I will use contacts in this company to get to OSS events in Ireland and promote openSUSE. I will also try to promote openSUSE amongst the company members. Are you ready to start promoting openSUSE? I got 100 promotional DVD's here that will get me started but I will need to find more ways of getting average users to switch to Linux. What is the best kept secret of openSUSE? For most PC users, i.e. Windows users, it's the fact that they don't know there is an alternative to Windows. Most people think that a PC runs ONLY on Windows like a car can only run on petrol. We need to get more awareness of alternatives, freedom and choice to the average pc user. Why do you love to do this? I love Linux. I love the fact that it represents freedom, openness and choice. These qualities are severely lacking in today’s society. With the financial crisis deepening here in Ireland people need to know that there are alternatives out there to expensive software. I want to get that message out there. How did you start with Linux/openSUSE? What is your level of experience? I started with Linux in 2008. I read about Ubuntu 8.04 in an online forum somewhere and decided to try the live-CD. Didn't really like it and thought the heavy command line usage was very 90's. Then saw someone in the Ubuntu forums saying that openSUSE 10.3 rocked so I decided to try that. This was my first run in with the KDE 3.5 desktop and I loved it. YAST was a revelation! I don't need to use the command line a lot and it really felt like a proper modern operating system. Have been using openSUSE ever since. Have also experimented with Linux mint and I currently have a friend who started using this. Will switch him to openSUSE soon. -- http://opensuse.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://own.opensuse.gr http://warlordfff.tk me I am not me ------- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+help@opensuse.org