[balug-talk] Good Letter in San Francisco Chronicle Today

[Joseph Brenner]

Michael T. Halligan <michael at halligan.org> wrote:

> [...] you'd be rather frightened that these savants might some day
> have to use anything more complicated than Windows 95.

The problem is not so much that Linux is "more complicated" as that it's
different.  The ten years they've spent blundering around with Windows
95 was no doubt not without pain, but they've learned how to do things
with it -- one of the reasons they're reluctant to just upgrade it, no
doubt.  Myself, I don't go around telling friends that they should 
switch to Knoppix or Suse or something (I'd rather not be their tech
support... in fact, the "I haven't used Windows in ten years" line is
often very convenient).


> I'm not quite sure where you get the idea that SF has a lot of 
> unemployed tech people. 

One idea: a volunteer organization (of some sort) might offer their
services to smooth over the transition period.  

A variant: go through the Board of Supes, convince them they need to
(a) standardize a certain type of linux installation and (b) create a
shared IT department to deal with setup/maintenance, possibly
"training" (which would be the big headache, or the big moneymaking
opportunity, depending on how you look at it).


> As incompetent as our local government is, I shudder to imagine them 
> trying to figure out the Xwindows way of cut & paste.

Yes, X Windows cut-and-paste is still an irritating mess even if you're
not trying to use the old-fashioned select-then-middle-click-to-paste;
but the reason it seems that way to us is that we're not willing to,
for example, drink the KDE kool-aid and never touch anything that
doesn't know how to talk to KDE's latest-and-greatest version of the
clipboard.