Gergely Nagy dijo [Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 01:32:32PM +0100]: > I see people around me teach their children to use and control > computers, to build things with them, even before they learn to > write. They have their toys, they build stuff, sometimes they > unknowingly write programs - before the age of eight. I find that > astounding (I used to be so proud at writing my first program before I > could write - now it isn't all that rare, and that's a good thing, that > people have the opportunity to do that). > > The thing is, Debian is often not available on the devices younger > people start off with - and even if it is, not by default. Someone who > just began to experiment, to play, will not install a whole new world > onto his/her device. That's advanced stuff.
Well, Debian is *almost never* available by default on the devices they start off with, and has never been. We have always been of appeal to the technically minded (and less so to the very-freedom-minded) public. Of course, we have tried to go beyond our natural "limits", but -outside of some local governments providing Debian-based solutions for a wide spectrum of their society, which cannot of course be downplayed- have been unable to. > Debian is also not impressively different, so to say. We have a distinct > culture, we have great technical solutions, but those are hardly enough > to impress someone who just casually looks. We need to reach out and > show them that there is much more under the hood than they may imagine, > that we can, and we do provide something unique. > > And we need to impress them. That's a very, very hard thing to do, and > something that we'll need lots of help to accomplish, and not > necessarily from technical folk. (Which is why one of my primary aims is > to reach and and recruit non-technical contributors to Debian.) How would you suggest "impressing" them? A new, shiny user interface is not what it takes, or at least, not all it takes. We have packaged *great* user interfaces for a very long time. Even other Linux distributions, aimed at the desktop, have given a lot of extra shine and polish to their UIs, someof them (i.e. our derivative Ubuntu) developing completely new frameworks, targetted IMO to touch-devices, which are all the rage now. And I still cannot say it impresses or dazzles newcomers. > Share the knowledge, share the culture, the stories. I've attended a > couple of code retreats recently (they seem to be quite popular, and for > a good reason), and found that they're a great forum not only to meet > others, learn and teach, but to spread the word too, to evangelise, so > to say. Much like DebConf, but for the not yet initiated. > > What I think would help, are more local events - not always strictly > Debian related, as you'll only reach a tiny fraction of people with > that. But things where the attendance can be impressed, to bring them > closer to our culture, to our ideas. Once interested is sparked, we can > proceed further, but it is a gradual process: we won't win anyone for > the project overnight. > > We need to impress the young. We won't be able to do that with technical > feats alone (though those do help, and are required, and we have much to > improve there too, at least in the being readily available for all kinds > of fun devices department). > > Most of the younger people I talked about Debian with in recent years > were in their early 20s, and what they seemed most impressed about is > not our technical feats, not our quality, not anything like that. But > the culture. Right, I liked very much the insight in this part: What makes Debian unique, besides the software (which can be integrated into myriads of other distributions) is the culture. My recent free software-related talks have also gone more towards the free culture and flat organization aspects than to towards technical feats. And, although it's been a long time since I feel I got a new Debian "addict", I think that's what we should promote if we want to give a sense of uniqueness. The way our community works, and why it attracts the kind of people it does. And why we continue working together. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130319185335.gf7...@gwolf.org
