I'm not familiar with the Neal Stephenson reference so I may be misinterpreting this, but from a kid's perspective, both Windows and Linux would be free (in the financial sense), and considering which OS all their games will run on, Linux will seem like the station-wagon. I think kids would be a hard sell, unless they're the type who might be interested in all the geeky cool stuff you can do with Linux.
-Derek > It's the "willing teacher" problem I had with my classroom idea. I put > the question to a few teachers I know, and there's not much interest. > > I like the idea of outreach and advocacy Matt suggests - if you think > about my original idea, perhaps the market's wrong. Instead of selling > Linux to the teacher/administration, sell it to the kids. Any kid > interested in computers would choose the "free tank" over the "expensive > station-wagon" (a la Neal Stephenson "In the Beginning") and a *willing* > kid would actually learn. > > On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 22:25 -0500, Judah Milgram wrote: >> Beware of OPC [1] syndrome >> >> [1] Other Peoples' Computers >> >> It's not just the install and setup. You'll have to hold their hands >> forever, else sooner or later they'll run into a problem they can't >> solve and if you're not available right then and there it'll be "we >> tried Linux and got burned". >> >> Especially unpromising if you have to "convince" someone they want >> Linux. >> >> I see a reply from Eoin ... maybe his experience says something >> different. >> >> Judah >> >> >> Matt Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> > I've recently started to look into the idea of assisting private >> schools and >> > non profits in migrating over to linux. Has anyone else already done >> this >> > sort of thing? With the summer break a few months out this seems like >> it is >> > a good time of year to come together and start planning, convincing, >> > whatever is needed before any actual installs take place. >> > >> > Feedback, experience, whatever? >> > >> > -Matt >> > >
