[CS-FSLUG] Transitions

[Josiah Ritchie]

Greg Slade scripted ::

>>> Rather than sitting back and berating the guy (BTW, does that
>>> show the love of Christ?) why don't you volunteer to help him
>>> out with his work.  In the process you can learn more about
>>> WinNT and his concerns and maybe have a chance to widen his
>>> horizons in teaching him some about Linux and Open Source.
>
>> There is no doubt that IT guys in ministry especially are
>> over-worked and under appreciated in general so helping him
>> might fulfill his needs. Today's society is more likely to
>> listen to someone who is willing to listen to them. It's part
>> of that "Post-Modern" mindset.
>
>Uh, no, it's not "post-modern" at all. Consider the issue from the
>point of the person you are trying to convince: what you are asking
>them to do is put in a whole bunch of extra time and work, only to
>end up where they are right now. (Pointing out that Linux is free
>while Microsoft costs money makes no difference when the money has
>already been paid to Microsoft. Uninstalling stuff which has already
>been paid for won't magically put the money back into the ministry's
>coffers, it will only take up the IT guy's time for no benefit.) That
>moves forward *your* agenda for promoting Open Source, but it does
>nothing for the ministry's agenda of getting work done for the
>Kingdom (still less the IT guy's agenda of putting out fires so that
>the ministry *can* get some work done.) 
>
>When I was in Hong Kong, my list of desired qualities in volunteers 
>working in the computer refurbishing department very quickly
>shortened down to two. Things like computer experience were much less
>critical than two basic attributes:
>
>1. be gentle with the equipment (don't bang it around)
>2. do what needs to be done (not what's fun)
>
>We had managed to obtain a large number of Windows 95 licences, but
>we still had more computers than licences, so as the pile of licences
> shrank, I grew more and more concerned that we needed to get a
> workable, 
>easy-to-use, works-out-of-the-box, free solution to install on the 
>computers before shipment. (Most of our recipients had extremely
>limited computer skills, and if we didn't ship the systems in a state
>where they could plug them in, turn them on, and use them, they would
>probably just ask some geek to install stuff for them, and that geek
>would almost certainly give them pirated Windows stuff.) I had plenty
>of volunteers come in and say, "Oh! You need to install the Brandex
>distro! Every other kind of Linux is rubbish." (Or, they'd want me to
>use FreeBSD, or whatever.) My reply was invariably, "Fine. You bring
>in a distro, complete with OpenOffice, E-mail, web browser, and so
>on, so that I can stick in a CD and let it install itself, and we'll
>use it." (I wasn't kidding, either. Installing Windows 95, applying
>the assorted patches and upgrades, then installing Mozilla and
>OpenOffice, is an incredibly tedious procedure, and we never could
>get utilities like Ghost to automate the procedure reliably.) Not one
>ever came back with a CD. 
>
>I have been forced to the conclusion that most of the "you should
>use..." talk doesn't stem from any real experience with the problems
>of the current solution, or with making the recommended solution work
>in a production environment, but from a fairly widespread tendency
>for people to want to recreate other people's computers in the image
>of their own. Therefore, any time you want to "evangelise" for Linux,
>you need to overcome the resistance which will invariably have built
>up to this kind of displace egotism. That means that you have to be
>willing to help the poor, frazzled IT guy meet *his* goals, not
>yours. In other words, helping to make Windows systems work may well
>be something you need to do first, in order to convince the ministry
>to replace them ultimately. 
>
>In Hong Kong, the way we first got into Linux was when volunteers
>came in and built systems we needed, using Linux. (One was a firewall
>machine for the network running Smoothwall, another was an internal
>webmail system running SquirrelMail.) By adding functionality to the
>network at no cost[1], those volunteers helped us achieve important
>goals for the IT department (to protect and enhance the work), and
>also demonstrated that Linux can deliver working solutions, and is
>not just a lot of unkept promises.
>
>God bless,
>
>Greg

Thank you Greg, there's nothing like experience to clarify a
situation. I was thinking more in terms of Gospel evangelism, but
correlating to to Linux evangelism. I think I forgot to tell you that.
:-) Besides, they are only roughly similar.

I agree that putting Linux on the desktop is still a very difficult
thing. I'm in ministry where our donated computers are all sorts of
different things and replicating an install like you mentioned is
nearly impossible for any OS. The reason we don't have linux on the
desktop is programs that require Win and a resistance to
change/training efforts that would be needed. If I had to send these
boxes out beyond my touch, I can't imagine the effort that would come
with that, nearly impossible. It's hard enough to maintain all
the boxen within my reach.

JSR/