[clue-talk] Why Linux is being killed by Linux "experts"....

[Kevin Cullis]

Collins Richey wrote:
> I take a somewhat different view, and my troll sensor did not alarm
> when I read these articles. My net take on the two articles is this:
> suspicions confirmed. BestBuy and CompUSA are fine examples of stores
> that for the most part target sales of pre-packaged crap (good and bad
> crap, but always pre-packaged). MicroCenter, OTOH, is more of a geek
> haven, so that's where I would expect to find the friendly, helpful
> salesman who can spell Linux. Where else can you always find the
> latest US and UK Linux, MAC, and Linux publications?

You're thoughts are exactly what I'm talking about. Geeks need to get 
out of the CPU case and start talking to real people about real problems 
at the novice/inexperience level and not be so blinded by the 
technology. You've done exactly what I'm asking NOT to do: take someone 
who's a novice to a geek haven, or at least you can expect them to have 
their eyes roll back into their head when they walk into a place like 
that. And I'm not talking about only Best Buy or CompUSA, I was talking 
in general ALL retail outlets, if possible. Not all of what is sold is 
crap, but some of it is, for sure, no different than we could say of any 
other organization as well, right?

> I'm not convinced that taking new Linux users to the local CompUSA or
> BestBuy stores will accomplish much. You can't teach a pig to dance
> when the pig's owner has another vision for the pig.

And what did the article state: the retailers are taking a slow 
approach, nothing different than corporate American doing the same in 
adopting Linux.

> An example, I bought my wife's WinXP system (Celeron, uggh, reliable
> but slow) from the local dealer, but he was way out of line on prices
> for a suitable system for Linux.

And I had a customer that bought a old copy of SUSE 7.3 for $40 and was 
ripped off by the smaller organization.

I had a guy just yesterday said he moved his whole programming 
development onto a Mac 2.7 G5 computer because as he stated "programming 
using Apple's methodology has made me a better programmer, and my friend 
who also bought a Mac agrees."

As a friend stated, "Moving to Linux is one step closer to moving to 
BSD" ;-)

Kevin