regarding "just plain works" as a goal

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Tue, 10/7/08, Oren Beck <orenbeck at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am damned if I have easy answers beyond the 
> warning scream that if at ITEC for example a 
> walkerby or lookylou idly punches up their
> favorite website on a demo Linux machine- and 
> they see "placeholders" or "click to see image" 
> or anything other than the site rendering as 
> it does on their Flash laden home machine- WE 
> FAIL.and so does Linux... Same with Audio.

Well, I have some good news for you then.

First off, I always bring a demo Linux PC on hardware which is currently considered "obsolete", to demonstrate that Linux can bring new life to old hardware using a modern and current operating system.  The highly-technical attendees at ITEC will not expect the demo system ("what's inside" is printed on a label on the monitor) to produce quad-core system results, and this fact means that as the demo Linux PC performs quite nicely for multimedia and applications, they will agree that Linux can resurrect allegedly "obsolete" hardware.

Secondly, every year for the past three years there hasn't been reliable free wireless Internet on the ITEC Exhibitor floor.  This means that the option of showing people the Internet on the demo Linux PC will most likely not be available, which prevents people from seeing the "blinkenlights" Internet (for good or bad).

While some ITEC attendees might figure out how to dual-boot their existing system to explore Linux, most of them will balk at dual-booting their main system.  What I aim to do is show them that the 10 year old 1Ghz system in their closet (or the $25 1Ghz systems on Craigslist) could be restored as a Linux training system or child's computer.  That will get them using Linux.  The main system can come later.

The demo Linux PC has working audio, and thanks to a lucky find on Craigslist I now have a spare 15" LCD monitor with built-in speakers (uses up less table real estate).  I think an attendee who has ever had to upgrade his or her PC because Microsoft added more bloat to their Windows OS and he or she got sick of the older hardware system slowdowns, will be impressed with how Linux runs so fast on a PIII-1Ghz machine.